Basic Home-cooked Cat Food Recipe

This is a recommended home-cooked cat food recipe using easily sourced ingredients. The recipe comes from The Encyclopedia Of The Cat by Dr Bruce Fogle DVM, MRCVS.

Basic home-cooked cat food recipe and ingredients

Basic home-cooked cat food ingredients

The Recipe

  • cook the rice, bonemeal, salt and corn oil in twice their combined volume of water for 20 minutes;
  • stir in the chicken and the liver;
  • leave to simmer for a further 10 minutes;
  • blend it thoroughly and refrigerate.

It should feed an average sized domestic cat for three days. The chicken is medium-fat but could be leaner if the cat is being dieted.

See raw food diet for a cat articles of various kinds.


Note: sources for news articles are carefully selected but the news is often not independently verified.

Michael Broad

Hi, I'm a 74-year-old retired solicitor (attorney in the US). Before qualifying I worked in many jobs including professional photography. I love nature, cats and all animals. I am concerned about their welfare. If you want to read more click here.

You may also like...

8 Responses

  1. Marc says:

    Great info – thanks I will try it. I want to be able to feed my cats non carcinogenic food and I assume all mass produced cat food is carcinogenic because it lasts for so long for a start. It’s just not natural that meat can survive in a little package.

    • Marc says:

      Why so much rice?

      • Michael says:

        Probably because it contains a lot of good stuff 😉 LOL. Not a very accurate answer.

        Nutritional value per 100 g (3.5 oz) (from Wikipedia)

        Energy 1,527 kJ (365 kcal)
        Carbohydrates 80 g
        – Sugars 0.12 g
        – Dietary fiber 1.3 g
        Fat 0.66 g
        Protein 7.13 g
        Water 11.61 g
        Thiamine (vit. B1) 0.0701 mg (6%)
        Riboflavin (vit. B2) 0.0149 mg (1%)
        Niacin (vit. B3) 1.62 mg (11%)
        Pantothenic acid (B5) 1.014 mg (20%)
        Vitamin B6 0.164 mg (13%)
        Calcium 28 mg (3%)
        Iron 0.80 mg (6%)
        Magnesium 25 mg (7%)
        Manganese 1.088 mg (52%)
        Phosphorus 115 mg (16%)
        Potassium 115 mg (2%)
        Zinc 1.09 mg (11%)

        Wild cats do eat the contents of the stomach of animals that are herbivores and mice consume any kind of fruit or grain from plants. Perhaps this is a factor in its inclusion.

  2. Riverside Robyn says:

    For Americans:

    140g chicken–about 1 C. chopped or 5 oz.
    30g liver–a little under 1/4 C. chopped or 1 oz.
    70g rice–about 1/3 C.
    10g bonemeal–a little over 1-1/2 tsp.
    5 ml corn oil–a little over 1 tsp.
    2g salt–1/3 tsp.

    Yes, and what about taurine & any other supplements?

    • Michael says:

      I agree, what about taurine and arginine and other supplements? These are not referred to in the recipe so I must presume that there is enough of these essential ingredients in the chicken and liver. For example: chicken liver contains about 6.763 g taurine per kilogram of dry weight. Chicken contains arginine. There is no automatic need to add these vital ingredients provided the food contains them.

  3. kevin roche says:

    I often wonder how to cook a cat healthy meal,but I know they need the ingredient “tourine”.that is important for their health.how do you add the tourine?

    • Michael says:

      There is enough taurine in the meats to cover that essential ingredient. That is my reading of the recipe. There is no automatic requirement to add taurine and arginine.

      The recipe does not mention adding supplements.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *