Here’s another USA recipe for homemade cat food – original source unknown
To make one batch:
4 cups Instincts powder; mix in 10 cups water. (Let it stand to thicken while grinding the meat.)
Using the middle plate (not ultra-fine, not coarse) grind:
10 pounds turkey thighs, skinless and boneless
6 pounds beef bottom round, no fat
2 pounds raw beef liver
4 tins water-packed sardines
Add the powder/water mixture and mix well.
Place into individual Ziploc containers or bags and freeze for 2 weeks.
We take out the raw food to thaw, as needed. Before feeding, we heat the thawed meat in the microwave until it’s slightly warm. We leave the food down for a maximum of 15 minutes. What is left can be refrigerated and used for the next feeding, but discard if there are leftovers from the second feeding of the same meat.”
Makes about 50 cups. As can be seen some thought is required.
cat dead bird
Powdered Premix for Homemade Raw Food Diet for Cats
In the United States, an example of a suitable food supplement mix is the one manufactured by Feline Future (new window) and provided in their product InstinctsTC.
I have no affiliation with this company. They support the view that modern “cat food” (i.e. canned and bagged processed food) is too far removed from a cat’s true diet for it to be healthy. They believe in a raw food diet for a cat plus added supplements. Forgetting for a minute their products, this view has a ring of truth about it. The trouble is it is inconvenient for humans and this world loves convenience. It takes time to prepare cat food the more natural way.
The way they recommend is to add water to their powdered supplement and then add raw meat and liver to that, thereby making up your own natural cat food. Or, you can lightly cook the raw meat and add the supplements of your choice after cooking.
Some Further Thoughts on a Raw Cat Food
You make your mind up. It takes more time and is no doubt more expensive but I suspect better for your cat. A lot of ill health can originate in unsuitable cat food. Perhaps keeping a cat has become too convenient and too easy and that may be one reason why the domestic cat population has increased so much. Maybe it should be more demanding for the benefit of all cats.
Apparently, in the San Francisco area of America, there is a raw food buyers group affiliated to a supplier, SF Raw. Obviously, I am all for this as I have come to dislike processed cat food. Too much of it gets left by the cat. And I am frankly not sure, despite efforts, as to what goes into it.
Until now, the vets have been against people preparing a raw food diet for their companion animal on the pretext that it was dangerous and impossible to do well enough. You had to be an “expert”. But this is not actually the case. A homemade cat food diet is relatively easy (if we are careful and thoughtful) because it is essentially meat plus supplements and some people supply all the supplements you need in one packet. See this post for example: Homemade Cat Food. There is also the suspicion that some vets advise against preparing our own raw cat food because it will undermine a part of their sales as in the UK, at least, a lot of vets sell Hills dry cat food. Hills will be upset too!
This photo kind of states the obvious. Do we feed “kibble” or the real stuff.
Photo by This Year’s Love
The bottom line is that a properly prepared raw food diet for our cat will as near as possible replicate what our cat would have eaten as a wildcat. It will probably be an improvement on that. The drawback is having the confidence and time to do it. It is more fiddly and troublesome but if we can overcome these hurdles our cat will be living more naturally and we will probably more environmentally friendly if we buy the raw products such as chicken thighs or neck from a local supplier rather than big business.
Here are some more posts on the subject of cat food:
Salmonella strains are not particularly a problem to you, if you’ve had cats in your past. My cat is fed a T. Of plain nonfat Greek yogurt every night, before my bedtime. I mix it with a tsp. of cream to make it palatable. This is insurance that he/she won’t suffer from diarrhea after eating raw chicken.
Sorry for commenting on an old article, but I found it very useful and I will be keeping this for future reference! I haven’t got cats of my own yet, but when I do I will feed them a raw diet. I will give Mark’s recipe a try, just make much smaller batches since I am going to be only adopting a maximum of three cats. I have noticed that my local supermarkets sell all the ingredients, including chicken hearts and livers. I am in Aus, so I don’t think I will be able to get Kitty Bloom. If I can’t get my hands on Kitty Bloom, I will find some other complete supplement for cats.
Yep thats true, i guess in small amounts it might work.
I agree that cats won’t eat food that is contaminated badly.
Michael, we trust our cats to not eat bacteria-laden food. Have you ever seen a cat eat dog poop? I haven’t. 😉
Woops. That was not clear: Because our cats have such fastidious personal hygiene (most, anyway), and they have a particularly interesting immune system which is greatly tied to the Gut and their saliva, they are allowed to carefully clean their hinies, lick their fur till satisfied with the smell, and then lick our ice cream/yogurt cones. <3