Homemade Cat Food Help

My kitty had terrible diarrhea. He would eat commercial food and run to the litter box. He was soiling outside the box. He seemed lifeless. I was concerned that he might be really sick.

I switched to a raw food diet. He's a different cat. He goes once a day sometime once every other day. He doesn't smell. He has much more energy and is growing like the proverbial weed.

I read all the confusing article too. I figured that a cat in the wild ate raw meat with vitamins. Yes, a cat in the wild lives a shorter life but usually not because of diet so much as cars and other outside hazards. 

And so I think I've adopted a common-sense approach. I have an inexpensive meat grinder. I buy chicken or turkey. Turkey is cheaper especially during the holidays. I thaw it out and then grind it. With turkey I use a small hatchet to cut the turkey apart. Turkey bones are bigger; thus, I chop them up prior to putting them through the grinder.  I have used Cornish game hens too. They are expensive but easy to process.

I leave out about twenty percent of the bones according to what I read. I leave out the bigger bones.  I add chicken hearts for extra Taurine. I spinkle on a little salt and some brewer's yeast. I freeze it in vaccum bags and get out what I need for the day.

That's it. I'm having good success so far.

Rollie, you should leave the salt off your cats' food; they have no need of it and it can contribute to a variety of health issues. Also, cats require several different meat sources and you might want to look into feeding more than just turkey and chicken. The only studies we have so far on this topic are on the big cats, but the minimum for them is 5 to 7 different protein sources; it stands to reason that our house kitties require a similar range of foods.

Ckovacs, the information you need about what's involved in home-preparing your cats' foods can be found on CatInfo.org, Feline-Nutrition.org and RawFedCat.org. These sites overlap a bit, but the first and last concentrate on ground and frankenprey/whole prey, respectively, and Feline-Nutrition.org gives a very high-level look at both. TCS has a thread, Natural Diet Information Resources, that outlines the different feeding methods and some of what they entail, and you can find a much-expanded version of that thread on CatCentric.org.

Because there are so few studies to give us assurances, some of what you're going to read is subjective and will differ from one source to another. This is mostly a comfort level issue. For instance, some folks feel that parboiling (lightly cooking the outside of the meat) is necessary to keep cats from becoming ill while others, like myself, are quite comfortable with our belief that cats evolved with the necessary defenses to handle their natural diet in its naturally raw state (else they wouldn't have made it this far). Most raw feeders - but not all - believe that the more processed a diet, the more supplementing it needs, so supplementing ground products is a good idea, but isn't necessary with frankenprey/whole prey diets. Others think that no amount of home-processing requires supplementation and go so far as to feed a fully cooked diet without any supplements at all (a practice I think is illogical and unhealthy).

Don't forget - there are lots of commercially-prepared raw foods available today and that number is steadily increasing. Quality control issues are inherent in commercial products, but raw foods are handled with more care and, at least those that I've seen so far, higher quality ingredients; these products make a great half-way step if you want to get your cat on a natural, healthy diet immediately, but you're still researching how to home-prepare said diet.

Good luck! Please feel free to ask questions in the raw-feeding forum... there are several experienced raw feeders here on TCS!

AC