High cholesterol in young cats!

Hi everyone. I have three domestic shorthair cats. Two of them are 3yrs old, and one is 2 and a half. I took my cats to the vet for a basic check-up this Friday and ran a urine test. The results came out, and shows all of my three cats have high cholesterol.

I don't understand why. I feed my cats homemade raw-diet using meat sources from a trusty farm. Each nutrition I'm adding to the meat is strictly measured and followed the instruction on the raw-diet recipe I found. 

I've looked into this problem for a while, and found in most of the case, cat with high cholesterol is usually either old, or overweight. Then I feel it is weird, because my cats are young, and at the same weight of 10.2 lbs, which according to my vet is a pretty normal number for a three-year-old domestic shorthair.

I'm really confused and don't know what the problem could be. My vet suggested me not to feed shellfish or shrimp but I never did. Most of the time I feed them chicken or turkey, and sometimes pheasant or quail. The vet then suggested me to try Omega-3 supplement, so I placed an order on Amazon and it should be delivered by Tuesday. I hope it'll help.

And, I don't mean this has anything related, but I spend hundreds on my cats' diet every month, and this result really came up as a surprise. I don't want this problem grows big into a huge problem in the future. Therefore, I'm here sincerely asking for help. Please tell me what I should do to stop this problem. Thank you!!

This is a really basic question that I assume the vet would know about, but did the cats fast before the test? Because most cholesterol tests require a 12 hour fast to be accurate, and not doing that would result in higher levels. This was my cat's recent cholesterol levels from her bloodwork, but she hadn't fasted and my vet said she was fine:


Did they have bloodwork done? I haven't heard about testing for cholesterol from urine before.

Thank you for your reply Molly92, and yes, they got fast before the test. 

My friend's cat ran the same test the same day, and her numbers are totally normal. Btw my friend's feeding her commercial dry food. So that's why I'm confused  

Interesting. If they're not related (and it's therefore not genetic), then it must come down to something in their diet. What recipe are you following? Maybe you can see if someone else here uses the same recipe, and if they've had any problems. You might need to switch to a slightly different recipe. This page links to some different ones: http://www.thecatsite.com/t/264154/raw-feeding-resources

The advantage of commercial food is that, even though they do have some awful ingredients, the basic nutrients are always there in the right proportions. If you or your recipe is using ratios that are a little off, that could cause something like cholesterol to be higher.

http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Raw-Cat-Food This is the recipe I've been using, and I think maybe egg yolks is the problem, because the recipe only says "4 egg yolks" and didn't say anything about the weight, and I usually buy extra large eggs so the total intake of egg yolks may come up to be a little too much. Anyways, that's just a guess. I will look into the link you gave. Thanks again Molly92!