Barbara in Littleton, Colorado is so enthused about cooking for her cat, that I hate to rain on her parade but even the most elaborate recipes can get you in trouble if they aren’t balanced for a cat’s dietary needs.
I have been experimenting with different ingredients and came across chicken liver. They love it! Yesterday I tried a different technique and baked the chicken instead of boiling it. Made a much moister chicken. Whole roaster, pint of chicken livers from the store, brown rice, spinach, peas and carrots. I processed everything separately. The chicken pulsed a few times to make bite sized morsels, chicken livers into pate, spinach, peas and carrots were pulsed slightly and the brown rice I kept whole. Blended everything in a bowl and voila! I will be out on the hunt for this Ultimate Pet Food Guide book that you suggested. Maybe I can experiment with other flavors.
As for your book, I have lent it to a coworker to read (she’ll come to work today and get it). I hope she finds it as informative and eye opening as it was for me. I’ve also left her a sample of my cat food to see what her cats think. Marilynn is cat person herself and owns two cats up until last year. A stray female that kept coming around her house. Marilynn wouldn’t allow it into her house, but she would leave food for the cat and made a bed for her outside, so she had a warm place to sleep. She decided to name her, Sweet Pea, because it’s a lovable little creature. After the cat become more comfortable coming around Marilynn’s house, she would sometimes sneak inside when the opportunity came about. After finding the cat in the house, and a little concerned for the welfare of the cats that she owned, she decided to adopt the cat. Last summer, she took the cat to the vet and had them shave off the matted, mangy fur and got all of her shots. So, needless to say she is a proud owner of three cats.
As noted elsewhere, cats lack taurine which needs to be added to their food in order for their bodies to process it properly. In addition, they need both the bone and the organ meats so in order to properly make homemade food you’d need a commercial food grinders through which you would put the entire chicken – and then you’ve STILL have to add the taurine. Therefore, if you want to continue cooking, you need to keep all that in mind which is why Weruva and Halo’s Spot’s Stew are such great canned foods.
Tracie
The Cat Bible
If she feeds heart she’ll have plenty of taurine (though it is in small amounts elsewhere in the animal this is the best source). She should add some calcium, too. I always suggest a multivitamin for homecooking to cover the gaps of a well prepared home diet.
Thanks for joining the conversation – but as you can see from your own comments, it’s not so easy to include all the nutrients cats need and then what about balancing those ingredients?? The calcium would naturally come from the ground bone in feeding raw frozen prepared food- to which the proper proportion of taurine has also been added. You can cover all the nutritional bases by feeding Platinum Performance feline formula – but you still can go quite overboard in one direction or another by trying to concoct your own food and trying to figure out quantities and proportions of individual items. Take the stress out of feeding a balanced diet to your kitty cats by leaving the alchemy to the experts!