Homemade Cat Food

By

Lizzyanny

I have been feeding my cat Dr. Lisa Piersons recipe for several years (www.catinfo.org) On her website she explains your cats nutritional needs and what to put into the recipe to meet those needs. My cats epileptic seizures are controlled by her diet.

I do include heart in my recipe for the high taurine content. Do not include indiscriminate amounts of offal (which can include intestines and their contents). Chicken liver is very high in vitamin A and you can overdose you cat with too much. I grind fresh meat only (with bones).

There are no carbohydrates in this diet. Cats are obligate carnivores. An obligate carnivore is an animal that necessarily subsists on a diet consisting mainly of meat, because it does not possess the physiology to digest vegetable matter. Such animals may consume other materials (vegetable or mineral) for non-nutritional purposes.

But they must eat meat. Pasta? I don't think so. Humans are carnivores, not obligate carnivores. We can and do digest meat and other foods because we can. Cats cannot, because they have a short digestive tract.

Some cats get serious digestive problems from eating grains. Do check out Dr. Pierson's site before you feed your cat something that sounds good, but may well not be.

By

Wynclute

About offal. Cats and dogs that have been euthanized are sent to offal processing plants. Also diseased animal pars are included. That is why it is not advisable to feed your cat or dog food based on offal.

Diseases such as mad cow disease have developed through the feeding animals the flesh of their own kind, and through the concentration of disease element that results for the practice.

Prion based diseases occur even in thoroughly cooked stuff that is included in the offal.

I do not recommend using offal for animal feed, nor inadvertently turning your pets into cannibals.

By

smartfell-r

A cat's diet should consist of mostly meat, and low to no carbs... When cats used to be wild, they would hunt small rodents such as mice and their diets consisted of the meat and bones from the animal and the only carbs they would get would come from the stomach contents of their prey if any.

The best food for a cat is using raw, not cooked meat, chicken, turkey and rabbit are good choices. But, these meats can not be used alone, as some other ingredients need to be added such as taurine.

Dry foods should never be given to a cat, they only contain 10% moisture and will dehydrate a cat. Also, most dry foods are loaded with carbs.

While feeding a cat a good healthy diet is more expensive, they will be far healthier and will spend far less time at the vets office and will live a longer healthier life. A good higher end canned food (has plenty of moisture) is EVO brand. It has over 95% meat and no grains.

http://www.catinfo.org/
http://www.catnutrition.org/foodmaking
http://www.catnutrition.org/recipes.php
http://www.rawfedcats.org/index.htm

Jim in Jax

By

Deeli

ChloeA and catasrofy: Do you realize just how much protein, vitamins, minerals, nutrition are in lentils and animal organs? A lot! Please check out more nutrition facts before saying this recipe is a health disaster :-( Everything needs to be 'balanced' in food including using grain products like rice or pasta ... 'Balance' in any food consumed daily is the key to health even for cats.

By

ChloeA

Please, please take the other poster's advice and read up on cat nutrition before feeding this to your cat. They need essential vitamins and minerals which aren't in this recipe.

By

catastrofy

My vet says this is a very unhealthy recipe. Cats should be fed high protein meals, not pasta and vegetables. Pasta, grains, veggies, and the wheat and rice gluten that are added to cat foods are a major cause of diabetes in cats. Check out a cat diabetes website.

By

Deeli

I am giggling really hard because offal 'does not mean poop' here in the US unless it happens to be a brand spanking new slang word ;-) LOL!

Offal is ground up organs of animals including but not limited to the liver, heart, gizzard, tongue, skin, etc. and used in a variety of products (including sausage) for both human and animal consumption.

Anyway, Verity, thanks for the recipe and it sounds very healthy to me! There are lots of nutrients in the lentils and even more so in 'offal' ;-) I think I'll start with a small batch to see how my finicky feline friend likes it first and will also experiment with substituting rice for the pasta :-)

This recipe will save lots of money over store bought food and has no added chemicals or preservatives!

By

katklaw777

What is offal in the UK? In the USA it means "poop." I think we better get this straightened out pretty darn quick!
This doesn't sound healthy to me no matter what it is.