Making Raw Cat Food for Do-It-Yourselfers

Meat/Bone/Organ grinds: With these grinds, follow the above recipe, but omit the heart and liver. Add the 4000 mg taurine even though the organs are included in the grind.

 

 

Ideally, cats want their food at "mouse body" temperature. The best way to accomplish this is to put thawed or partially thawed food in a Ziploc-type baggie. Squeeze as much air out as you can and then place the baggie in a bowl of warm water for 5 minutes or so. This warms it up without cooking it. It's best not to microwave it, since this does cook it. To serve, cut off the corner of the baggie with scissors and pour or squeeze it onto their plate. Serving the food cold can cause stomach upset, and your cat may throw it up.

 

Cats usually prefer to eat off a plate, rather than a bowl. For feeding raw food, glass or metal is preferred because they won't get bacteria-harboring scratches the way plastic will. A low sided Pyrex baking dish or pie plate works great; they are heavy enough not to move around as the cat eats and they usually come with covers for refrigerating leftovers. Some people like to use paper plates for easier clean up.

 

 

Generally, for adult cats you should feed 2 to 3% of body weight per day. For example: for a 10 pound cat this would work out to 3.2 to 4.8 oz a day. My cats will vary in how much they will want to eat in a day; one day they're ravenous and the next they're leaving food on the plate. Kittens can require twice as much food per pound of body weight as adult cats, as they are growing, not just maintaining their weight.

 

If your cat is overweight, try feeding the amount they would need for their ideal weight, not the weight they are now. They will then lose weight slowly down to their ideal. Just be sure they do eat every day. See "How to Transition Your Cat to a Raw Diet" for more information.

 

Get a good scale to keep accurate track of your cats' weights, even if they are not overweight. Health-O-Meter makes a good baby scale that works well for cats. It features a very useful averaging function that will get an accurate weight even on a squirming cat, and a zero-out function that allows you to get a weight even if you have to wrap the cat in a towel or put her in a carrier to weigh her.

 

 

Just to be sure my cats are getting all the taurine and omegas they need, I add a little directly to their thawed food a couple times a week. I open a taurine capsule and sprinkle a little on their food, and I'll stick a knife point into a fish oil capsule and squeeze the oil onto their meal. I recommend putting a glove or baggie on the hand holding the fish oil capsule, otherwise you'll be pretty fragrant; that fish oil is very pungent.