Selfsufficientish.com

There's so much about homemade food for dogs, but what is suitable for cats?

i tried my cats with a recipe I found online - couldn't get them to eat it. So if you do find a recipe you like the look of only make a tiny bit at first.

I'd also like some idea's.My sister feeds her dog raw meat,good grade meat,with sometimes cheap offcuts thrown in.Her dog does'nt have biscuits either.Can you feed a cat just raw meat???I know the brought cat food/biscuits are fortified with vitamins/minerals,so I guess I would be abit worried my cat could fall short?

Well a cat's natural diet is raw meat and I've read that where an adult night eat a full tin of catfood plus biscuits they'll be perfectly happy on just a couple of ounces of raw meat because they get more nutrition from it. But I have no idea if that's true. My cats will happily catch and eat small birds and rodents and then come in and eat their tinned food so I'm not wholly convinced

Having read the small print on cat food tins, I've learnt that standard cat food contains only 4% meat. I dread to think what the rest is

I quite like the idea of home made cat food, but get the impression that it will be a lot more expensive, as well as all the extra work, so I'm afraid my cat has to put up with the 4% stuff. If she doesn't like it she can always catch her own (and does).

Green Aura wrote:Well a cat's natural diet is raw meat :

must include some organ meats in here and bonemeal or another source of calcium

Yes, I also think it would be more expensive and a lot of work. However, I also believe that a wll balanced raw diet would be very healthy.

But it would be a mistake to only gove the cat raw meat. One of our cats is a hunter and she brings in mice, birds and an occasional baby rabbit. Now there apparently are prey-to-play and prey-to-eat, don't ask me how she distinguishes between them.

But the prey-to-eat gets devoured very methodically and she doesn't just eat the meat. Everything (brain, skull, hair/feathers, toenails, bones, tail) gets eaten, except the gall bladder and sometimes the intestines.

Dessert usually is a few pieces of kibble (biscuits?) and if we're lucky she doesn't puke it all out within 15 minutes

Anyway, the point being that it would take some study to put together a well balanced raw diet for a cat. Although I would consider supplement biscuits that only have 4% meat with either quality canned food or some raw minced meat, chicken hearts or one-day-chicks. Perhaps once or twice a week? I'm no expert, so don't take my word for it. But 4% actual meat in the cat food sounds as though it might need some improvement.

Just checked our catfood, it has 18% salmon and an undefined quantity (but lower than 16%) of dehydrated poultry protein. The brand is Pro Plan and it sells for 20 pounds at A'zon UK. Such a bag lasts us over a month and if I take it at 30 days it would be about 33 pence a day per cat to feed it this food. Our cats get no other food, as they won't eat it. One of them obviously supplements her diet with her own catch.

Well, I kind of got distracted there... but I doubt that you could feed your cat a balanced raw diet for 33 p a day.

For my penneth. http://skeptvet.com/Blog/

I had no idea that a standard tin had that little meat in! I am definitely going to be checking what our cats eat.. it sounds all wrong
Although our cats do seem to catch a lot of small rodents/rabbits/birds so they probably make up for it in other ways.
Dont quote me on this, but I heard that if anything dodgy would happen to meat in the UK (think BSE or foot and mouth) that humans had a higher likelihood of being affected than our cats and dogs - because tinned pet food has higher food standards. So maybe it would be better to stick with the tins after all?!
...Just something to think about