Making your own cat food

More than a year ago (probably 6 or 7 blog entries ago) I wrote about the evils of dry cat food. Since then I have purchased a Tasin TS 108 meat grinder and spent 2 hours each month in the kitchen faithfully grinding chicken thighs and whipping up slurries of supplements. My cats are amazingly sprightly and happy with shiny coats and all those nice things in cat commercials. I will provide here simplified instructions for making food. This recipe comes from catinfo.org, the instructions on that are more detailed- these directions are the ones I wrote for myself and therefore they are simplified. For the more detail oriented- perfectionist types there is a more intense recipe at catnutrition.org. I highly recommend visiting both of these sites before attempting to make cat food- there is a wealth of information there that I cannot begin to delve into.



Raw Cat Food Diet by Lisa A Pierson, DVM:

3 lbs of chicken thighs
3-4 oz chicken liver
2 eggs
2000 mg wild salmon oil
2000 taurine (powdered)
400 IU Vitamin E (powdered)
100 mg Vitamin B-Complex
3/4 tsp. Lite Salt (make sure it containes iodine)
2 tsp of psyllium husk powder (optional- good for constipated cats)
1 cup of water


Separate the eggs, return the yolks to the fridge, poach the whites - allow to cool

Hand chunk 1/3 of the thigh meat into 1/2 inch pieces, put in large bowl
Grind remaining meat, bones, and skin through smallest grinding plate
Halfway through grinding, run liver and egg whites through grinder
Put meat-filled bowl in fridge

In second bowl empty all the powdered supplement capsules, cut open salmon oil capsules and squirt in, add reserved egg yolks, beat it all together, add water mix more and add to meat, add psyllium (if using)

mix, mix, mix

weigh into containers the size you prefer (I put 1.25 lbs into Ziploc containers)
Put in freezer

Clean up

I make food for 30 days and feed each cat 4oz of meat a day- so I make 15 lbs of chicken- the final product is of course heaver due to the added ingredients.