I first started researching how to make homemade cat food when my cat, Calypso, was diagnosed with diabetes. I managed to change his diet from the kibble to canned easily enough, but his sugars still weren’t going down. Checking his blood sugar and giving him insulin weren’t near as hard as I feared, but even that wasn’t giving him the quality of life he deserved.
Years ago, I made homemade ferret food, so I wasn’t too concerned about making my own cat food. I was mostly concerned my cats wouldn’t eat it, especially finicky Riley.
I used the site by Lisa A. Pierson, D.V.M. www.catinfo.org, gathered my ingredients, and changed it up a bit.
For instance, I don’t like the idea of feeding raw food, especially chicken, to my animals, but I didn’t want to boil or bake. I doubled the recipe, since I have 3 cats and didn’t want to spend every few days in the kitchen. I used 6 lbs. of chicken thighs and doubled the recipe for hearts and liver. I added them all to a crockpot to cook overnight. For one, I like how a crockpot tenderizes the meat and bone and yet still keeps the fat that she suggests you keep and for two, it’s simple and I love my crockpot!
Doesn’t look too appetizing, huh?
The next morning, it was ready to grind. I don’t have a meat grinder and didn’t go out and buy one, but I felt my Ninja blender would do the trick. And it did.
TT was my taste tester. She got to lick the blender bowl (once the blades were removed) and gave her approval.
Because I used thighs with the bones and the first batch didn’t blend too well, I added the bone to the leftover broth and boiled it in an attempt to soften them. It boiled for at least 30 minutes while I prepared everything else.
Afterward, the bone did blend pretty well. If you decide to make your own cat food, don’t be afraid to use your hands! I blended the bones separately and dug through each batch after the blender, and dug through the entire mess again to make sure there were no bones that hadn’t blended. I removed anything suspicious.
All the bones but this blended well, and some that I threw away. I used a meat cleaver to break these up, since they crumbled pretty well, and I removed anything else that seemed too rough.
I added the ingredients the vet suggests, i.e. Taurine, Vitamin E, B Complex, and fish oil and used my hands to mix it all in a big bowl (unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of it all). Again, see www.catinfo.org for the ingredient list.
She says to cook the egg white lightly and use raw yolk, but I cooked the white, then added the yolk afterward to cook it a bit, too. Again, I don’t like feeding raw food to my animals.
And wallah! After two hours of blending, adding, mixing, etc, I had my first batch of homemade cat food! I separated them into four large containers to freeze some. I’m not exactly sure yet how long each will last.
TT definitely approved! And again, she got to lick the bowl. But she didn’t stop there, she licked my hands and cannot wait for tonight’s dinner! Calypso had a sample, too, and gave his approval. We’ll see how he does when he realizes it isn’t a snack but his actual dinner.
Because Riley is the finicky one, I decided to chop up her kibble in the blender to sprinkle on top. Not sure how that’s going to play out just yet. Stay tuned for the results.
