It's hard to believe that I never calculated this until now, but let's just say that "metrics" are not my thing.  A very nice site visitor recently asked me, "How much food fits into the pint-sized jars you use and how long will that last?" and I said, "Um, err . . . let me get back to you on that." 

A single batch based on the recipe with bone that I use to make cat food makes a wee bit over 2 kg (4.4 pounds) of food.  How long that lasts is entirely dependent on your cat.  

In truth, I usually make about a triple-sized batch. At least.  

If you're using the super-nifty pint-sized can-or-freeze jars to store the food you make (see Supplies page too), each jar holds about 400 grams of food.  I know because I just weighed it out this morning and I am so wicked proud of myself for remembering to do that that I'm actually blogging it.  

That means that if you make a single-sized batch (2 kg), you will need about five or six jars to store the food.  

Those six-ish jars should feed one average healthy adult cat for about 12-14 days.  Please understand that every cat's appetite, needs, activity level, body size, and moods are different so your mileage may vary.  A petite 7 pound cat will require less food (most likely) than an 18-pound male Maine Coon cat.  And even body size isn't the only indicator for judging how much a cat will need to eat each day. Hop on over to the the FAQ page for more on how much to feed your cat. (Spoiler alert:  I really don't know, but I can give you a ballpark guesstimate.) 

A little under two months ago, word reached me that Shelby Gomas – the founder of Feline’s Pride – passed away. I’ve wanted to write something, say something, for the longest time, but I’ve been without words.

The words came, clumsily, this morning, when my husband and I were making cat food and we ran out of enough glass jars to put the food in. We looked at each other and agreed, “Yup, we’re going to have to use the Shelby containers.”

The Shelby containers. Shorthand for the square plastic storage boxes we’d accumulated dozens of over the years from purchases of Feline’s Pride food – known affectionately in our house as “Uncle Shlebee’s food.” (Long story.)

When I went into the basement pantry to retrieve them, I spied the tall stack of plastic containers that had once protected pound after pound of frozen, healthy, magnificent raw food I’d gladly fed our critters. My heart sunk a little knowing I couldn’t email Shelby and share my goofy little story about how he’d come to mind this cold January day. He’d have laughed if I’d written, “Hey Shelby! When I see stacks of petroleum-based food storage units, I think of you!”

Shelby hatched the idea of Feline’s Pride a few years back after I ran into him on the Feline IBD Yahoo e-group. He’d seen firsthand how a carefully prepared, correctly served raw meat based diet was the healthiest thing for carnivores and launched his company, selling about the only pre-made raw cat food I ever felt comfortable buying. Shelby “got it” about what was truly appropriate for carnivores, and didn’t fall prey to the common folly that other raw cat food manufacturers did – which was to toss in all kinds of healthy-sounding – but entirely species-inappropriate – ingredients like blueberries and flax seed and potatoes.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m happy to see more companies elbowing their way into the business of making healthy, fresh, cat food. But I will always hold out immense respect for those that shy away from adding what amounts to filler – under the anthropomorphic fantasy that what’s very healthy for humans is appropriate for small cats – even though it’s tempting and easy to market such formulas.

Shelby was special. He was very funny. He adored his animals. And he saw every cat who ate the food he made as an adoptee.

Having been a homemade cat food advocate for a long time, I never felt comfortable serving any food I hadn’t made myself. But when Feline’s Pride came along, I started supplementing the food I made with orders from Shelby. Anyone who knows me – and what a fussbudget I am about what goes into my cat’s food and my innate suspicion about anything anyone else prepares – knows that I must have had a very high degree of trust to serve someone else’s food.

The cardboard boxes with the food inside almost invariably arrived with special gifts for the cats — homemade catnip toys and sometimes even a personal note of affection for Duke and Nettie. For about a year there, I found myself getting ‘lazy’ and just buying Feline’s Pride. I put my grinder away, and was frankly grateful as life and my job got more busy that I was able to buy and confidently serve cat food that was as good as anything I could make at home.

I went back to making my own food all of the time in the middle of 2010, in part because – frankly – I missed doing it. And because after losing Duke earlier in the year, I wanted to return to the labor of love that began because of Duke.

It’s staggering to think of how much love-charged water has passed under the bridge since a handful of us first started waking up to the the importance of reexamining the whole paradigm of feeding small cats. The founder and moderator of the Feline IBD e-group, Lee Ellis, started her own pet sitting service, and continues to share the word with her clients about the benefits and wisdom of a healthy diet. One of the godmothers of raw feeding, my first mentor, Michelle Bernard, has taken her knowledge and insight on healthy feeding for cats and become a vigorous advocate for healthy raw diets for her beloved dogs.

Natascha Wille of the Raw Meat Cat Food Company (formerly Feline Future) remains, after over 15 years, an articulate and insightful advocate for raw feeding. Then there’s wonderful Margaret Gates, who launched an amazing movement and site with the Feline Nutrition Education Society – and some of the best ‘educational commercials’ online sharing the important message about raw feeding – without ever getting preachy or so weird no one will watch. It’s an amazing site.

And Dr. Lisa Pierson – who I am honored to count as a friend – has a recently revamped website on cat care that knocks it out of the ballpark when it comes to one-stop shopping for thoughtful, sound, advice on every aspect of cat health, including nutrition.

Then? Then there was Shelby. An upstart if there ever was one. His vision and passion – much more than his business sense (I’m guessing) – were what kept him going, but bless him for that. He always put cats first. And talk about someone with a heart always in the right place.

Thank you, Shelby, for making such a difference when you were here. Thank you for all the meals that my cats enjoyed because you made them when I was too busy. Thank you for sharing your deep passion and love for our animal companions. If I had a hat on just now, I’d “doff it” to you.

You’re missed.

You were appreciated.

And there are many cats thriving and well today because of your dedication.

For all that, we are ever grateful.

Big thanks to Rebekah, a website visitor, for the tip on a story from earlier this week about that big outbreak of salmonella that grabbed so much attention in 2006 and 2007.

Before I get to that, recall that for years, many of us opting for home-prepared raw meat diets for our cats and dogs listened to stern admonitions about the risks of raw feeding from a spectrum ranging from well-meaning veterinarians to less honorably-motivated marketers of many commercial pet foods. Given the presumably well-known risk to humans from eating raw meat, that’s a pretty easy sell: everyone knows that humans ingesting raw meat are taking a chance, especially given the grisly conditions at factory farms.

I recall vividly that in 2000, during an exchange with a leading figure at a major veterinary school about the value of feeding a raw diet to cats suffering from inflammatory bowel disease, an exasperating debate erupted between us about food safety. He indicated that no veterinary school could, in good conscience, implicitly or explicitly endorse raw feeding not only because of the risks posed to the animals from salmonella but because of the “very real risk to humans” handling the raw meat.

(It was never clear to me how humans handling raw meat intended for a cat’s consumption were at any higher risk than humans handling raw meat prior to cooking it for their own consumption. Not to be snarky, but I never suggested humans eat the raw food they were preparing for their cats, but okay.)

Implicit in this admonishment, I realized as I dove headfirst into the world of raw feeding, was the notion that commercial pet foods were somehow ‘safer.’ Free of dangerous pathogens. More sterile. Layer on top of that the strawman arguments about how homemade food has the ‘potential’ to be unbalanced (well, d’uh), and the be-really-wary-of-raw gang seemed to have their rationale all sewn up. “Stick with tested commercial formulas backed by years of quality research and it’s healthier for the animals and safer for humans.”

• The massive pet food recall of 2007 quickly began to unravel the threads stitching up that rationale: There’s no need to belabor the details of that horrific episode here, except to remind readers that the Big Lie that big-name pet food companies exercise careful control over the ingredients that go into their products became harder to escape.

So what now?

The results of a just-released investigation by the US Centers for Disease Control, conducted jointly with the FDA, on the 2006-2007 salmonella outbreak in the US that sickened 70 people across the US, identified the source of these human infections.

Where did it come from?

Dry dog food.

Many have been quick to warn warn about the risk of feeding fresh meats that are stored in freezers but don’t think twice about selling bags of (potentially contaminated) dry food with no admonition about the real dangers associated with deadly bacterial overgrowth on those products. This latest CDC revelation notwithstanding, remember that the bacterial count on dry food can be very high and the danger of toxic levels of aflatoxin contaminating dry food is always present. Many dry pet foods are drenched in fatty flavor enhancers that provide an ideal medium for the growth of bacteria and fungus. And those bags of food are generally stored at room temperature and go unconsumed for weeks or months.

I’ll repeat what I’ve said on my website: No food you feed your cat is entirely without risk. Respect those risks and take steps to minimize them. It’s not that hard: use fresh meat from the highest quality source you can find, don’t leave it sitting out for ages, and don’t eat it yourself. Leave the raw meat eating to the obligate carnivores. Oh, and wash your hands for pete’s sake.

Whatever you do, don’t buy into the notion for a second that dry food is clean, pathogen-free, and therefore safer for you and your cat. Especially now.

In the last few months, my email inbox has been full of inquiries from people asking about feeding fish to cats. To my mind, there are just too many arguments against feeding fish regularly to make it a safe, healthy choice as a staple of a cat’s diet.

As a treat once in a great while? Maybe. If you must. But know a few things first.

There are a number of problems–some well established facts and others that are somewhat open to question–that make feeding fish regularly, whether raw or cooked, pretty gosh darn inadvisable. At least from the digging I’ve done. The problems stem both from what’s in fish and what’s not in fish.

So far, I count eight distinct ‘strikes’ against the idea of feeding fish, raw or cooked, to cats.

Strike One: Low calcium levels.

Whole fish, even with bone, is far too low in calcium for a cat. Remember: if you’re making homemade cat food, one of the most important things to get right is the ratio of calcium to phosphorus. You have some wiggle room here, but not much. A whole ground fish would be low in calcium. And while the high phosphorus is not good for any cat, elevated phosphorus levels are something you most definitely wouldn’t want to feed a cat that is suffering from any kind of kidney problem.

Strike Two: Thiamin destruction.

Raw fish contains high amounts of an enzyme called thiaminase–an enzyme that destroys Vitamin B-1 (thiamin). A thiamin-deficient diet can lead to neurological problems and seizures in cats. No good.

Strike Three: Urinary tract problems.

Fish, with its high magnesium content, can contribute to a type of urinary tract problem in cats.

(While I’m on urinary troubles, let me interject something here. Curiously, the discovery some time back of magnesium as a culprit in feline urinary tract disorders was accompanied by the development of specialized ‘urinary tract’ formula foods. The idea with these foods was to add acid to the food, reasoning that magnesium crystals develop in alkaline, not acid urine. The problem is, cats whose urinary tract acid is too high are prone to another type of crystal–calcium oxylate. Just another reason it’s best to feed a cat a diet that nature intended. As Dr. Elizabeth Hodgkins points out in her book, the rise of urinary tract diseases in the cat coincided exactly with the increasing use of dry kibble to feed cats. But I digress.)

Strike Four: Addiction.

Heaven knows, cats absolutely adore the taste of fish. Anyone who’s ever opened up a can of fish within a 12-city-block radius of any hungry feline knows that. But you can quickly end up with a ‘fish addict’ on your hands. And the last thing you need is a cat on a hunger strike refusing to eat anything but an inferior fish diet.

Strike Five: Heavy metals.

There is a great deal of persuasive research suggesting that predatory fish (those at the very top of the food chain and the same ones often found in pet food or used as ‘treats’ for cats) have extremely high levels of heavy metals such as mercury–in addition to pesticides and other toxins. A 2004 study published in Acta Neuropatholgica discovered neurological disturbances in young kittens fed tuna daily that contained the US FDA-approved level of mercury (0.5 ppm).

Strike Six: Possible link to hyperthyroidism.

A US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) study in 2007 revealed a disturbing link between feline hyperthyroidism and the chemicals in fire retardants–that mimic thyroid hormones–and cats’ consumption of fish. In the study, cats eating canned fish were exposed to polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) that were five times higher than cats eating poultry or beef canned foods.

Strike Seven: Vitamin E depletion.

Felines love tuna, but eating it long term can deplete a cat’s stores of vitamin E and create conditions that lead to an extraordinarily painful condition called steatitis, with symptoms such as hypersensitivity to touch and loss of appetite. Huuuuuge bummer for the cat and for you. You’ll find tuna in lots of cat foods for the very reason that it’s tasty to cats and draws them to the food. But it has nothing to do with healthy, safe, or necessary nutrition for cats.

Strike Eight? Allergenic.

Fish are allergenic. To my mind, it just makes little sense to feed something that is more likely to create a allergic reaction than something that isn’t.

Dr. Jean Hofve wisely advises against feeding fish and suggests that it be reserved as a very occasional and special treat–certainly no more than once a week.

If you’re really anxious to give your cat a treat once in awhile, go for something like small bits of dehydrated chicken liver or freeze-dried chicken hearts. But skip the fish. Feed something with fur or feathers, not fins. It’s kinder to–and safer for–your carnivore.

There aren’t any excuses left for veterinarians that continue to advocate, sell, or look the other way about dry food for cats.

For years now, while a number of nutrition-savvy vets have ‘gotten it’ about the folly of feeding meat-flavored cereal to obligate carnivores, for the most part, the only easily accessible published information out there about why and how it is cats do infinitely better on a quality canned food or a balanced raw diet has been on websites like mine, Michelle Bernard’s, Feline Future’s, and the terrific site run by Dr. Lisa Pierson.

My gratitude for those people is immeasurable. Without them, and without early support from Lee Ellis and the wonderful crowd on the Yahoo Feline IBD e-group, I’d likely never have seen the light about what a ridiculous and dangerous idea making dry food the staple of a cat’s diet is. Without Michelle Bernard’s book–which I still consider an absolute ‘must-have’ for anyone with a cat–I’m not sure I would have had the courage to strike out on my own making cat food. Which means that without her book, my cat Duke would likely be gone by now. Or at least gravely ill. Instead, we just recently celebrated his 13th birthday. (True confession: he got whipped cream. Oh, c’mon, it was just one day.)

True, there have been scores of scientific papers and studies done by pet food industry researchers and veterinarians on cats as carnivores, but some of the pet food industry research seems to be held tight like some kind of state secret. And while there have been notable papers out there — such as Deborah Zoran’s groundbreaking 2002 JAVMA article and Dr. Deborah Greco's comments on the 'Catkins' diet -- it seems that even that work hadn’t really grabbed the attention of the mainstream veterinary community in a way to create the sea change we need.

It’s astonished me more and more each year, as the evidence mounts about how upside-down so many of the pet foods sold for cats are, that the aisles of the pet food superstores are packed to the rafters with dry food and nearly every veterinary clinic I walk in or hear about still carries incredibly low-grade, species-inappropriate dry food.

What’s it going to take? While more and more lay people have taken it on themselves to learn about nutrition — a task thankfully made easier by the Internet — it’s still hard to walk into a vet’s office and have The Conversation about diet with a kibble-peddling veterinarian. And if you say, “well, I read about it online . . . ” it’s not unusual to be met with blank stares, rolling eyes, and maybe even a stern lecture about being cautious about anything that comes from the Internet.

Well, maybe what it takes is the book published this summer by Dr. Elizabeth Hodgkins, “Your Cat: Simple New Secrets to a Longer and Stronger Life.” Have you read this book?

I was lucky enough to see the book just before publication, and as good as I thought it was then, I’m even more impressed now that the book is out. It’s one of the most practical guides to living with cats out on the overcrowded “pet care” shelves at bookstores today. Not only does this highly-credentialed and compassionate veterinarian cover all the basics about dealing with all the issues that arise in living with a cat from kittenhood through the senior years, but it also gives the reader one-stop shopping for some long overdue, sane advice from a veterinarian about:

• The myth that dry food cleans a cat’s teeth;
• Vaccinations, and the discovery that vaccinating annually may be dangerous and entirely unnecessary;
• The latest treatment for chronic renal failure (hint: um, it’s not about protein starvation!) ;
• And nutrition (hint: quit being so gosh darn scared about raw diets.)

And that’s just for starters.

Really, you gotta get this book. And if your vet hasn’t read it, ask why.