An essential for your library - Michelle Bernard's groundbreaking book: "Raising Cats Naturally"
A "must read" book by Dr. Elizabeth Hodgkins: "Your Cat - Simple Secrets to a Longer, Stronger Life"
Foodmaking
If you've already visited my main page on cat nutrition, you have an idea of how it is that I came to feeding my cats a balanced, raw, grain-free, home-prepared diet. The short version goes like this: Simply nothing else worked to relieve one of of my cats from the misery associated with a chronic digestive disorder that left him with non-stop diarrhea. Seeing what a dramatic difference a species-appropriate diet made set me on a course to learn more about properly feeding cats. Eventually, I was inspired to craft an open letter to veterinary professionals laying out the case for more robust nutritional education of those we turn to for advice on caring for these magnificent creatures.
There are already plenty of books and web sites on the hows and whys of raw feeding cats, so I'm not going to reinvent the wheel. I highly recommend you invest in a copy of Michelle Bernard's groundbreaking book, "Raising Cats Naturally." It is my favorite book, by far, on the subject of raw feeding, and includes a wonderful detailed dissection of the individual components of a raw diet for cats. You can also have a look at what a veterinarian, Dr. Lisa Pierson, has to say on the how and why of raw feeding at her website. Both Michelle Bernard and Dr. Pierson use essentially the same recipe I've used for seven years now, with superb results. I sometimes gently "tweak" the recipe to suit the needs of my own cats, but if you're new to raw feeding, I strongly urge you to follow a time-tested recipe to the letter at first.
Here's the deal: To enjoy the greatest shot at good health, all animals should be fed the food that's most appropriate to their species. Squirrels, for example, eat nuts, seeds, grains, and fruit. That's what they were built to eat. Humpback whales are built to eat small shrimp-like organisms, plankton, and small fish. That's what mother designed the whales to derive nutrition from.
Small cats? They're designed to eat to other animals. And they're built to eat those animals raw. Cooking is the enemy of the nutrients and living enzymes that cats need to thrive. No, the cats living under our roof are hardly living in the wild, but biologically, they remain true carnivores. And their ideal diet would consist, for example, of freshly killed mice and small birds. Cats and their ancestors have been eating raw food for tens of millions of years.
They didn't get here eating meat-flavored cereal. Not hardly.
The introduction of dry cereals (kibble) and processed canned foods into the diet of domestic small cats is, evolutionarily speaking, a very recent event. And all one has to do is visit a veterinary clinic to see the waiting room filled with cats (and dogs) suffering from a variety of ailments--diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease, mysterious skin allergies, urinary tract disorders, and obesity, just to name some--to begin to see that there may very well be a relationship between the health of these magnificent creatures and the fact that many of us are feeding them food that they were never meant to eat.
Dry foods and many canned foods are packed with ingredients that are not appropriate for carnivores. Plant matter, carbohydrates, vegetables, and fillers are not health-building ingredients for cats. A mouse, on the other hand, offers a perfect and complete nutrition package for a cat. Meat, bone, organs, Essential Fatty Acids, ample Taurine, a little fiber, vitamins, and key minerals are all there in the mouse.
So why not 'build a mouse' and feed it to a cat?
There are lots of smart, wonderful, and yes--sane--people out there feeding raw food to their cats. Some are vets. I learned from many of them, vets and lay people alike, and continue to benefit from feedback on raw feeding from site visitors and from those I've come to trust on the issue. You can run an Internet search for "BARF" (the unfortunate acronym for "biologically appropriate raw food" or "bones and raw food") and you'll be overwhelmed with the sites, chat rooms, and egroups out there. Some are terrific. Some are not.
The range of passionate opinions on whether to feed raw -- and how to feed it if you do -- is vast. It's also sometimes snarky, personal, and downright weird. But ultimately, any civil and informed debate about how to properly feed a cat is one that I welcome. Check them all out, do your own reading, make up your own mind. My only advice is to remember the key scientific principles concerning nutrition for carnivores and to at least think twice about any recipe that contains grains or vegetables or that relies on plant-based sources to supply vitamins, minerals, amino acids, or other essentials.
Cats, don't forget, derive nutrition from eating other animals, and cannot biologically derive the same nutritional benefits from plant based sources as humans do. Blueberries, whole grains, flax seed, kale, dandelion root, and other plant ingredients are perfectly lovely for humans. But we're not obligate carnivores. Our cats are. They may be 'domesticated,' they may sleep indoors on fleece beds, they may wear sparkly rhinestone collars -- but none of that transforms them into having the enzymatic pathways they would need to derive nutritional benefits from plants. Cats are carnivores. Period.
There is absolutely no need for "life stage" foods. Or for differently formulated foods for different breeds. The emergence of specialty "natural" foods to address the the "needs of different breeds" is a marketing gimmick that really makes me giggle. That idea is right up there on the Absurd Scale with "indoor formula" cat foods. As one of my vet friends likes to say, "there are no 'kitten mice,' tartar control lizards' or 'senior cat crickets' in the wild." A kitten needs more food, not different food. A kitten needs meat, bone and organs. An adult cat needs meat, bone and organs. A senior cat needs meat, bone and organs.
Making your own cat food is certainly a compromise from the 'ideal' diet for a cat. But unless you're willing to capture wild field mice and small birds and let your cat kill them and eat them, a compromise is what we're left with. We sacrifice some freshness for the sake of convenience by buying packaged meats, processing (i.e., grinding) them, and freezing and storing them. But to my mind, this still offers an option for feeding carnivores that is light years ahead of anything out of a can or a bag.
Preparing your cat's food is not rocket science, but there are some extremely important principles to which you should adhere. It's foolish to toy with the amounts of individual ingredients unless you've grounded yourself in the knowledge needed first. Some vitamins, for example, are water-soluble, which means if you use more than the recommended amount, you're not putting your cat at risk for toxicity. Other vitamins? It's possible to 'over-dose' your cat. Some ingredients are a "polish" to the diet while others are not "supplements" at all, but are absolutely essential components that must be included in the ratios and amounts specified or you risk throwing your cat's diet dangerously off balance. Perhaps the most important thing to get right is the calcium-to-phosphorus ratio, which is most easily achieved by feeding whole carcasses. If you're preparing your own cat food and are not using real bone in the correct amounts, you cannot just skip adding a form of bioavailable calcium to the diet. An all-meat diet is frightfully unbalanced.
In other words, please do not improvise unless you know what you're doing.
I've included some of my own suggestions for sourcing all your supplies and ingredients and a page of tips and shortcuts for making and serving food. Finally, there's a step-by-step pictorial on making the food. Oh, and a recipe or two too. And even a partial nutritional breakdown of the recipe made with bones.
Be sure to visit my FAQ page. There is plenty of information there on the issues that I find come up most often with people that are new to feeding raw: What about salmonella and avian flu and toxoplasmosis? Do I switch cold turkey? What if my cat won't eat it? How much do I feed and how often? What do I tell my vet who thinks I've gone off the deep end? How much will it cost?
If you don't think you have the time or energy or skill to make your own cat food, please remember that there are still many ways to put good food into your cats that doesn't consist of buying some of the junky food that's often sold in vet offices (and sadly, yes, some of the worst food is sold in vet clinics) or in many grocery stores. There are some premade raw diets out there that are quite good--one of my personal favorites is from a company called Feline's Pride whose formulation is extremely close to the recipe that is on this website. Be sure to do your homework on the formulation and quality of meat you're using if you decide to leave the food-making to someone else.
It's not easy finding premade raw foods that are up to snuff, in my opinion, so I suggest that you do some homework on the formulation and quality of meat being used if you decide to leave the food-making to someone else. Be sure that what you're buying is truly a species-appropriate formulation and not a diet designed for dogs, who have more flexible digestive tracts than cats do and aren't as prone to have digestive disorders creep up if they're eating vegetables. There are also some other alternatives to making the food yourself explained in more detail on my FAQ page.
I certainly do not have the corner on the only way of doing this right. The recipe and method I use is simply the one I've settled on that: I have faith in based on my research and experience; honors the carnivorous heritage of small cats; is something that a mere mortal with a busy life can accomplish; and is as close as I can come in my kitchen to reverse-engineering a mouse -- The Perfect Cat Food.
