Where can I find recipes for making cat food?

About.com has some recipes. Then a vet has put together a good discussion of feline nutritional needs and includes a recipe that is balanced for health.

Why do you want to know how to make cat food?

Feed her beef liver, leftover steaks, often most anything off your plate will be acceptable to your feline friend!

@davidbetterman – In the “wild” cats eat the entire prey animal, including the stomach contents, and their bodies have a need for the nutrients contained therein. Thus, a diet of just meat is not advisable. Also, certain foods that people eat should not be fed to cats, such as onions and possibly garlic.

Making a healthy and nutritious cat food is not quite as simple as you would like it to be.

I would assume it would be because most pet food is full of crap. If you want an alternative, Blue Buffalo Co. is very high quality pet food. It will run you like $2 a can but it is so worth it. My dog has been doing so much better on it.

Most people I know feed their kitties a diet of high quality pet food and raw food. More cat info just as supplemental to the above links.

@Darwin When do you think is the last time lilikoi’s cat was living in the wild?

The fact that her cat’s ancestors lived in the wild is why her cat today needs to eat what it does, not whether her cat is actually a free-ranging animal or restricted to her house.

The fact that your ancestors were hunter-gatherers explains why you need to eat a lot more fruits and vegetables than you do meat. However, that doesn’t mean that you do eat the best diet. As many people do you may opt instead for too much meat, salt and fat. But that is a choice you make for yourself. The cat cannot choose in that way so it is incumbent upon us to learn what a cat’s diet should be and offer it that, to keep it healthy.

Try TheCatSite.com.

Nutrition forum

In the KITchen…oh dear did I just say that out loud?

Most veterinarians do not advise that we feed our pets human food. There is too much fat and not enough nutrients. Animals love human food, because they do not know any better.

Study the recipes you find online, and verify with your vet before you switch to exclusively homemade.

@YARNLADY Then why do animals in the wild (not that far removed from our pets at all) thrive on “human” food?

@Val123 hahaha, you mean eating humans? They don’t, their main diet is uncooked, unprepared, unfattened, non-medicated, smaller, wild animals.

@YARNLADY Well, if given the chance that’s exactly what humans would eat.

@Val123 I highly doubt it.

@YARNLADY Modern eating practices are just that….modern. It wasn’t more than 100 years ago that humans were hunter/gatherers, or, at the most, herders, hunting or raising various forms of animals, large and small, from cows to chickens to eat.

I misspoke. I wouldn’t say that if a human was given the choice of meat from a market over slaughtering his own meat, he’d chose to slaughter his own meat. I should have said, “if we had no other choice….” that’s what we’d be eating. But we do have other choices, thanks to the technology of the last 100 years, so that’s what we chose—to eat the “medicated” meat from the big farms and markets. If it won’t kill us, it won’t kill our cats.

@Val123 I highly disagree that it won’t kill us or our cats. I chose to not eat meat period because of how they treat the animals and how the meat is procured and treated. It is disgusting and unnatural. I think most people eat this way simply because they don’t any better.

@tragiclikebowie So….Cats shouldn’t eat meat? I don’t quite understand what you’re referring to.

@Val123 I’m referring to the capitalist food industry that does all sorts of disgusting thing to their animals (meat) for profit, rather than nutrition.

And…that doesn’t happen with cat food? I mean, look at the question. There is no getting around the “capitalist food industry” any way you look at it. What are your suggestions for making your own cat food? Keep in mind that they are strictly carnivores. No chance of them becoming vegetarians.

Then you buy responsible cat food products (there are companies that make them) or consult your vet on how to balance your cats diet while you buy local, organic, free range, grass fed, no hormone, no antibiotic beef or other meat (and other products)?

@Val123 You’re arguing on the losing side. Our food is killing us, and a strict diet of table scraps only can kill a cat as well. Don’t take my word for it, ask any veterinarian.

People need to eat more fruits and vegetables and less meat, and cats need a full blend of foods to avoid liver failure and many other disorders they can get from a lack of proper nutrition.

@tragiclikebowie So…..would you eat meat if you bought local, organic, free range, grass fed, no hormone, no antibiotic beef or other meat?

@YARNLADY Well, the way I see it, if it takes 80 years to kill a human with the processed meat that humans eat, I imagine a cat, with an average life span of 15 years, will survive.

@Val123 80 years? Would you care to back that figure up? Try this

Like I said, ask any veterinarian, or provide your sources.

Blogs don’t count! Try This
Have to read a bit, but the life average of Americans is 75 years for males, 80 for females.

@Val123 sorry about the blog, they don’t count Who am I to argue, I intend to see my 100 birthday, or more, and I am an avid, life long, commercial meat eater.

ME TOO! Only, not so much a meat eater, but for no higher reason than most of the time it doesn’t appeal to me….I’ll race you to 100!!

You really want to make your own cat food? God bless you.

When I was younger, we made our own cat food by first boiling the cat to loosen the furr, skinning him and then barbequing him… oh wait, sorry. I misread the question. :-)