Never thought I'd be a crazy cat lady, who cooked for her pets, until I lost long-haired rescued orange kitty Oscar to kidney failure last year when he was 14.
But since I've switched his orange tabby brother to my home-made recipe, Felix is now healthy and happy, although his health was failing (on every and any brand) of commercial cat food, dry or canned.
I've been feeding this recipe to 15-year old Felix for about six months, and not only is he healthy as long as he's eating it, his fur is amazingly soft, he has the energy of a younger cat (canned or dry food -- of any kind -- and he goes back to diarrhea for weeks on end, and skeletal.)
I've based this on vet-recommended recipes, and that of home feeders (although some recommend raw meat, I was afraid of the bacteria with an older cat, and Felix has responded well to the cooked.)
HOMEMADE CAT FOOD
2 medium packs or one Max Pack: Chicken thighs, drumsticks or one whole
chicken (I buy whichever is on sale, but thighs and drumsticks have the most muscle meat, which cats need for the taurine.)
1 large chicken liver container, or 1-2 small containers; or l package of hearts and gizzards
1/2 cup brown rice
2 eggs
Several pats of butter, or a dollop of vegetable oil
(Optional: several dollops of plain yogurt)
1 can peas, or peas and carrots, or 1/2 to one cup of frozen peas, or fresh green
beans, zucchini, carrots (diced)
1 human multi-vitamin (without iron, if possible)
2 human calcium tablets (can also be calcium with magnesium or zinc)
2 human vitamin C tablets
2 fish oil capsules
(Optional: 1 human probiotics tablet)
(Or buy kitty vitamins at the pet store.)
Kitchen shears or pair of scissors
Put chicken in big stew pot with rice, vegetables, and vitamins (except the fish oil.) Add water to cover ingredients, beat eggs, drizzle them into water,
add butter, oil or yogurt.
Bring to quick boil, simmer for 45 minutes, then add one of the small containers of chicken livers, or one-quarter or half a large container of livers, or one quarter a pack of hearts and gizzards. Less if you're using muscle meat, more for whole chicken or white meat.
Add the fish oil capsules.
Simmer for another 15 minutes or so.
Let mixture cool, and then pick the chicken off the bones, discard the bones, and cut meat, skin, liver, or hearts and gizzards into small pieces (easiest with kitchen shears or scissors.)
Return meat to pot and stir into the liquid and vegetables mix. Scoop out and freeze portions (I save the containers from the chicken livers and freeze the
cat food in them, or you can use ziplock bags.)
Should feed a medium-size cat for two weeks, or more.
Simmer leftover chicken livers separately, and whenever your cat is finicky about the new food, sprinkle some liver on top and he'll scarf it right down (too much liver isn't good for them, so do it sparingly.) Or add a little tuna to their bowl to encourage them to the new food. (You can also throw a can of tuna into your large chicken recipe, or any other fish, canned clams -- occasionally.)
Freeze any leftover liver (or gizzards and hearts) and add to your next batch of cat food.
I let one container or bag thaw at a time, refrigerate it, and feed Felix from that. It has more nutrition than canned or dried food, so you may not need to put out as much at one time in their bowl. When Felix is done, if there's any left in his bowl, I refrigerate that, and bring it out for the next meal.
(This recipe can also be made with fish --not highly salted-- with canned clams for the taurine; beef or hamburger with beef liver and/or kidneys. But chicken probably comes closest to a wild diet.)
You might want to cut open the fish oil capsules, in case they don't dissolve easily on their own.
Exact measurements aren't necessary, and you can vary any of the recipes slightly, because it doesn't matter if the cat gets exactly the same level of nutrients in each and every meal.
Human vitamins are okay, especially since a human daily dose is spread out over a couple weeks -- in zoos, tigers and other large cats are given one human Centrum multivitamin daily.
Don't skip the taurine (in muscle and organ meat) or calcium, both of which are primary to a cat's diet, and are supplied by wild kill and the bones a cat would eat in the wild. (But hearts and gizzards are so packed with taurine, you need much less than liver.)
(No cooked bones! They're brittle and your cat can choke on them.)
This recipe may be a hell of a lot more nutritious than any canned or dry cat food -- even "organic."
For one, it has a lower grain content (high carbohydrate content of dry foods especially can lead to kidney failure and/or diabetes), no chemical preservatives, and a better grade of protein.
(And no mystery meat! Commercial cat food with "meat by products" is particularly scary -- "meat by-products" can include the rendered corpses of euthanized pets from shelters, including flea collars.)
I only wish I'd switched Oscar over before he had kidney failure.