8 Best ingredients for your cat food recipe (updated)

If you have prepared many cat food recipes from this website and wonder now what ingredients are out there that you can safely use to make up your own home made cat food recipies, then I suggest that you bookmark this list and use it alongside with your experimentation.

INGREDIENT #1 - Meat:
As you may already know, cats are carnivorous animals! that means they were made to eat MEAT as a principal source of nutrition. Meat (red and white) as well as meat byproducts (liver, kidney heart, chicken heads, ... etc) should make up to 80% of any healthy cat diet.

The second important question with meat is whether to feed your cat with raw or cooked meat, while no answer can work everywhere, and since this question has largely been subject to debate and controversy, I will give you some facts and then let you make up your mind by yourself:
- Cats have survived thousands of years only as predators, they only eat raw meat, and their digestive system adapted to this raw diet over the generations, this means cat don't need their meat to be cooked to eat it, they just need it to be fresh.
- Eating raw meat means eating it with a lot of bacteria and this can in SOME CASES lead to infections and other complications, while cats have become very resistant to major kinds of bacteria, cooking meat for them can be a safer option.

INGREDIENT #2 - Fish:
Since meat is expensive, some cheap fish varieties can be a cost cutting option! this includes sardines and a lot of other cheap fisheries that will positively complement your cat diet (without becoming the main part of it).

INGREDIENT #3 - Eggs:
Many cats don't like to eat eggs, however eggs can be a very good (and cheap) source of protein for cats, .. I suggest you try to feed your cat both raw and cooked eggs and see what works best with it, in both cases it is not recommended to feed large amounts of eggs (or at a daily basis) to you cat.

INGREDIENT #4 - Milk, Cheese and Yoghurt:
Unlike many people think, your cat doesn't need any milk at all (except if it's a kitten), so if you feed your cat with milk this can be a good thing to an extent, the previous eggs rule works here as well: "don't feed large amounts and don't feed daily"

INGREDIENT #5 - Fats and Oils:
Cats move a lot and play a lot and hence need energy, while the amount of sugars that they take is generally close to zero, fats are their main source of energy, special care needs then to be made to the amount of fats or oils that cats eat daily, the meat based meals should have enough fats in them and non meat based cat meals can be supplemented with other oils as well (see recipes), if your cat is obese some fats can be cut, but please never reduce this amount to zero or you will kill your cat.

INGREDIENT #6 - Vegetables:
Cats are not herbivorous, don't expect them to eat a lot of vegetables, the 20% of vegetables that you find in my recipes are there only to add vitamins improve taste, improve digestibility, ... etc, don't feed to much veggies.

INGREDIENT #7 - Grains:
As it has been said before, cats don't need a lot of grains, but you can add them, this will add some carbs in your cat diet (although cats cannot process carbs very efficiently), it also adds some consistent to the cat food and improves the taste a little.

INGREDIENT #8 - Water:
Water water water ... !! never forget it! water is what keeps every human or animal alive, take that away and your cat will starve in no time.

Edit: I now have a collection (pdf file) of ready to make cat recipes, click here to download

Homemade Cat Food Recipe for Cats with Kidney Disease

Note: please contact your veterinarian before you use this recipe.

Ingredients Grams
Liver, chicken cooked 21
Rice, white cooked 98
Chicken, white cooked 21
Oil, vegetable 7
Calcium carbonate 0.7
Salt, iodized 0.5
Salt, substitute (KCl 0.5
Total 149
Nutrient Content (%DMB)+

Dry matter 37.8
Protein 24.4
Fat 17.5
Linoleic acid 7.9
Crude Fiber 0.85
Calcium 0.54
Phosphorus 0.29
Magnesium 0.09
Sodium 0.42
Potassium** 0.66
Energy(kcal/100g) 458

Directions: Cook the meets separately then cook the starch component. Grind or finely chop meat if necessary. Mix all other components with this (except the vitamin-mineral supplement). Mix and serve immediately or cover and refrigerate. Serve the vitamin-mineral supplement with the meal; give as a pill or pulverize and thoroughly mix with food before feeding.

Easy cat cookies recipe

This is an easy to make version of the cat cookies recipe, this can be a fantastic treat for a cat of any age, and you should easily get it done in less than 30 minutes, here's how you make it:

Ingredients:
7 ounces mashed sardines
1/4 cup dry non-fat milk
1/2 cup wheat germ

Directions:
Mix ingredients up. Roll into 24 small balls. Place them on greased cookie sheet. Flatten them with a fork. and bake at 350 degrees until brown.

The chicken heads cat food revisited



Welcome back to this blog, I had previously talked about chicken heads, and said it was a real low cost and nutrient rich cat food alternative that you can either serve cooked or raw depending on your cat diet opinions/beliefs.

Unsurprisingly, I have received an amazing amount of positive feed back from many cat lovers around the world asking for more information. Consequently I will give you here two ways you can make quality cat meals using the chicken heads.

First thing you should know is how to get large amounts of chicken heads! In many countries it's just a matter of asking the butcher to give you some heads for free or for a ridiculous fee, .. however in some other places of the world, the chickens are industrially conditioned in special places, you need then to go there and ask if you can get some kilos/pounds of heads weekly or something, and you will need to store it in the fridge.

Now that you got the chicken heads, you will need to clean them and eventually cook them before you give them to your cats, I suggest you use one of the following two methods:

Method1: Clean the heads, take away some of the fur, crack them with a hammer, and feed them RAW to your cats.

Method2: Clean the heads, cook them in boiling water for 5 minutes, then cool them, take away the gelatine/fat, take away the fur, crack them with a hammer, eventually extract the brains (cats looove chicken brains!), and serve them to your cats.

Nutritionaly speaking, chicken heads are basically just pieces of meat and bones (cats will not eat the bones and the bill), it is a very convenient food for your cat, it is just like feeding them meet, except that this is fantastically cheaper.
But don't rely on this alone! I encourage you to serve some cat recipes that are based on fish as well, and maybe other foods to improve the balance your homemade cat diet ... this blog is a perfect place to find free homemade cat food recipes anyway, just check the older posts or do a search in the box above ;)