DIY Tips for Making Healthy Homemade Cat Food Recipes

It's important that we feed our furry feline friends, even if they insist that they've never been fed in their lives every time mealtime rolls around. What we feed them can make a big difference, too. While many commercial cat foods are "nutritionally complete" for our tiny obligate carnivores, that doesn't mean they're healthy.

Some commercial cat foods are full of filler. Some include sub-par ingredients that might not be bad right now but can be bad in the long term, especially if contaminants build up in your cat's system. Sometimes, they just include allergens, and your cat has a sensitive stomach and can't handle them.

There are plenty of reasons to consider making DIY, homemade cat food. But there's also a lot to consider. Let's talk about it!

Should You Make DIY Cat Food?

The first question that might come to mind is whether or not you should even consider making homemade cat food.

In my opinion, yes! There are a few good reasons to do it.

You know everything that goes into your cat's food when you make it yourself.

This is possibly the biggest reason; you know everything that goes into a recipe you make. With commercial cat foods, you often see ingredients listed that you might not know what they are or you might not like. Things like:

• Poultry by-product meal

• Corn gluten meal

• Soybean meal

• Dried bifidobacterium animalis fermentation product

• Natural flavors

Since the FDA doesn't regulate pet foods as much as it regulates human foods – and we already have a lot of shortcuts and tricky information in our own food – it can be very difficult to read the ingredients on a pet food label and understand what's truly in the food.

To be clear, most of the time, the ingredients are fine for your cat. It might not be the best possible food, but it's not likely to actively hurt them. The trouble is, you can't necessarily tell that, and there seems to be a scandal every year or two about pet food hurting pets.

You can customize their food if they have allergies or sensitive stomachs.

This is a big one. Unlike human food, where allergens need to be disclosed, including if it was produced in a facility that also handles allergens, you don't get that kind of quality assurance with cat foods.

If your cat has an allergy to a given ingredient, it can be hard to tell if a commercial cat food has that ingredient in it. Even if it doesn't, if it's made in the same facility as a food that does, it can end up cross-contaminated, and there's no way you can tell until your fur baby starts showing signs of digestive distress.

When you DIY some homemade cat food, you know everything that goes into it and everything that doesn't.

You can change the recipe when your cat gets tired of it.

Raise your hand if your cat is a picky eater and turns their nose up at food on a regular basis, even food they've enjoyed in the past.

Everyone? Alright, hands down.

Most cats are at least somewhat picky eaters, and even if they aren't actively dismissive of the food you give them, there's a good chance they'll just want to change things up from time to time. When you buy normal cat food in bulk, that's pretty hard; what are you going to do with the extra 20 lbs. of kibble if they won't touch it anymore?

When you make their food, it's easy enough to mix up the main protein or a couple of key ingredients to get something new for them to enjoy. You also don't need to make huge batches and let some of it go bad, and if they decide mid-batch they don't care for it, you can freeze it for later.

You can usually make cat food cheaper than buying their food.

Another benefit to making your own cat food is that it ends up being cheaper at the end of the day. Depending on the kind of food you're buying for your cat, it can cost anywhere from $1.50 to $7 per day. When you make your own, the cost of the ingredients will work out to be less than $1.50 per day, almost no matter what you want to do.

Obviously, this can vary depending on how you source your ingredients. People with local butchers or with lower costs for certain ingredients locally can come out further ahead.

People who have trouble sourcing key ingredients might be more comparable to cheaper commercial cat foods. In those cases, the difference in quality is important enough to balance the scales.

It does take time to make your own cat food, but honestly, less than you might think.

You can also often do it on the side while you're making food for yourself, so you don't need to spend a dedicated chunk of time making your cat's food. Even then, it's still fine for most people.

If all of that hasn't convinced you to start making DIY cat food, I don't know what will.

What Does DIY Cat Food Need to Include?

Cats are obligate carnivores, but that doesn't mean you can just grind up some chicken breasts and call it good enough. They still need enough nutrition, including vitamins, minerals, fiber, and other ingredients, which means you need a good list of what to include.

You'll want to include:

• A primary protein. Most people start with chicken, but a variety of different primary proteins can work. Pork, eggs, beef, and even more exotic meats like duck, quail, and others are all fine.

• Supplements. Often, the meat you choose won't have all of the nutrients your cat needs. Cats evolved to catch and eat whole prey like birds and mice, including things like bones, organs, and blood. You'll need to replace those with added supplements like taurine, fish oil, and omega-3s.

• Fiber. You don't need a lot of fiber for homemade cat food, but you should have some. A good option is barley powder, which is relatively cheap and serves as a good filler when used in moderation.

Some people recommend grinding up the bones of poultry. Your cat can benefit from the calcium and other nutrients in the bones, but you need to make sure not to cook them so they don't turn sharp and brittle.

Should you cook the protein? That's actually up to you and your cat. Some cats prefer cooked meat, while others like it raw. As long as you cook it without spices, you're fine.

Overcooking the meat can destroy some of the nutrients in it and make it less pleasant for your furry friend to eat, so most people start with raw meat. That said, raw meat does have the potential for bacterial contamination, so keep an eye out for signs of infection after starting a homemade raw cat food diet.

What Should You Leave Out of DIY Cat Food?

One of the benefits of making cat food at home is that it's easy to make a fairly simple recipe. There are a lot of things you generally want to leave out of the food you make, though.

First of all, make sure you avoid any of the human food ingredients that are toxic or bad for cats. I have a whole post about it here, but to replicate the list:

• Alcohols

• Yeasts

• Chocolate

• Coffee and Tea

• Citrus Fruits

• Coconut

• Dairy Products

• Grapes

• Eggs

• Alliums like Onions and Garlic

• Nuts

• Xylitol

• Tomatoes

• Salt

You also want to avoid fillers in excess. A little bit of fiber filler and carbohydrates are fine, but too much will end up hurting your cat in the long term, and that's what you're trying to avoid in the first place.

What about oils? Oils are a good way to get some healthy fats, vitamins, and supplemental nutrients into cat food, but you need to use them in moderation and only use the right kinds of oils. Fish oil, safflower oil, sunflower oil, and flaxseed oil are fine, but don't use too much.

Should You Change DIY Cat Food Recipes?

I already mentioned this a little bit above, but there's a pretty good chance that your cat, even if they initially love the DIY cat food recipe you make, is going to get tired of it over time.

I generally recommend only making 1-2 weeks' worth of food at a time so that if they start to get tired of it, you don't have a lot of wasted food they won't eat.

You can change the recipe from time to time, so long as you're as close to nutritionally complete with each recipe as you can be.

What's a Good Recipe for DIY Cat Food?

There are as many recipes for DIY cat food as there are people making them.

Rather than reproduce any here, here are a few links to recipes you can read up on and decide if you want to use them:

• Beef and Barley Cat Food from Cats Magazine

• 5 Vet-Approved Homemade Cat Foods from Cats.com

• Two Options for Homemade Cat Food from Know Better Pet Food

As you can see, they're all pretty simple and don't require a lot of time, equipment, or expensive ingredients. It's easy enough to change them up to suit your fur baby's needs, too.

DIY Cat Food FAQ

Now, let's cover a few points I didn't have space for in the main post, as well as some questions I've been asked about DIY cat foods.

Is DIY cat food cheaper?

Almost always, yes, but various factors can cause the numbers to not quite line up.

If you're going for gourmet, organic meats and high-tier supplements to make your DIY cat food, it's going to be comparatively more expensive than other kinds of homemade cat food recipes. It can be comparable in expense to the cheaper or even mid-range cat foods you would buy at the store.

On the other hand, if you're normally feeding your cat expensive organic food because they have nutritional sensitivities or other issues, making your own food will pretty much always be cheaper.

If cost is your primary concern, consider keeping track of the price of ingredients and doing the math for yourself. It will probably work out in favor of homemade cat food!

Is DIY cat food better for cats?

If you make it right, yes!

This is one of the biggest issues, though.

Many commercial cat foods are engineered to be nutritionally complete, but they may also have excessive amounts of some nutrients or too much filler.

They might also just not be high quality. A lot of these pet foods tend to use scraps and refuse from other meat processing, so the starting ingredients aren't great, and the added nutrients are of lower quality to avoid being too expensive.

While they keep your cat fed, they might not keep your cat healthy. It's why obesity, kidney issues, and other problems can be common in our furry friends.

When you make your cat food at home, you have full control over the ingredients and can make it as high quality as you want. As long as you make sure you're giving them all of the nutrients they need, you'll be good. I recommend running your recipe by your vet to make sure it has everything your fur baby needs.

Should DIY cat food be different for cats of different ages?

Yes!

Kittens, adult cats, and senior cats all need different nutrition to stay healthy. Kittens need more calories and a different balance of nutrients to stay healthy and grow big and strong. Meanwhile, senior cats are more likely to have health issues that need a dietary adjustment.

The post above is pretty much entirely focused on otherwise healthy (or slightly obese) adult cats. Make sure to talk to your vet about homemade food for kittens or for senior cats with different health needs to guarantee that you're giving them what they need.

As always, if you have any questions about this article, please feel free to let me know! I'd be more than happy to help however I can!

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