Things to Consider When Feeding Cats a Homemade Diet

If you are still seriously considering feeding a homemade raw or cooked diet for your cat, I strongly suggest that you do your own research on the subject. It is all well and good for one person to give advice on a subject, but I believe it is only possible to make a well-informed decision on anything by reading all you can about it, both pro and con, and then figuring out how you feel about it. I do believe that either homemade diet is superior to anything commercial, even prescription diets. You need to discover for yourself how and why this is so, and understand biologically why cats, just like humans, "are what (they) eat".

That said, I do have a few tips that I will pass on in regards to homemade cat food, some of which I read about and others I discovered on my own. I've already mentioned the protein factor in homemade cat food, and I would like to extrapolate on that. First, don't substitute tofu for part of the protein. This is OK for dogs, whose protein requirements are not as stringent as those for cats, who of course would never eat such a thing in the wild. Also, tofu is bean curd, which could possibly cause intestinal upset. Also, never give cats raw egg whites (yolks are OK). I cook the whole thing in with the food, which works great. Raw albumen contains a substance called avidin, which prevents the absorption of B vitamins.

As I've mentioned previously, I don't add bone meal to the cat's food for the calcium component, due to the lead contamination issue. I use ground eggshell powder, which I make myself. I rinse the eggshells really well, then freeze them until I have a baggie full. I cook them at 300 degrees F for 10 minutes to dry them and kill any bacteria. Then, I grind them in a coffee grinder. A large ground eggshell contains about 2,000 mg. of calcium and 75 mg. of phosphorus, which is a good ratio for cats. I don't add this to the pot of food, but use it as the base for a daily supplement I make for my cats.

Whenever you cook meat for your cat, it is very important not to throw out any broth or drippings, as this is where the amino acid taurine will escape to. Cats with a taurine deficiency will develop serious eye and heart problems. I add taurine to the supplement that I give to my cats, as well.

If you decide to change your cat to a homemade diet, you will never regret it. I have a friend who has many cats, and she uses the food I make to treat elderly cats for a variety of problems such as hyperthyroid and chronic diarrhea. She claims it works better than prescription cat food and drugs, combined!

Just So You Know: For healthy cats, the stool becomes small and odor-free, since there is so little in the diet that the cat's body cannot use. What a bonus!
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Cooking for Your Cat

What do you do if you're dissatisfied with commercial canned cat food but not wild about trying a raw food diet? Well, you cook for your cat, of course!

I know this sounds like a lot of work and maybe just a little bit crazy, but bear with me. I have been doing this for nearly three years now and, even though it is tons of work, I feel that it is well worth it. Of course, I work from home and don't have kids around, so I have a bit more time than many of you. I also have a background in veterinary science and animal care, so I had some of the research material I needed right on my bookshelf. I can tell you, though, that anyone determined enough can do this. As for the time involved, well, I've learned that time is an elastic thing: When you need to get something done, you manage to do just that. People who work outside of the home full-time often seem to get more done in a day than people like myself, simply because they have to be more organized. As a wise woman I worked with for many years used to say, "If you want something done, ask a busy person."

What do I mean when I say that cooking food for cats is "well worth it"? As I have mentioned before, the three cats that live here are litter mates and are 12.5 years old. If you saw them, you wouldn't believe it! At this moment, they are downstairs raising a ruckus because they think I am overdue feeding them (they're not used to the time change yet!). They keep running up here to yell at me, then fly down the stairs when I act as if I'm getting up. Every night between 8 and 9 p.m., they all wake up from their naps and go berserk, just like youngsters. They still jump and land easily and run and play like kittens. They have no skin problems and their fur is soft as silk. To what do I attribute all this? Diet, of course!

Was it hard to change them over to the homemade food? No, not at all. They were all indoor cats all their lives and I always fed them a premium diet, so their health was excellent to start with. I would add a little more into the bowl at each meal. Do they like it? Absolutely. They are fed at proscribed times, but they start nagging about an hour early, since they love it so much. There's an added benefit: They get lots of exercise while they're bugging me for meals!

Over the next few posts, I'll talk about what you need to know to get started cooking for your cat.
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Should You Feed Your Cat a Raw Food Diet?

As the melamine-tainted pet food scandal was unfolding, I decided to forgo commercial cat food entirely and start preparing my cats' food at home. I read many, many books on the subject of feline nutrition, some of them veterinary texts. Basically, my choices boiled down to two: Raw food or cooked. After much research, I finally came up with the cooked diet my cats have been eating for the past 3 years. Before that, however, I tried raw food.

The biggest problem with the raw food is that my cats didn't like it. One problem is that there really isn't any "aroma" to it. Think about a cat eating its prey. There's the excitement and physical activity associated with the hunt. The prey definitely has its own smell, exciting the senses further. The flesh is warm and fresh. A much different scenario than a bowl of raw stuff being plopped down in front of you in the kitchen! Personally, I think a cat raised on raw food will accept it better than one who has not, but that's my opinion.

Another problem I had was the actual ingredients. In order to mimic the prey scenario, most texts proposed buying a whole bird and grinding it all up (bones and all) and then adding something like 20% vegetables and 10-20% carbohydrates (rice and/or grains). The grains have to be cooked, and the veggies are better off being blanched. You need a pretty brawny meat grinder to grind up a whole chicken! In lieu of that technique, you could buy already-ground poultry and add bone meal. Most bone meal is made from beef bones, though, and is contaminated with lead since bones tend to be the repository of ingested heavy metals. Alternately, you can use ground up eggshells (which I do).

The problem with buying ground poultry is that contamination can occur through this process. Almost all the meat that is recalled for this reason is ground up, and the machinery spreads the pathogens to each successive batch. Cats are more resistant to E. Coli and Salmonellae than we are, but you are still putting them and yourself at risk. Since you won't be cooking it, problem batches can become deadly very quickly. Even under normal circumstances, you must always freeze what you are not using, only leaving enough in the fridge for a day or two of feeding. If you forget to thaw it, well, you wind up cooking it, or the cats go hungry!

As you can see, a raw diet is about as much work as a cooked diet. If you are considering this change for your cats, I suggest doing lots and lots of research first. One book I found very helpful (and full of the cutest cat photos) is Whole Health for Happy Cats by Sandy Arora. You will need to consult more books than this, but this one is a good start.
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Raw Food Diets: Pros and Cons

Let's take a look at some of the facts and opinions regarding BARF, or raw food, diets and try to figure out whether or not this type of feeding is really a good alternative to commercial cat foods, shall we?

Proponents who swear by this diet use history to make their case, as well as observable physical improvements in the subject animals. First, their argument that wild cats eat raw food (prey), therefore domesticated cats should also eat raw food, does have some truth to it. What an animal naturally gravitates toward is often the best thing for it. The problem is that wild cats are not always in peak condition. This could be due to many factors, of course, but the point is that there really is no control group to compare them with. So, one can never be sure exactly what is being measured.

Those who feed their cats a raw food diet often boast of healthy teeth and gums, a fine, soft coat of fur, fewer skin problems, small, scent-free stool, no urinary tract diseases, etc. These are observable improvements that would be more like what cat lovers would be looking for when trying to decide if this diet is worth the trouble. J. knows a woman who has fed all of her cats this type of diet since kittenhood, and they live into old age with few health problems. This type of testimonial makes me believe that there are definite positive aspects to this diet.

Then there are those who feel that this diet is unhealthful, even dangerous. Many feel that feeding any kind of bones to cats is not smart. There is also the question of contamination of raw meat with E. Coli and Salmonellae. Cats have a much higher resistance to these organisms than humans, for obvious reasons. Therefore, the risk is more to you than your cat. If you prepare and serve the food carefully, however, you can effectively nullify those risks.

Other groups that voice opposition are the commercial food manufacturers and veterinarians. They claim that these diets are not nutritionally complete, as they do not conform to AAFCO standards. If you have read other posts here, however, you know that these industry standards really mean nothing and that commercial food is much more wanting in the nutritional profile department than homemade food could ever be. As for veterinarians, some may just be erring on the side of caution, while others, who sell prescription pet food for profit through their practices, cannot be expected to bite the hand that feeds them.

Still thinking of going "raw"? Tune in tomorrow, when I'll weigh the pros and cons and tell you why I decided to go the "cooked" route. I'll also give you some facts to consider before you start feeding your cat the BARF diet.
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Is Raw Food the Best Diet for Cats?

If you have done any research into alternatives to commercially prepared cat food, then you have probably heard of the BARF diet. Alternately described as "biologically appropriate raw food" or "bones and raw food", this diet has been touted as the most natural diet for cats. The idea is based upon the notion that in the wild, cats (and dogs) tend to eat live prey, i.e., mostly meat. Any grains or vegetables they consume are incidental, for the most part comprising the contents of the prey's digestive tract. Since much of this type of diet consists of eating small bones or actively gnawing meat off of larger ones, bones are prominently featured, unlike in other diets.

Dr. Ian Billinghurst, an Australian, is credited with first promoting this type of diet. He claimed that the wild ancestors of domesticated dogs ate raw prey and therefore this was the most natural and healthful diet for dogs. According to Wikipedia, the BARF acronym was not coined by Billinghurst, but by Debra Tripp. It originally meant,"born again raw feeders". After meeting Billinghurst at a seminar, she supposedly gave him permission to use the acronym as he saw fit. He thanked her, and the rest is history, as they say.

Naturally, this regimen has proponents and detractors. Those who favor its positive effect on animals point to the well-known Pottenger studies on cats. Between 1932 and 1942, Dr. Francis Pottenger fed one group of cats cooked food, and another raw food. Those in the first group showed signs of decreased immune function and various diseases that the raw food group did not. It took three generations of raw-food dining to bring that group's immune systems back up to snuff.

Pottenger's study was a long one, and involved nearly one thousand cats. Lest you think him an admirer of felines, know that these were lab cats that he was using for other, unrelated research. He wanted them to live longer and healthier in order to validate his results. Also, despite the claim often made that the cooked diet was well-balanced, this time frame was long before commercial cat diets and therefore any real research on feline nutrition, particularly the roles of proteins and the amino acid taurine. Despite these caveats, it does seem to show that raw food is beneficial to cats.

Tomorrow we'll take a look at the pros and cons of the bones and raw food diet.
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