1st attempt at homemade cooked food

[JulietteTruong]

Not so great.

Been obsessively browsing the homemade forums, Dr Pierson’s website, and whatever proper internet material there is for making cat food at home. Raw seems appealing, but for now I’ll start with cooked. I ordered the U-Stew chicken premix for cooked recipes, and made half a batch.

To make it appealing, I sprinkled a pinch of krafts Parmesan cheese, and topped a little bit of the FF Tuna treat that Juli loves. She took one sniff and walked away.

Juli has always been an easy eater. I feed her canned food from the fridge cold, she eats it. She’ll eat any brand or texture of wet food I put out. Often she takes one or two bites and then comes back hours later to finish it. I just put out the first batch an hour ago so maybe there’s still hope.

I would love to get her to eat raw one day, but the way she grazes makes me feel like that might not be possible since I’d have to leave her food out for hours.

Anyways, cats are complicated lol

 

[Beholder]

Ahh, sorry you're having a rough time. Cats are definitely very complicated. I'm still trying to get my own cats to stop grazing as we're moving from cooked to raw. It's annoying

Anyway, maybe you could try a different texture? I tried to get mine as close to the canned food as possible after cooking it and that helped a lot. Originally, I basically made what looked like cooked hamburger meat and none of my boys wanted much to do with it. Once I started mixing it in the food processor with a bit of water into a pate-like texture they ate it right up.

 

[JulietteTruong]

Ahh, sorry you're having a rough time. Cats are definitely very complicated. I'm still trying to get my own cats to stop grazing as we're moving from cooked to raw. It's annoying

Anyway, maybe you could try a different texture? I tried to get mine as close to the canned food as possible after cooking it and that helped a lot. Originally, I basically made what looked like cooked hamburger meat and none of my boys wanted much to do with it. Once I started mixing it in the food processor with a bit of water into a pate-like texture they ate it right up.

Thanks for the reply! I used the food processor to make it a mush. She’s also a fan of pates. I tried mixing in a little bit with a serving of Sheba wet, one of her usual foods.

I’m going to leave it out and see if she will eat it eventually overnight. Hopefully her hunger will push her to eat it!

I wonder if the U-stew premix has a smell that’s turning her off? Hmm.

 

[Beholder]

Thanks for the reply! I used the food processor to make it a mush. She’s also a fan of pates. I tried mixing in a little bit with a serving of Sheba wet, one of her usual foods.

I’m going to leave it out and see if she will eat it eventually overnight. Hopefully her hunger will push her to eat it!

I wonder if the U-stew premix has a smell that’s turning her off? Hmm.

Luckily with cooked food leaving it out shouldn't be a problem.

And I was having similar thoughts about the U-stew mix. Perhaps it might be a better idea to leave it out the next time you cook the food. Doing it a few times won't hurt as long as it's not long term. If that doesn't work though I think you may want to try the traditional way (slowly introducing a small amount with each meal next to their other food) which takes a while but works with most cats.

 

[JulietteTruong]

Luckily with cooked food leaving it out shouldn't be a problem.

And I was having similar thoughts about the U-stew mix. Perhaps it might be a better idea to leave it out the next time you cook the food. Doing it a few times won't hurt as long as it's not long term. If that doesn't work though I think you may want to try the traditional way (slowly introducing a small amount with each meal next to their other food) which takes a while but works with most cats.

So I had one of those Fancy Feast tuna treat, and mixed half of it into a little portion of the cooked food and she ate it. At first she tried to pick the pieces of tuna out, but eventually she just finished it all.
I’m going to try getting some of those pouches of meal toppers with the sauces and mix those into her next cooked meal and see how she responds. I think I’m just going to have to keep doing this for a while until she gets used to the U-stew food

 

[daftcat75]

I ran many rounds of Krista Test Kitchen before I found a winning recipe. The first recommendation I will make is always keep some amount of canned in her diet. Cats can be picky batch to batch and you may have trouble with supply or production (forgot to make a new batch before the current one ran out.) Also if you need to leave Juli in the care of another (or overnight at the vet), canned is always easier than homemade. The next recommendation I will make is small batch deconstruction of your recipe. I never made more than a 1 pound batch at a time. The raw feeder I consulted with sold me a calcium supplement and told me, "Start with that. Figure out the cuts of meat and preparation she likes with just the meat and calcium and go from there." It took me a few batches to learn that Krista didn't care for Hare Today frozen chubs. The little princess wanted her meat--thigh meat!--freshly ground at home. Or finely cut into sashimi for treats. She had a preference for cuts. I don't know how it would work with cooked. But I know it made a better pate to grind raw while it was still frozen or mostly frozen. It made a much cleaner and coherent grind. Grinding non-frozen meat eventually became pink slime wrapped around the auger and not pushing through. I wonder if it would work the same for cooked. After you have let it cool after cooking, freeze it. Then run the frozen cooked meat through your food processor. Mix in water to the desired consistency. Then add a half tablespoon of unflavored gelatin to it so it will set up and hold together instead of being watery meat. Once you know you have the right meat cuts, prep, and texture for Juli, your next batch you could try the U-stew to see if it's the supplement mix she objects to. Skip the calcium supplement with Ustew (or any other premix) unless you want a very constipated cat. If she doesn't like the U-stew, there are other supplement mixes out there. Many of them will sell you samples. Krista enjoyed EZ Complete even though it didn't agree with her. We found out the hard way that chicken liver was chicken enough for her IBD. She also didn't mind Alnutrin. That's perhaps the most flavor neutral of all the premixes. Or there is always continuing with the deconstructed recipe adding in one or two new supplements each batch. This is what we eventually did for Krista's rabbit portions when she couldn't have the egg ingredients in any of the premixes. By this point, we were too off-road (no eggs and less B-vitamin than the recipe called for) for her raw to ever be full time. But she did enjoy those portions while they lasted.