I've brought this up in the general Nutrition part of the forum and wanted to bring it here to look at it more in depth. A little background: my kitty Kip was diagnosed with feline hepatic lipidosis a few months ago and he's still kicking, but his eating habits are a crapshoot. Sometimes he does really w\ell and eats 2-4 cans of food a day for a week or so, and then the next week, he'll hardly eat anything. And then he'll have his off days where he will eat maybe two bites of cat food in three days and do nothing but sleep.
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I've been batting around the idea of homemade food for a while and also looking at various recipes, raw versus cooked, etc. I'm just getting sick of buying cat food and giving it to the dogs because Kip whines for food and then won't eat what I give him. He needs to eat more than a couple slices of bologna every day. He's been off his cat food for a few days and I've just been giving him whatever he's willing to eat. Homemade food obviously has many upsides, such as better quality, purer ingredients, and probably costs less long-term than canned food. But there are a couple issues with it that could turn Kip off to it. The biggest issue with him is he absolutely refuses to eat anything that has been refrigerated or frozen. I've given him leftover cat food or tuna and what-not that was in the fridge and he wouldn't touch it. I've also tried giving him food I froze and thawed in warm water...wouldn't eat that either. He will eat cold deli meat, but that's about it. Homemade food will need to be frozen and I worry if it's not 100% fresh, the dogs will wind up eating it.
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Also, Kip has no front teeth, so he has problems picking up chunks of food (he seems to have a much easier time eating pate-style food). I assume it'd be okay to toss homemade food into a blender or food processor? I would like to wonder, also, if it might be okay to try making this stuff and seeing if Kip would actually eat it before buying all the necessary supplements and vitamins to add to it. I swear, he knows when I "drug" his food; I used to put milk thistle in his Fancy Feast - just a couple drops. He would never eat the food I put it in, but if I gave him the exact same kind and flavor of food without the drops, he'd inhale it. Nuts as it sounds, I worry he will "find" any vitamins I put into anything homemade and I don't want to throw away a whole batch of cooked kitty food because he can somehow taste a B-vitamin tablet that got dissolved.
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And in terms of bones and calcium and all that, I understand some bones cannot be used in homemade food, but would it be acceptable to break open the bones and use just the marrow? If I do go this route, I think I'd go with whatever I could find at the local grocery store like chicken or turkey (probably thighs would be better because of the stronger flavor and higher fat content) and chicken livers. The recipe I'm looking most at is the one on CatInfo.org.
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I've been batting around the idea of homemade food for a while and also looking at various recipes, raw versus cooked, etc. I'm just getting sick of buying cat food and giving it to the dogs because Kip whines for food and then won't eat what I give him. He needs to eat more than a couple slices of bologna every day. He's been off his cat food for a few days and I've just been giving him whatever he's willing to eat. Homemade food obviously has many upsides, such as better quality, purer ingredients, and probably costs less long-term than canned food. But there are a couple issues with it that could turn Kip off to it. The biggest issue with him is he absolutely refuses to eat anything that has been refrigerated or frozen. I've given him leftover cat food or tuna and what-not that was in the fridge and he wouldn't touch it. I've also tried giving him food I froze and thawed in warm water...wouldn't eat that either. He will eat cold deli meat, but that's about it. Homemade food will need to be frozen and I worry if it's not 100% fresh, the dogs will wind up eating it.
.
Also, Kip has no front teeth, so he has problems picking up chunks of food (he seems to have a much easier time eating pate-style food). I assume it'd be okay to toss homemade food into a blender or food processor? I would like to wonder, also, if it might be okay to try making this stuff and seeing if Kip would actually eat it before buying all the necessary supplements and vitamins to add to it. I swear, he knows when I "drug" his food; I used to put milk thistle in his Fancy Feast - just a couple drops. He would never eat the food I put it in, but if I gave him the exact same kind and flavor of food without the drops, he'd inhale it. Nuts as it sounds, I worry he will "find" any vitamins I put into anything homemade and I don't want to throw away a whole batch of cooked kitty food because he can somehow taste a B-vitamin tablet that got dissolved.
.
And in terms of bones and calcium and all that, I understand some bones cannot be used in homemade food, but would it be acceptable to break open the bones and use just the marrow? If I do go this route, I think I'd go with whatever I could find at the local grocery store like chicken or turkey (probably thighs would be better because of the stronger flavor and higher fat content) and chicken livers. The recipe I'm looking most at is the one on CatInfo.org.
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