EZcomplete Supplement

[lisahe]

I just made our second small batch of cooked food using EZcomplete Supplement, from Food Fur Life, a company started by @LDG and Carolina Liima, whose Cat Site name I don't remember! Our cats love the food so much that I wanted to start a thread and post a photo. This is (uneventy) chopped chicken thighs: it looks especially soupy because these cats love to slurp so I added extra poaching water. Their first batch was hand-pulled chick breast. Pork may be next...

EZcomplete works for either cooked or raw meat and I'd been planning to use it more for semi-cooked or raw but I'm now thinking I may keep them on their current Primal and Rad Cat and, at least for a while, use the homemade to reduce their intake of canned foods with gums, which I don't feel great about feeding. We'll see! All the canned foods we feed are very low-carb and pretty filler-free but (interestingly enough!) it really looked like after a few days of homemade replacing about the equivalent of one medium-sized canned meal a day, the poops in the litter box were even smaller than before. (And still not very smelly.) Which makes me wonder even more about some of the ingredients in commercial foods...

Yum!

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• lisahe
• Apr 18, 2016

 

[paiger8]

I was waiting for your opinion of this! I'm glad your brood liked it! I've been pricing out making my own lately because my cat food spending is out of control. :lol3:

 

[lisahe]

I'm not sure how much cheaper this particular food might have been since I've been using the same chicken we eat (I buy natural or organic, depending on what store I'm in) but it sure does keep the cats happy and full for a long time! And they eat every bite of it, even Ireland, who's pickier. They did circle the dishes for a while the first time I served it: they looked very suspicious but then really dove in.

I'm interested to see what else they'll like. As I mentioned, pork may be next, plus I want to see what I can find for turkey. And what else there is for chicken, too. The biggest problem I've run into so far is that a lot of the meat in supermarkets has sodium or rosemary added. It'll be interesting to see what else there is! I got a funny look from the meat department guy at the local supermarket when I asked him about the pork chops and told him I was thinking of using it for cat food.

I think they hear more of that at Whole Foods, where I even once got advice on supplements!

All in all, I'm really happy about this: the food truly is EZ to make, the cats love it, and I definitely want to get them off some of the gums in canned food!

 

[paiger8]

Yeah, my cats LOVE RadCat, all the flavors, so I've been feeding it one meal a day. I'd love to get them on 100% raw, but it'd be at least $130 a month for 2 cats on RadCat. 

I buy all my meat bulk at Sam's Club so I get GIANT platters of chicken breast, thighs, or tenders for really cheap. I just divide and freeze it because I couldn't eat it all if I tried. I know they also have beef as well, but I only eat red meat occasionally so I haven't priced it yet. It's not organic, but it doesn't have any additives. 

You could also make friends with a butcher and see if you can buy directly from the source? You may be able to get some more interesting meats that way.

The biggest thing that's keeping me away is the meat grinder. The cats won't eat anything with chunks or shreds, it's pate or bust. One of them drags the chunks around the house on the rare event I give him a raw chicken "treat" and my petite girl just stares at it and looks confused. If she can't lap it up, it's not food. 

I just don't have the money or the space to store a giant meat grinder. And I'm not sure if my food processor would mush it up enough

 

[lisahe]

Ha ha, it's funny that you hit on my next steps: the butcher shops for "interesting" meats and BJ's for bulk! I love the organic chicken thighs at Whole Foods (the value packs are great) but I'm definitely not stuck on organic chicken, particularly for the cats (

sorry, kittens!) so cheaper chicken is just a matter of looking around.

If you want to make raw food, a food processor will probably work fine for getting the meat to a Rad Cat-like consistency. I made Dr. Pierson's semi-cooked recipe in a food processor and processed to a moderately smooth consistency. And I make chicken cutlets for us in the processor: that grinds the meat to a pretty soft consistency.

I'd been thinking about processing my next batch of food, no matter what I use for the (cooked) meat: our cats like variety of meat and texture so I want lots of options! I don't want to buy a meat grinder, either, so I'm feeling lucky our cats like all textures.

 

[missmimz]

Glad they like it! All of mine like EZ too with the exception of my picky old man and our Bengal that won't eat any raw. I don't feed it exclusively just because my cats need variety. So i rotate EZ with Rad Cat, bone-in mixes from HT with alnutrin, some FD, and some canned/kibble for snacking. It's working out pretty well. 

 

[lisahe]

Yes, they love it, missmimz, though I, too, could never get away with feeding them just one kind of food, even if I used totally different meats and different textures for each meal! Even if they went for that sort of thing initially, they'd get tired of one supplement pretty fast.

Meaning that I'm keeping Rad Cat (today was their first HPP batch: they ate it slower than ever, sigh) and Primal, and happily scaling back on their canned foods with gums. They've been on a natural kick anyway, preferring Tiki over most of their other canned foods.

 

EZ pork will be next! And then maybe mixed meats...