Got A Kidney, Now What?

[entlaufene]

My cat (with CKD and general tummy problems) has been eating home cooked since the beginning of the year, with a super basic recipe because of just moving to a new country and don't know where to find stuff issues. So for two months, it's been:

- ground beef/veal (they're somehow about the same price)
- eggshell
- iodized low sodium salt
- olive oil (to reduce the constipation from the eggshell and lack of fiber)

With occasional liver (limited by my lack of a real freezer) and for the past week spirulina. (The spirulina helps so much with the all meat no fiber constipation! The poop is still small and dry and odorless, but she's pooping about once a day instead of once every 2-4 days. And now she's addicted and won't eat her food without it.)

Well I have a real freezer now so I can start giving her a more balanced diet!! So I bought a liver, which I know how to deal with, and a kidney, which looks like this:

All the pictures of beef kidney on the English speaking internet look different (all red, no white stuff).... Do I need to clean the white stuff (fat or ??) off or can I just chop it up and feed it as is?

My raw feeding strategy is freeze the meat, let it start thawing enough to cut, and slice it in thin slivers (I don't have a grinder, and she doesn't like big chunks) then feed with a sprinkling of eggshell and spirulina. She is such a little princess, at first she would only eat paper thin slices. Her meals looked prettier than mine!! Now she'll eat chunks 3 mm thick but I still feel like I spend way too much time in the kitchen slicing meat.

Should I feed more than 10% organ (5% liver, 5% kidney) for a little while to make up for the two months of almost pure muscle?

 

[orange&white]

Ideally you want your mix to have 80% boneless muscle meat, 10% bone (you're using the egg shells for calcium), 5% liver, and 5% other secreting organ. The liver is not optional. The kidney counts as "other secreting organ".

I would not feed more liver and kidney to make up for not feeding it in the past...just start with the balanced diet going forward.

The white stuff is fat. If you cook with animal fats in your food, you can save it for yourself and render it down. If you don't cook with animal fats, it will be fine to include it in your cat's food.

Congrats on getting the freezer! It makes life much easier and more affordable when you can stock up on good sales.

 

[prairiepanda]

You can leave the fat on. I would only cut away fat if blood tests were showing a need for reduced fat in the diet.

My cat hates the texture of liver and kidneys, but likes the taste, so I pate the organs and mix them into the egg yolks, vitamins, and water to make a sauce.

 

[entlaufene]

Pate is a good idea, I'll try it sometime. Frozen in ice cube trays after making it all pasty?

So far my kidney experience hasn't been fun. Kitty loved the kidney and vacuumed it up, then vomited it all back up an hour later. My hands smelled all the next day from cleaning the kidneys (I ended up cleaning them because they're not organic and someone somewhere said the kidney fat can have higher levels of toxins) and my partner kept saying I smelled weird.

Liver I can totally deal with. But the kidney smell.... ugh.