A Raw Food Tutorial

This diet is based on the recipes at catinfo.org and catnutrition.org. There are other sites and several books written on the subject of raw food nutrition for cats. I would encourage anyone interested in a raw diet to seek out such resources. Research before raw.

Now that my public service announcement is out of the way, on to the food…I am a highly visual person, so there are a lot of pictures to illustrate the process. Quite obviously, there’s a lot of shots containing raw meat. If you’re squeamish, consider yourself warned.

We start with four pounds of boneless, skinless chicken thighs purchased at the local store or butcher of your choosing (in this case, Wild Oats). Using meat that is preservative/hormone/antibiotic-free is important when feeding a raw diet, though it’s not such a bad idea for humans either.

The chicken is diced into small, bite-sized chunks. This encourages chewing, which is not only good for the kitties’ teeth, but also stimulates the process of digestion.

Next, we take one pound of raw chicken hearts (shown below, whole) and cut them into similar bite-sized pieces. Heart muscle is packed with taurine, an essential nutrient for cats.

The bulk of the diet consists of ground whole chicken. The ground chicken and chicken hearts are purchased from Hare Today, small farm that raises, among other things, free range chickens without the use of hormones or antibiotics.

I buy the ground chicken in 5-pound ‘tubes’. Within three days of shipping, it arrives on our doorstep still frozen. For the time being this method is the most convenient, because we don’t have any way to grind our own meat.

All together the ground chicken, chicken hearts, and chunks are nearly ten pounds of meat. It sounds like a lot, but four fully grown cats can eat a combined pound of food a day. I’m starting to understand how real zookeepers feel.

*throughout this whole process, hands are washed and the counters are wiped down multiple times – raw chicken isn’t something to be fooled around with*

Next, we add 1½ cups of water. This is actually less water than the recipes call for, but that comes into play later on at meal times: adding warm water to the thawed food makes it much more palatable.

The water and various meats get mixed together.

And we move on to supplements…

from left to right: Vitamin B Complex (400 mg per 10 pounds of meat), Taurine (8000 mg), and Vitamine E (1600 IU).

The supplements are mixed together with one tablespoon cod liver oil and eight large egg yolks (no egg whites – they contain avidin, which can impede absorption of biotin in the small intestine) Separating the egg yolks is probably the most tedious part of the whole process. The eggs are from a local farm, so unlike commercially farmed eggs, they’re large with thick shells and similarly thick egg whites. It makes it very hard to separate, but the yolks are large and healthy (and a rather bright yellow color). By the way, these eggs also make a great egg salad sandwich. Cooked, that is.

The ‘supplement slurry’ is added to the meat…

…and mixed together. Now it’s ready to be stored. I find Mason jars to be the most convenient, but be sure to get the ones for canning and freezing.

One half-pound per jar, which divided among four cats is equal to one meal:

All told, there’s enough food for nine days. After setting aside the next few meals in the fridge, the rest of the food is packed away in the freezer, and each can is taken out and placed in the refrigerator to thaw 24 hours before it will be served.

Now all that’s left to do are the dishes: