So I looked into how to make homemade cat food. Taurine is a really important part of a cat's diet. It's an amino acid that helps metabolize fats, and cats need it for their hearts, kidneys, and eyes. So you can't just cook up some meat and call it good.
Here's the recipe I use to make a balanced meal for my cat. She's about 9 pounds, so you may need bigger or smaller meals depending on the size of your cat.
Put in casserole dish:
- 1 lb of chicken gizzards, livers, and hearts
- a little bit of vegetables (some good options include: spinach, beans, peas, zucchini, yellow squash) (you want about 85% meat, 15% vegetables)
Bake at 350 for 40 minutes.
Dump contents into food processor. Add 8 tsp corn oil and 14 scoops of Cat Mix (this has the taurine). Process until it resembles canned wet food.
Feed 1 oz per meal, 2 meals per day (so this ends up making 1 week's worth of food).
It's really much more affordable than the homemade dog food. That little jar of Cat Mix costs $10 and lasted me about 3-4 months. The chicken runs about $1.25 a pound here. It's hard to even factor in the cost of corn oil, it's so cheap and lasts a long time. And for vegetables, I usually have something that I wasn't going to be able to use up and would've tossed anyway, so I consider that free.
That means that per month (4 weeks) your costs are:
Cat Mix: $3.33 (or less)
Chicken: $5
Corn Oil: I guess we can say 50 cents
Vegetables: n/a
Total cost per month: $8.83
Total cost per week: $2.20
Total cost per meal: 16 cents!
