Home Cooked 101

[Mary K]

Hi, All, I just discovered ! that cooking chicken and feeding it in big pieces got the attention of my felines, today. I had been putting it in the food proccesor and adding water and baby food to make it sloppy like their old canned diet. That wasn't making much of a hit.  But today, 2 of my 3 chowed heartily on the cooked chicken pulled off the bone.
PS: I found that some boiled chicken bones (the ends) pulverize easily into a fine powder which can then be sprinkled on their food. All of my local health food stores are out of human-grade bone meal and report a big demand recently. We know why   

[alek0]

I've tried that, one would eat it and others not. But when I  minced it none would eat it. I wish they would eat home cooked.

[Mary K]

Aleko, Hi, What have you tried feeding? Chicken? I have read that cats can also eat turkey, cornish game hens, rabbit, quail, and pheasant. Maybe they would prefer a different entree    This is all new to me, being a vegetarian. I cooked meat in my kitchen for the first time, just for my dear cats. Talk about love! 

[alek0]

I am a vegetarian, too! First time I cooked meat it was a disaster. tough to cut. Second time I baked it in an oven covered with aluminum foil, which I took off near the end. That time it was quite tender, and I've done both chicken and rabbit that way. My 8 months old is willing to eat cooked meat, but two seven year olds won;t touch it. First time I handled meat was when I got my two older kitties, they were such skinny pitiful looking kittens so I supplemented their food with raw australian minced beef and new zealand lamb, as well as occasionally sashimi (they are crazy about tuna and octopus, but that is just a treat due to vit. B issue and raw fish).

They are willing to eat raw, but I gave that up a while ago when all three had some diarrhea and I was concerned. Might just go back to feeding raw. They love raw venison. I am just worried about supplements (hard to find good quality ones), and freshness of meat if I feed raw. I live in Hong Kong, and don't want to feed meat from China. So overseas imports are OK when they are freshly thawed but they should not be refreezed and I don;t  want to buy them after they've been sitting on supermarket shelf for a while. I am onsidering freeze dried raw, got several bags of that but I am waiting to hear some feedback about it.

Btw, got Strombeck's book from the library, can post some recipes if you want for cooked food. Seems quite simple, not sure how good it is. I got quite a few cat recipe cookbooks but most are garnage, some contain onions, and in Anitra Frazier's New Natural Cat she recommends garlic supplements which are better than onions but still controversial.

[Mary K]

Aleko, Some cooked recipes would be appreciated! You know, I tried to get Strombeck's book. It was running anywhere from $19 to $55. The high-end pricing reflects someone taking advantage of our critical situation, and that is a shame. Good for you getting it at the library! It is great to hear from the other side of the world here on our forum!

[Therese]

Hey guys, I read your comments about recipes..what  a great idea! I just set up a couple new boards under Cats & Dogs where you can share your recipes.

Therese

[Mary K]

I've been reading Itchmo again...It appears that feeding home-cooked may not be safe, either (and I am having a hard time deciding what to eat for myself!) There have been chickens that were fed the toxin. Some people are questioning the safety of eggs, chicken livers and organ meats. What are organic chickens being fed? Even if this has been going on a long time, the best time to make changes is yesterday! The grains are potentially unsafe; soy, rice, wheat either pumped with protein or Genetically Modified. Maybe I am being too paranoid, but I have begun feeding these new foods to my cats. And being vegetarian, I am somewhat afraid to use soymilk, grains, etc, now. Vitamins from China are not a good idea, but they make a lot of our human-grade vitamins (now using for my cats)!Can we get some discussion going here about what is safe to eat, and what is safe to home-cook for pets? How safe is organic? I know I will get some serious thinkers who's opinions I respect! Thank you! I'm getting hungry 

[Davis]

Mary, you are quite right. And this is much farther reaching than pet food.  Like you, I am reconsidering my own diet.  I use to make a lot of fruit smoothies with frozen fruit, yogurt, juice, and "protein powder".  They were delicious and gave me a nice protein boost, or so I thought.  Maybe it was falsified with melamine.  My protein powder has now gone in the garbage, and I will probably never use it again.  Too bad, because I'm a vegetarian for the most part and depended on that protein.  I eat lots of whole grains too--yikes!...scary.  I also get lots of my protein from eggs...so much for those now.  And fish a few times a week, but that is supposedly toxic too.  And occasionally chicken....contaminated no doubt.  I have a new saying.  "In this world, nothing is for certain except death and toxins".  Sad but true.  Cherish every moment of health you have with your pets.  Love them like never before.  The future looks bleak for all of us.

[Cindy Nevarez]

Mary,

I know this is worrisome.

When the wheat-gluten thing broke almost 2 months ago, I was already checking all my veggie burgers, bread, pancake mix and so forth. I called Boca Burger...they wouldn't tell me where they got their ingredients...I told them to go jump in the lake; I won't ever buy their stuff again. I called GardenBurger...they were very friendly and forthcoming that all their ingredients are from the US and produced in the US. Same with Orowheat. I called Trader Joes, and they said they couldn't tell me every single source of all their foods because the list was too long. So now I can't eat a lot of what I used to eat of their's either.

As far as meat goes, my non-vegetarian family members have been buying their meat at Sprouts, Sunflower Market, and Whole Foods. I've getting Foster's Farms for the dogs because they don't use hormones and additives. But now I'm thinking I'll have to get the same kind for them that my husband and daughter get.

Since I don't feed any extra grains to either the cats or the dogs except for the tiny amount they get in their .25 cup's worth of kibble, I'm pretty sure I won't avoid most GMO ones (esp. since I still have several bags of The World's Best Cat Litter), at least until I use up their old bags. After that I'm not sure yet what I'll do.

Yeah, the organ meats are the real problem here. I put chicken hearts and gizzards in their HK mix, but I don't do liver, and never did kidneys...simply because it wasn't available, but now I'm not going to on purpose.

As far as what's organic? That's a good question. That's one of those loosely based regulatory systems that's open to a lot of abuse, corruption and lies. When I choose organic stuff for myself and my family, I try to stick with well-established companies that I recognize from 'way back' in the 70's and 80's and figure that they have much more to lose if they were found to be screwing around with the rules. And those rules keep being revised every 10 years or so....so you know there's problems with that too.

With pet food it seems that 'organic' is all relative. I can only go with my gut feelings on that as it's too infuenced with all this other stuff going on right now. Again, it's what you choose to believe.

I'm sorry this turned out so long-winded, and after I'm re-reading it, it doesn't look all that helpful. I guess we're all in the same boat here.

It just goes to show you how deeply ingrained this problem has become to infiltrate and change forever our way of life.

FDA are you listening?

[Mary K]

Thanks, Davis and Cindy! I didn't mean to sound negative, but it does happen periodically.      You are correct. I guess we all know the dangers here, and have chosen to focus on our pets. Their little bodies can't handle it like ours can; they showed us that. R.I.P.  It was just so frustrating after all of my research on how to get all the vitamins in home-cooked cat foods. I thought I had all the answers yesterday, then started reading more blogs and people are talking about chickens, livers, vitamins. So liver isn't an option, now, either.  And eggs? Concentrated toxin-filters...
As for me, I guess I can survive on my neighbor's organic produce and hope for the best with the other stuff. I know most people reading this don't do organic-vegetarian and that's fine. But when you spend half your life trying to stay healthy and watching everything you eat and then have the rug pulled out from under you with news like this, it is really hard to get up and start over again. Besides, this one isn't our fault! Sometimes I just get tired of worrying and trying so hard. Then I go make a big soy milk mug of hot chocolate with marshmallows on top and say "Oh, well...."                 May we live as long as our pets do, at least.