Human fast metabolisers - similar perhaps to cats who need to eat frequently ?? - often do well on organ meats, sardines and other high-purine foods.  It has been suggested that this is because they slow down an over-firing metabolism promoting metabolic balance rather than other proteins that can 'rev' it further.  Yet fast metabolisers are also often the ones who have a degree of kidney impairment, so would feeding them kidneys also be helping kidney tissue repair?

Amazing what one finds on a pet food recall thread - sorry if this is a diversion - but fast metabolisers might like to try......

Lyra, thanks for your comments, they have been noted.

Kind regards  (and happy holidays NRs)

Sheila

Another cat owner told me of his cat's kidney problem being relieved by
cutting out the dry food and feeding him chopped KIDNEY.  Hmmm!
Synchronicity there.

A few thoughts:

One of the reasons cats are mandatory carnivores is because they must have pre-formed Vitamin A, as they can not convert beta-carotene into Vitamin A.  Liver is a great source of Vitamin A but should not be fed exclusively like any raw meat for two reasons: 1) the potential for excessive Vitamin A called Hypervitaminosis A and, as with all meats (not just livers) a tendency to induce a calcium deficiency which then requires supplementation to overcome it (if you don't stop doing it, or your cat refuses to eat anything else).  For Hypervitaminosis A, I must make clear, there has to be quite a history of exclusive feeding on liver, so 2 - 3 meals a week should be OK, just not every day otherwise it can and will happen.  (If you think what happens in the wild, no cat just eats the organ meats of an animal it kills, it eats fur and ears and all parts, indeed big cats often eat the intestines of bovines with grass in the stomach too (known as 'green tripe' in the food trade and very nutritious) - and yes, domesticated cats may leave the rest of a mouse but generally this is because they're already well fed or are 'topping' up on a deficiency.

Nobody in their right mind would feed their cats liver exclusively.  Come on now.  All I said is that I like to *occasionally* give my cat liver as a treat.   I bought her livers this past weekend and so far she's had exactly one. 

Again.....I really don't think anybody in their right mind would feed their cat only fish exclusively. 

I don't know how to say this delicately, but...based on your past posts in other threads I've started, you have a tendency to over explain things, meaning, getting into tedious details...even stuff that isn't relevant, and/or coming up with absurd scenarios in order to "correct" them so that you can get into a (really dry...) school-like lesson plan.  It's a bit like showing off, but that's not entirely it, because your personality seems nice and well intentioned.  So I'm not sure what the best way to put it would be.  Just over explaining things, going too far into tedious details in order to have an excuse to lecture.  I don't know.  Something like that.   I'm not sure if you genuinely misunderstood what I and others were saying in this thread and you really and truly believed that any of us would have exclusively fed our cats either liver or fish, or if that was just a reason to be able to segue into a lesson plan, or what.   There's valuable information in your posts, but speaking for myself, that particular overall approach doesn't work for me.

One of the reasons cats are mandatory carnivores is because they must have pre-formed Vitamin A, as they can not convert beta-carotene into Vitamin A.  Liver is a great source of Vitamin A but should not be fed exclusively like any raw meat for two reasons: 1) the potential for excessive Vitamin A called Hypervitaminosis A and, as with all meats (not just livers) a tendency to induce a calcium deficiency which then requires supplementation to overcome it (if you don't stop doing it, or your cat refuses to eat anything else).  For Hypervitaminosis A, I must make clear, there has to be quite a history of exclusive feeding on liver, so 2 - 3 meals a week should be OK, just not every day otherwise it can and will happen.  (If you think what happens in the wild, no cat just eats the organ meats of an animal it kills, it eats fur and ears and all parts, indeed big cats often eat the intestines of bovines with grass in the stomach too (known as 'green tripe' in the food trade and very nutritious) - and yes, domesticated cats may leave the rest of a mouse but generally this is because they're already well fed or are 'topping' up on a deficiency.

As a previous contributor has said, cats need a diet with high protein content, and this is because they can not conserve nitrogen and thus protein (consisting of amino acids, compounds containing nitrogen) alone must be used to provide energy rather than like dogs, or humans for that matter, who can get energy from both carbs and fats exclusively if needs be (not good long term of course). 

Cats need fats however and fish is one of the best sources as long again as it's not an exclusive feed or your cat may get fatty diarrhoea from too much unsaturated fat, so combine with some saturated animal fat, dairy if they can tolerate it or fish oils including small amounts of fish liver oils, again everything in moderation and balance. 

Cats can utilise both iron and copper from meats but the loss of coat colour could mean either an excess or lack (bioavailability) of copper depending on the meat used as iron and copper fight for absorption and iron would be the most bioavailable in red meat probably pushing out copper.   How the cattle are fed, if you're feeding beef for example, will affect the minerals in the meat never mind the use of sick and 'downer' animals, often highly deficient, in this regard.  Whilst such animals aren't allowed into the human food chain (supposedly) cattle fed grain in food lots are.....with corresponding negative effects on the human food chain, but that's another story.  Alternately for coats lacking lustre consider calcium deficiency as above as this shows initial signs in the coat (lack of lustre and falling out) before the more serious effects become apparent.  But then, the more I think about it, so does quite a few other deficiencies so nothing completely conclusive to add there, but calcium deficiency is a well-known problem with cats fed exclusively on red meat.

According to my faithful Hungerfords's Diseases of Livestock which, for some reason also includes cats, "Generally commercial canned or dry foods with two or three varied organ meats (kidney, heart, liver), occasional cheese, cooked fish, meat, baby foods, yoghurt, cooked vegetables and cereals, two egg yolks per week and a daily teaspoonful of cooking oil, bacon fat or butter, all used with discretion, are general guides."

That's the sort of combo my cats did very well on years ago before the 'tin din' era.

Finally, many years ago now, I visited a homeopathic vet with my dogs who were in dire straits with 'genetic' problems (bilateral stiffness of front legs) and he pulled them off all cereal-based foods and put them on a little goats milk, green tripe, tinned fish (like pilchards, which they loved the best), rabbit, organic chicken, vegetables (no solanacea like potatoes), brown rice, brewers yeast, cod liver oil and all their significant problems cleared up within weeks and they became like puppies again instead of old crocks at 5 years.  I thought until then I had them on the best red meat and biscuits diet, never 'tin din', but in my ignorance had contributed to their problems.  We live and learn.

So, as always, even with the peculiar dietary likes of cats, it would seem varied and balanced is the way to go.  Sometimes that even works for humans too.:D

Kind regards

Sheila

Well I belong to 9 cats.  I do cook for them sometimes, but good lord, I don't think I could handle doing it every day.  I don't even cook for myself every day LOL.

With homemade cat food, you don't make it every single day.  The optimal way to do it is to make one huge batch which gets divvied up into those little "Ball" brand glass mason jars and frozen in your freezer.  It's really the only way to do it, since homemade cat food involves so many ingredients, from the meats to the vitamin supplements to the organs, and sometimes bone meal too, if you're able to get some.   Each jar holds about three servings worth of food roughly, so you have one defrosted in your fridge at a time.  You take a portion out of the jar, reheat it in like a Ziploc bag or something, then serve. 

Thanks for the tip...

As long as we are on the subject of pet health, I'd like to mention something else.  It is an extremely dangerous situation when a cat stops eating for any reason.  Cats have a very unusual metabolism.  Other animals can live off their own body fat for a limited time if they are not able to eat.  The body breaks down fat cells when food is not available, and this keeps you going until you can eat again.  But for a cat, this is not a good thing, because the liver can't process those fat cells.  If a cat stops eating, even for just a couple of days, liver failure can take hold very quickly.   

My oldest cat almost died last year from hepatic lipidosis because I didn't know any better.  When we moved into our house she became very stressed.  The other cats got adjusted but after several weeks, Daisy was still stuck up under the bed like a troll growling at anyone who came near her.  She gradually stopped eating and lost a ton of weight.  I was stupid enough to think that if she got hungry enough, she would stop hiding and see that everything was okay in the new house.  She ended up having to be put on a feeding tube so her liver could recover.  She pulled through, and it's a miracle that she is still alive.  So I have made it my duty to warn people about this, because I had no idea that a cat could get so sick from not eating.

This is important to keep in mind if you are changing your cat's diet.  They need good nutrition, but the main thing is they need to have food constantly.  Plus cats can get notoriously stubborn or depressed over any changes in their routine.  So as long as what they are eating doesn't pose any serious dangers to their health, it's better for them to keep eating something they like, than to risk having them stop eating anything at all.

Wow, now there's something I never thought I'd say.  "I think I'll go to the butcher shop."  (I'm mostly vegetarian).

Omega fatty acids and taurine are things that have to be in a cat's food for their coats...

(Just be sure it's not in the form of flax seed or other plant-based pressed oils.  Cats can't break that down or convert it or whatever.  So salmon/fish oil is supposed to be one good Omega 3 supplement for cats to use....)

Chicken hearts.  The cat food recipes I was looking at awhile back all mentioned chicken hearts.  I didn't have any luck tracking any down where I live at our local Whole Foods.  They only carry little plastic containers of chicken livers.  (which my cat scarfs on...she LOVES liver!!)   You'd have to check around with any local butchers or what not in your area.

I know many of the recipes I've read contain brewer's yeast, vegetables (the kind carnivores would find in the stomachs of their prey, and in the same quantity), greens, etc.     Omega fatty acids and taurine are things that have to be in a cat's food for their coats, but I don't know which foods contain taurine in sufficient quantities.

I found some store foods that mimic nature called Innova and Solid Gold, along with a few others.  These seem soooo expensive, though.  It would be fine if you had just one cat, but I have a household of animals, and I need to eat, too!   I also have the problem of finicky eaters.  The healthier a food is, the harder it is to get them to eat it.  They wouldn't have this reaction to turkey, chicken, fish, etc.

Nutritional yeast is available from www.bulkfoods.com/health.asp and doesn't taste awful like brewer's yeast. You can also add a mineral supplement like bone meal which is available from health food stores or www.iherb.com/store/Default.aspx. You should also add sprouted grass or clover; see my post on sprouting. You can make pet food that is much better than the commercial product.

I found some store foods that mimic nature called Innova and Solid Gold, along with a few others.  These seem soooo expensive, though.  It would be fine if you had just one cat, but I have a household of animals, and I need to eat, too!   I also have the problem of finicky eaters.  The healthier a food is, the harder it is to get them to eat it.  They wouldn't have this reaction to turkey, chicken, fish, etc.

I did the homemade cat food thing for a bit and had no gag issue dealing with the raw meat - as you'll see in the thread, I had to dig in, ripping flesh from bones, skinning away tendons, throwing it in the meat grinder, dealing with raw livers and blood -  you just get to a point where you tune it out and do what needs to be done.    Then again, I was the only kid in my 10th grade biology class who was able to dissect the frogs without a second thought.  (I feel like some part of me, somewhere in time in some alternate reality is knowledgable and adept with genetics, biology and even surgery.  But tales for another time I suppose.) But my cat flips for raw meat and chicken livers, prefers it over canned food...understandably.  However, something was off with the nutritional balance, and her black fur started turning red and thinning drastically.  This means mineral deficiency of some sort.  So I was never able to master the vitamin/mineral content aspect of it all and had to go back on store bought food in the meantime so that she wouldn't lose all her fur.  Once she was back on Nutro her fur grew in again.    So I too would love to hear about any recipes that anybody has regarding homemade cat food that worked for them and didn't cause their cat's fur to thin and fall out (and in the case of black cats, turn red).

For once, I feel good about being a slacker owner who feeds dry food.   One of my cats has to eat Purina UR for his urinary tract, so they all wind up eating it.  Even so, this has made me realize the need to make my own food.  I just need to find a way to customize it for my dog and for my cats, so I make the majority of the batch for both of them and change it to meet canine/ feline requirements.

I was appalled to discover it was the so-called high quality foods that were indicated as well as store brands.  Think how some poor well-meaning owners must feel, feeding an expensive brand of food they assumed was healthier and having their pets die because of it.  Infuriating-- simply infuriating.

I can't do raw because it would gag me, but I have thought about buying large turkeys and chickens and just making ginormous pots of cooked food to store for a week at a time.  There are so many recipes out there.  Does anyone have good ones they've used and had success with?

http://www.menufoods.com/recall/

Here's the ongoing article at Yahoo:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070323/ap_ … Afd.6s0NUE

I've been a little peeved to discover that Nutro pet food, which was supposed to be one of the "good" brands, actually contracts out their pouch foods to Menu.  I don't use the pouch food anymore, my cat had adverse reactions to it last year...and now I'm starting to understand why.  Nutro is supposed to be one of those rare brands that takes measures not to use euthanized animals, roadkill, or downer (ie...already dead upon arrival at the slaughterhouse) animals, or rendered parts.   Supposed to being the operative word.   In fact they used to make mention of this on their website's home page.  They don't anymore.  So either I'm dumb and can't find this notice, or, it's been removed because Nutro can no longer make this claim....because they're contracting out the making of some of their foods to Menu, and Menu would in fact use downer/euthanized animals, roadkill and rendered parts.   I contacted Nutro pet food to get clarification on what the deal is with their products' quality but of course haven't heard back.    Don't expect I will either.   So down goes the endorsement of Nutro on my own website in my article about pet food and pet health.  Will see about sticking with Pet Promise brand in the meantime.

Anyway.  Just wanted to let people know who might have pets so they can check to see if their brands of pet food match the recalled brands, and to pass this along to anybody you know who also has pets.