Homemade Cooked Cat Food: Ratios That Hold Up

Most homemade cat diets fail on three numbers, not on the chicken: calcium to phosphorus, taurine after cooking, and how much the cat actually needs per day. Get those right and a cooked diet is a reasonable long-term option. Get them wrong for 6 months and you can produce bone pain, muscle loss, or a heart problem in a cat that looks fine.

Convert everything to dry matter first

Every label and recipe number means nothing until you strip the water out. Divide the nutrient percentage by the dry matter fraction. A canned food at 78% moisture is 22% dry matter, so 11% protein as fed becomes 50% protein on a dry matter (DM) basis. Homemade chicken thigh runs about 68–72% moisture after cooking, so a batch that looks like 20% protein is closer to 60% DM. Do this conversion once for protein, fat, calcium, and phosphorus, write the four numbers on the lid of the container, and stop guessing. The same arithmetic explains why canned food looks low in protein on the label; the water account is set out in /food/wet-vs-dry-food/.

Protein and fat: 45–55% DM protein

Adult cats do well at 45–55% DM protein and 20–30% DM fat. Below 40% DM protein, muscle mass on the spine and hips starts to thin within 3 to 6 months in cats over 10 years old. Above 60% DM, many cats eat less than their calorie target because the diet is too dense, and the owner reads that as dislike. Fat is where the calories live: skinless chicken breast lands near 15% DM fat and produces a cat that begs constantly and loses weight, so add 5–10 g of chicken fat or 1–2 ml of salmon oil per 100 g of meat. A 4 kg cat needs roughly 200–240 kcal a day, which is about 100–120 g of a 1.6 kcal/g cooked mix, split into 2 or 3 meals.

Calcium and phosphorus: 1.1–1.3 to 1

Meat is a phosphorus food. Chicken and organs together run near 1 part calcium to 12–15 parts phosphorus, and a cat fed plain cooked meat for 8 to 12 weeks will start mobilizing calcium from bone. The target is 1.1–1.3 parts calcium to 1 part phosphorus. Ground eggshell is the cheapest fix: 1 teaspoon supplies roughly 1,800–2,000 mg of calcium, so a 1 kg meat batch with about 2,000–2,300 mg of phosphorus needs 1.25 to 1.5 teaspoons. Weigh the powder on a 0.1 g scale rather than trusting a spoon, since a heaped versus level teaspoon is a 30% difference. Never include cooked bone: it splinters, and the risk is not worth the calcium.

Taurine after the heat, not before

Cats cannot make enough taurine and cooking costs them more of it: boiling or baking at 74°C removes roughly 15–40% of what the raw meat carried, and 3 days in the fridge takes another share. The nutrient profile minimum is 0.1% DM, which for a 1 kg batch at 30% DM is only about 300 mg. That is a floor, not a target. Common veterinary practice for cooked diets is 250–500 mg of taurine per cat per day, added after the food has cooled below 40°C. Low taurine shows up as dilated cardiomyopathy after 6 to 24 months.

Organs, and the 5% liver ceiling

A workable batch is 80–85% muscle meat, 10% heart, 5% liver, and 0–5% other secreting organ such as kidney. Heart counts as muscle for taurine purposes but carries more of it than thigh. Liver brings vitamin A and copper, and 5% of batch weight is the ceiling: at 10% liver, vitamin A intake roughly doubles and long-term toxicity becomes a real risk. Do not add both liver and a liver-based powder, and do not top up with cod liver oil, which stacks vitamin A and vitamin D on the same axis.

The supplement list, kept short

• Taurine: 250–500 mg per cat per day, after cooking.
• Calcium: ground eggshell or calcium carbonate, 1.25–1.5 tsp per kg of meat, weighed.
• Fish oil: 100–200 mg combined EPA and DHA per day for skin and joints.
• Vitamin E: 10–25 IU per day when fish oil is in the bowl, to cover the oxidation load.
• B complex: a thiamine-containing B supplement, because heat destroys thiamine first.
• Iodine and trace minerals: a feline premix made for homemade diets, dosed per its label.

Use a premix rather than assembling 9 separate powders; the premix is the part where small arithmetic errors compound. If you feed half homemade and half canned, keep the split steady so the premix dose stays honest, and use the wet-to-dry ratio in /food/wet-food-ratio/ to check the calories add up.

Cooking, chilling, and the 72-hour rule

Cook meat to 74°C internal for at least 10 minutes, or simmer until no pink remains at the bone end. Cool to room temperature within 2 hours, then refrigerate. Cooked batches keep 3 days in a fridge at 4°C or below, and 30 days in a freezer at −18°C; portion into 3-day containers before freezing so you never thaw more than you need. Thaw in the fridge for 12–24 hours, and warm to 30–37°C, not hotter. Above 40°C the taurine you just added starts to degrade again. Wash the bowl and the scale scoop with hot soapy water after every batch, because cooked meat plus a warm kitchen is a good growth medium.

Nutrient	Target on a DM basis	The usual mistake
Protein	45–55%	Stretching the batch with rice or pumpkin
Fat	20–30%	Skinless breast only, cat cannot hold weight
Calcium to phosphorus	1.1–1.3 to 1	No calcium source at all
Taurine	0.1% minimum, 250–500 mg/day added	Added before cooking
Liver	5% of batch weight	15%, because the cat likes it
Vitamin A	From liver only, capped	Cod liver oil on top of liver

Who should not start a homemade diet

Kittens under 12 months, pregnant or nursing queens, and cats with chronic kidney disease (CKD), diabetes, pancreatitis, or a struvite history should stay on a commercial diet formulated for that condition. Growing kittens are the highest-risk group: a calcium to phosphorus error in the first 6 months can cause folded growth plates and lifelong orthopedic damage. For everyone else, have the recipe reviewed once by a board-certified veterinary nutritionist before the first batch, and again if the cat's weight changes by 5%. Skip diet changes in the same week as vaccinations; the vaccine schedule at /tools/vaccine-calendar/ is a better place to stack the stress.

Four steps to start

1. Weigh the cat and set a daily calorie target at 200–240 kcal for 4 kg.
2. Build one 1 kg batch, weigh every ingredient on a 0.1 g scale, and log the numbers.
3. Add taurine and calcium after cooking, and label the container with the date.
4. Recheck weight and body condition every 30 days, and get a blood panel at 6 months.

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