Is cooked chicken or red meat safe for my cat? What about hormones?

Wild cats are NOT domestic cats, and domesticated cats have very different nutritional needs. Wild cats also do not live as long and may have health issues related to poor nutrition. And while cats ARE obligate carnivores, they cannot get all their nutritional needs from only feeding one type of food (IE only chicken breast) as it doesn't provide a complete amino acid or nutritional profile for your cat. This is why many home-formulated diets require several ingredients and nutritional supplements to balance. It is important to feed your cat a balanced diet in order to prevent nutritional deficiencies, such as taurine deficiencies, which can lead to blindness, organ dysfunction or even death if not addressed. Commercial cat foods are best (and cheaper than formulating your own diet which may require several different ingredients and supplements to provide the right nutrient balance) as they provide your cat with the correctly formulated nutrients to prevent illness or deficiency. If you do want to feed a homemade diet, I highly recommend working with a veterinarian in person in order to formulate a diet for Meo's specific nutritional needs. Otherwise, feeding a commercial cat food will be the easiest, and least expensive option while still providing the right nutritional balance to keep him healthy.

People food is just that – food for people. Cats are obligate carnivores, and as such, have a delicate balance of protein, carbohydrates, fat, and vitamins and minerals that must be maintained. Cats should eat a balanced high quality diet in order to meet all of their nutritional needs. Unbalanced diets with vitamin/mineral imbalances risk a variety of health problems. Home cooked diets are not as commonly recommended, but are preferred by some cats and pet owners. If you opt to go down this road, a carefully crafted recipe by a specialist in veterinary nutrition should be used with proper vitamin and mineral supplementation. Even with a commercial diet, occasional treats of boiled white meat chicken, turkey, salmon, or tuna can be perfectly fine in small quantities.

Thank you for submitting your question regarding your pets. Home cooking pet food can be very satisfying as most pets love it. However, it is extremely difficult to make the meals nutritionally balanced. For this reason, I recommend using a recipe provided by a veterinary nutritionist. I have several clients using this and have been so pleased with the results. I recommend www.balanceit.com. The nutritional requirements for a kitten will be different from an adult dog. Kittens need more protein and fat for growth and development. They also require an amino acid known as taurine in their diet. I hope this information helps!

Home prepared diets can be successfully fed to cats but it is important to fully research in order to provide all of the necessary nutrients in appropriate amounts to prevent over or undersupply of nutritional needs. IT is important to consult a trained nutritionist such as the Tufts University clinic which provide a range of well balanced recipes for home prepared food. A complete and balanced prepared diet should be fed with occasional treats otherwise

Hi Jamie, There are a lot of people who advocate for a raw food diet, but you are right that there are a lot of risk factors. There is not a medical benefit to feeding raw food over cooked food. I think a balanced homemade (cooked) or canned food diet are the safest for cats. Making a homemade diet and keeping it balanced can be quite a bit of work, so I currently feed my cats canned. I have attached a link below that may be useful for you. It has a lot of great information about cat food. http://catinfo.org I hope that was helpful. Thanks for using PetCoach.

I personally prefer giving a cat dry food, or a mixture of dry food and wet food. Cats have extremely specific dietary needs, which is very hard to achieve in a homemade diet. For example, cats cannot convert certain animo acids into essential ones they need to be healthy, and they therefore must be present in the diet for the cat to meet the important dietary requirement. There are four brands of food that have a veterinary nutritionist on staff to make sure the recipes for the food meet the cat's nutrition needs, and they are Royal Canin, Hill's Science diet, Purina ProPlan, and Iams. I recommend feeding your cat from those brands. If you really want to do to a homemade diet, I will put two websites below that have recipes for homemade balanced diets for cats. As for chicken and ham, chicken is fine as an occasional treat as long as it's boiled white meat chicken with no bones. I do not recommend ham because it's too fatty. I hope this helps! https://secure.balanceit.com https://www.petdiets.com

It would be ok to eat a small amount of chicken, as long as it is baked and not fried. She also needs to eat cat food because an all chicken diet is not a nutritional balanced diet for a cat. If she won't eat both and is only looking for chicken than you may need to feed only cat food so she will start eating it again. You could try different varieties and see which one she eats best.