My cat won't eat cat food, prefers human food. Is human food okay?

It is ok to feed human food as long as you make sure the diet is balance and safe. You could use a website called balance-it to devise a recipe that is balance for a cat. After the recipe is picked you have to buy a supplement that they make to balance your recipe. https://secure.balanceit.com/index.php

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.

Hello and thank you for reaching out to Petco Pet Education Center, formerly Petcoach. I'm sorry to hear that Kaira isn't eating like you believe she should. Home-made diets are typically NOT recommended by veterinarians, as it is very difficult to ensure cats are getting the proper amounts and percentages of nutrients. Cats have very particular needs when it comes to food, and they can become sick if they are either missing certain nutrients or if they get too much of others. Unless you consult a board certified Veterinary Nutritionist who can come up with an appropriate homemade diet for Kaira, I recommend feeding her a commercial cat food formulated for adult cats. There is nothing wrong with feeding normal cat food, in fact, they are much safer and preferred over homemade diets. A significant amount of research goes into formulating cat foods and making sure they are complete and balanced. I hope this is helpful!

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.

I would recommend consulting a veterinary nutritionist or using a website like https://secure.balanceit.com/index.php which provides recipes for balanced diets for pets, as it can be difficult to provide balanced nutrition from homemade diets. This website provides recipes based on your pet's needs.

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

Thanks for using petocach! I'm sorry to hear your cat is having issues with food preferences. Unfortunately, he will need to eat kitten food in order to get the nutrients, vitamins and minerals he needs to grow. I would recommend trying a variety of wet kitten foods to see which he may like, and occasionally warming them in the microwave to help it smell more enticing. He should ideally be eating two meals of kitten food a day, which can be supplemented with small amounts of additional protein but kitten food should be the mainstay of his diet. Good luck!