I am now caring for a large dog as well as my two feline friends. I’ve been feeding either homemade raw food or store bought raw food for my cats for over 15 years. Along the way thoughts on grains and cooked vs raw meat have evolved. A good guide I have found is Pat McKay’s on feeding raw food diets for cats and dogs. Below is a summary of what she has to say.

When feeding cats and dogs a homemade diet:
The breakdown is 35% muscle meat, 20% organ meat, 20% fat, and 25% vegetable (carbohydrates). Pat McKay specifies that these percentages are a guideline and that it is not essential that each meal be to exact proportions. For cats she says that ratios can go as high as 90% meat and 10% vegetable and that often it is easiest for felines to digest lightly steamed vegetables. I can attest to the fact that my cats love vegetables, particularly steamed broccoli! Note: the meat ingredients should all be from the same source (muscle and organs for example). PatMcKay is against bones in the cat and dog diet. You can read more about that here.

The only thing missing to this simple approach to cat and dog diets is the calcium they need. Pat recommends you order a specific supplement from her site, but this is just impractical for most as it ties you to a product that is not easily available. Most people will feed bones when feeding a raw diet to their cats or dogs. This is a good book for that investigation (if you have a dog): Give Your Dog A Bone OR Barf World for Cats and Dogs/a>. Sometimes raw food recipes come with a recommendation for bone meal as a supplement, or calcium tablets crushed into the mix. There is a ratio and it corresponds to the amount of meat you are using in your recipe.