Homemade Diet for Cats by Nature's Farmacy, Inc.

Nature’s Farmacy (Manufacturer of CatZymes Supplements) Homemade Diet

Welcome! This diet is designed to be easy, effective and affordable for you and your cat. It can be raw or modified raw. This diet uses human-grade foods you can pick up at your local grocery store. This simple diet will deliver far more nutritious and usable food elements than any processed commercial product. Raw is preferred in doing this program, but if the cat refuses to eat certain things raw, try that item cooked in the diet. The protein in this kind of diet is high quality and easily digested, therefore far less will be undigested to trigger allergies. This diet is low in grains (which are not well used by a cat anyway) and is formulated to duplicate what they would obtain in nature as much as possible, considering the availability of ingredients and time constraints of our daily life.

Foods: Notes on feeding fish: Avoid feeding fish to cats and kittens frequently as a meat source because many sources of fish can contain heavy metals like Mercury and farmed fish can contain PCB’s and other contaminates which can cause a multitude of health problems. We recommend that pregnant queens or cats that may become pregnant should avoid fish entirely as mercury can be passed to young kittens during nursing. If your pregnant queen has eaten a lot of fish you should consult with your veterinarian about methyl mercury and the safety of the queen’s milk. This is also true for fish oils (that are not molecularly distilled). Consult the list below for appropriate foods:

Meats: Raw or rare beef - Ground Beef or chunks Pork - cooked Venison - Raw or cooked (no deer liver) Poultry wings, legs, thighs - raw or cooked and de-boned Lamb - Raw or cooked de-boned except for raw joint bones Bison/Buffalo - Raw or cooked Cottage cheese or yogurt - Natural type or organic, not low/no no fat brand Eggs - Cooked or raw, without shells Organ Meat - Liver, kidney, heart, or gizzards. Feed up to 3 times per week or 10% of a meal, maximum
Vegetables: Legumes & leafy green vegetables such as asparagus, collard greens, mustard greens, beet greens, turnip greens, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, soybeans, peas, green beans, tomatoes, cabbage, parsley. These all can be fed raw or thawed frozen.

Carbo-Vegetables: Pumpkin, fresh or canned (Not Pumpkin Pie filling) White or Golden Potato high starch use only occasionally Sweet Potato - Low glycemic a good choice for cats Yellow squash Varieties – low glycemic also Apples and Pears – Good source of carbs and antioxidants Yucca Roots – Great source of carbs and easily assimilated in the digestive system

Portions: Adult cats should be fed 4% of their total body weight (BWT). Kittens and pregnant cats should be fed 6% of their total body weight.

Feeding Chart Total food % Meat % Veg % Carb
Adult Cats 4% BWT 75% BWT 15% BWT 10% BWT
Puppies & Pregnant Cats
6% BWT 75% BWT 15% BWT 10% BWT

PREPARATION TIPS

You can portion into freezer bags for later use to save time. Buy foods on sale when possible. Please note that grains are not a necessary part of this program. Frozen vegetables are better, especially when you have included CATZYMES Digestive Enhancer to the diet. Frozen vegetables, fresh produce and fruit need to be thoroughly rinsed. Put in a colander, thaw, and wash before chopping or processing. Organically grown is always best if you can get it, but in reality organic is not readily available everywhere and can be expensive. Otherwise, frozen vegetables are best. Frozen produce is picked ripe and processed immediately, therefore more nutrients are retained. Frozen produce also gives you a greater variety in winter. Any field-ripened, home grown vegetables are superior to the commercial supermarket version. Fresh commercial produce is picked under-ripe and has not developed its maximum nutrient value and does suffer nutrient losses while being transported and held for display. The concept of this diet program is to make it fit your lifestyle (User Friendly) so that you can develop a custom homemade plan that is simple and fits your routine. Feel free to call Nature’s Farmacy for help. Our staff is always willing to guide you through until you have reached your comfort zone. There are many other diet ideas available that are much more complicated and need to be specifically followed. This diet is easily followed and is based on sound nutritional principles and practices, and provides a balanced diet that fits the needs of most cats, even those with special needs. For treats, use vegetables, cheese or meats. Give your cats nutrition not fillers. Because this diet utilizes nutrient supplements, you can save some steps and eliminate most of your concerns. If you continue this diet long-term, as most do, it is simple and reassuring to have blood work done periodically to monitor your cat’s nutritional status if you have any concerns or if the animal has a health problem, talk to your vet about doing this. This is something many people do routinely anyway. Raw and modified raw diets have gained much popularity in recent years. Use red meat for at least 50% of the protein during a week. If your cat can't tolerate any of the different meat/proteins listed, eliminate the problem food. For example, if chicken causes your cat(s) problems eliminate the chicken and substitute another meat. This diet can be used the same as prescription cat food products by eliminating what the cat can't tolerate or lowering protein or fat. Avoid sugar, excess salt, preservatives, propylene glycol, MSG, and other unidentifiable items. If your cat has a yeast problem, eliminate grains, carbohydrates, starches and sugars. If you have questions about anything you want to feed, call us.

ESSENTIAL BASIC SUPPLEMENTS FOR A BALANCED DIET

1. Vitamin Supplements: CATZYMES Ultimate is a complete multi-vitamin that will provide all the vitamins, minerals, trace minerals, and essential amino acids your cat needs to ensure complete nutrition and optimal health. Great for coat, skin and color. Balanced for use with raw diet or commercial cat food. Unique self leveling formula eliminates the danger of overloading on any nutrient. 2. Probiotic: CATZYMES Digestive Enhancer is a unique blend of naturally occurring digestive bacteria, enzymes, strategic proteins and amino acids. Palatable dairy whey base for cats and kittens. Can be dissolved and used as a liquid supplement for newborns and cats with special health issues. Naturally protect your cat’s GI tract from bad bacteria growth (negative pathogens) and maximize nutrition, assist immune system, reduce allergy causing undigested proteins and reduce the potential for bloat and gas. Also helps with hairballs! CATZYMES Digestive Enhancer is an essential part of your cat’s healthy diet. 3. Joint and Bone Support: CATZYMES Phyto Flex is the best source of Glucosamine, Chondroitin, and Hylauronic acid, MSM, and Yucca for cats. It is superior to other similar supplements as they provide the unique necessary enzymes in the product to break down the molecules of connective tissue repair tools, rendering them over 90% available instead of the usual 25% in most other products. Unless these enzymes are present, the body has difficulty absorbing these beneficial ingredients. This product also contains unique all natural anti-inflammatory elements that reduce and prevent discomfort and damage. This product enhances the connective tissue reconstruction for healthy joints and provides protection from wear and tear caused by strenuous exercise and longevity. Phyto Flex provides for the supply of natural lubrication of joints adding stability and strength also decreasing pain association. 4. Vitamin C: Cran-Tri-C Caps combine all three types of Vitamin C: Ester C, Ascorbate and Ascorbic acid. Cranberry Powder base provides "whole food" synergy to correctly utilize the three forms of "C" in the cells. One eighth teaspoon contains 721 mg of C total, with cranberry as a whole food base.



Nature’s Farmacy © All Rights Reserved. Reprints with permission only. November 6, 2009

HELP! My vet can’t figure out what’s wrong with my skinny old kitty!!

Does your cat have what looks like a “wasting away” problem? Have you noticed your old kitty friend seems skinner? Lighter? But is eating like a healthy, large, pot belly piggy? Or maybe he already looks like a pot belly piggy? Other changes you may have noticed might not seem so drastic but are enough to have you concerned. Does he not seem as heavy sitting on you? Perhaps she seems a little confused or has stopped running at the sound of the can opener or cat food bag being opened. Maybe he seems to hide a lot and doesn’t come to pester you for food like he used to. Does she ignore distractions or sounds or has stopped playing and you think it could be a vision or hearing decline? Possibly she has developed some mobility problems and doesn’t seem interested in following you around or jumping on your desk and dumping your stuff on the floor like usual. Has there been kidney trouble found on a blood test or a liver function issue? Or maybe the vet found a heart abnormality. Do you think there could be a change in brain function, potentially the onset of senility, dementia, or an Alzheimer’s type issue? This is more common than people realize.

If the answer to any of these questions is yes, they need help and we think we can give it. Naturally and holistically.

It is very likely your cat has a food problem and we have found that commercial diets have been the biggest source of health challenges to our pets over any other influence. The older we mammals get; cats, dogs, or people, the harder it is to absorb enough protein to keep the body from fading away due to it cannibalizing itself to make up for the decreasing amount of protein in the diet, which allows the old body to repair and build new cells from protein and fat to replace lost cells. Just because your cat gets “protein” in a bag of food, DOES NOT mean the protein is digesting AND BEING ABSORBED. Like we realized back in the 1980’s we and our animals are not what we EAT but are wholly dependent on what we ABSORB. And what we absorb depends greatly on the choice of two critical things: the right food and the right probiotics, prebiotics and enzymes fed daily to make it possible to digest and absorb that critical, species-appropriate, cat-specific diet we will tell you about. Our Catzymes Probiotic Daily Balance was developed from that work starting 35 years ago, when we began bringing probiotics to the forefront and teaching pet owners how critical to the health of their animals it is to add these probiotics to the diet, no matter what you feed them.

We here at Nature’s Farmacy have been helping cat lovers with these problems for decades. We do not have any magic potions or silver bullets. And it is not “rocket science” either. It is our longtime experience in natural animal nutrition that has taught us that plain, simple FOOD is really the medical miracle for so many of these animals. Old age does not mean that there is no help and you should just give up. We know from case after case of thousands of owners who come to us for advice and help that the diet and digestive system are the absolute foundation that determines an animal’s health, strength, comfort level and longevity. We have spent 35 years proving you truly cannot fool Mother Nature. Not with a bag of dry plant-based protein cat food or dog food or a can of what you might think is meat, until you read the label and see the species-inappropriate fillers and tiny percentages of real meat that is usually of poor quality. A diet of any kind is supposed to supply the building blocks for repairing and replacing the body cells. Renewal. Rejuvenation. Repair. All very possible and probable in keeping us alive and functioning. We offer you diets that provide life-changing, life-saving food that follows Nature’s Plan. Food for a species that is the result of thousands of years of perfecting. That is until commercialization of pet foods came along.

This type of diet contains natural meat proteins and fats, not plant-based proteins substituting for meat. It also has a very low carbohydrate content level, like nature has always provided carnivores. It contains antioxidants to protect cells and vitamins and minerals provided by the earth. In today’s world we don’t let our animals hunt for food, so we do the next best thing and that is we hunt for them at the grocery store. We use meat, a little vegetable or green food added, and the essential vitamin, mineral, and fats in the form of supplements made to balance the ingredients you provide. We made it that easy. Our supplements fill in the nutritional gaps in the diet and ensures a constant supply of species-appropriate nutrients, including the calcium/phosphorus balancing of meat. These nutrients found in our supplements are easy to absorb and when used with the right diet, will build cells and give your cat the help it needs to regain health that is slipping away simply because of the wrong food. Everything, literally EVERYTHING that rebuilds health depends on the building blocks from food in daily diets. The first step on your little furball’s road to recovery is diet and the necessary supplements for your cat’s unique condition, including our advanced line of Catzymes supplements for conditions of the liver, heart, and kidneys and others.