From Scratch

When I was a kid, there was a great commercial for a cat food, maybe Fancy Feast, that featured a matriarchal woman who said, in all her snooty glory, “Dogs are dogs and birds are birds, but cats are people.” I think they all are, and if your family includes fur or feather babies, you probably agree. I don’t have a dog or cat now, but I’ve had both in the past. I even had a horse once. In Manhattan. A story best left untold, lest you doubt my sanity.

With the tainted pet food situation, I’d certainly be cooking for my furkid, and I know many are. If you’re considering it but need some help, I checked out a couple dozen Websites for both advice and recipes for cooking for pets and have assembled some links I hope are a good starting point.

I’ve left out sites that provide recipes based on commercial food, those that have recipes with those silly double-underline links that hope to sell you the ingredient (I saw one for milk. Gee, thanks.), sites that greet me with that annoying nasal-voiced chick telling me I’ve won two iPods and those that give my popup blocker a workout. I don’t have the time or temperament for all that nonsense, and I don’t think you do either.

Please, if there are sites you’d like to recommend, share them with all of us in the comments section below.

There’s an overview for developing your own dog and cat food recipes at healthyrecipes.com. The tips are good, ie: no peas for cats, no onions either. You’ll also find a few basic recipes.

I’ve never warmed up to recipezaar, but it has a user-submitted recipe that I’d be trying if my darling golden were still with me. It’s $15 a week dog food, and could be a boon for those with big dogs and a budget. The site has about 200 recipes for all sorts of creatures, so do explore as you need.

There are recipes for dog and puppy treats and meals at treatworld. The site hasn’t been updated for a couple years, but there’s some good stuff.

Cats are front and center at this site, written by a vet. There’s a lot of detailed information, some good pictures and several links.

This small list is not intended to be comprehensive but again, if you can recommend a good source for other pet parents, please use the comments section. Heck, that’s what it’s there for: communication.