homecooked renal diet for Helga

Having found out when called the vet that the Royal Canin supplier was out of stock of Renal pouches – which Helga loves, she won’t eat her Renal dry diet without it – I had to find a way to make up for the lack of wet food we will soon face for her.

Researching on the web, there are a lot of homemade diets for cats with kidney failure available. I found the easiest one to make to be this one below, and promptly went and cooked it for Helga.

Anitra Frazier's Diet for the Cat with Kidney Problems

Ingredients:

• 4 parts carbohydrate: Pureed barley flakes and /or baby food creamed corn
• 2 parts protein: Lightly broiled chicken or beef or raw organic egg yolk and cooked white (used with meat, not alone) you can also use baby food chicken
• 1 part vegetable: Chopped of finely grated raw vegetable or vegetable juice-carrots, zucchini, and alfalfa sprouts are best
• 2 Tablespoons Vita-Mineral Mix
• 2 teaspoons soft butter

Blend above ingredients together

What in the world are barley flakes? I know only of normal barley grains, so I chopped the barley into smaller bits before boiling it in equal parts of water. I used ground beef – Helga likes beef – and baby carrots. I skipped the supplements because she will only be eating the wet food with the dry renal diet and thus be getting the vitamins and minerals from there. I also do not have a blender so there was no blending involved. I added only one spoonful of slightly salted butter but before I added the butter Helga was already meowing in hunger so I served it to her sans butter.

She loved the food. Mixed in with some of the soupy residue of the food, her dry food gets coated with soup and so she eats more of it. She is happily tucking her face into her bowl now, and all I did was add one tablespoonful of the food I cooked onto her kibbles. Hooray for wet renal food crisis solved!