Soup FOR cats, of course.
I had to do a dump run today and took advantage of the trip to head into the nearer city’s Walmart and pick up a few things. While there, I tried to find canned pumpkin to use in Cat Soup, but couldn’t find any. They didn’t even have pumpkin pie filling. Or any pie filling, for that matter.
This is a very small Walmart.
So I got raw, unsalted pumpkin seeds, instead. Once at home, I ground them to a powder, and we made a half recipe of the Furball Farm Sanctuary cat soup recipe. The leftover powder is being kept in the fridge. Pumpkin seeds are an oily seed, and we don’t want it to go rancid.
Most of the cats ignored it, but Freya, our grand old lady, loved it! She’s one that I am concerned about, as she seems to have something going on in her mouth that she won’t let us look at, and isn’t eating as much. She has trouble with the dry kibble in particular. So seeing her enthusiastic about this stuff is very encouraging.
Now, if we could get Peanut Butter Cup eating it, too, that would be great. The lysine in it should help with her respiratory issues, and the ground pumpkin seed with her… leakiness. Actually, several cats are more… liquid… than they should be, so it’ll be good for all of them.
PBC, however, slept through the commotion.
*pause*
I just woke her up with some pets, then set her by the bowl we have in my bedroom. She is now enthusiastically enjoying it!
Since this is the first time we’ve made it, we don’t have any appropriate bowls. Instead, we’ve commandeered a lasagna pan for the dining room, and a cake pan for my bedroom. If this becomes a regular thing, we’ll make sure to have something just for the cat soup and 22 cats!
We’re running low on lysine, though. Gotta order more. We’re stuck with the granular type still; it’s the only kind I can find in the larger bulk sizes. Still no luck finding it in a fine powder form, which will stick to the kibble when we toss it together. There is a type that’s available in 4 pound buckets. It’s meant for horses, but lysine is lysine, isn’t it? I don’t know if it is granular or fine powder, but since we’re already using the granular, I guess it doesn’t matter much. Another reason to be making the cat soup. We can dissolve the lysine in it.
Anyhow. This is our half recipe, based on the one from Furball Farm Cat Sanctuary.
- 1 1/2 tsp lysine
- 1/8 cup pumpkin – in our case, raw, unsalted, hulled pumpkin seeds ground to a powder
- 6 cans cat food
- 1 cup warm water
To make it thicker or thinner, adjust the amount of water or canned cat food. Today, the tins at the top of the case where shredded turkey in gravy, so we probably could have reduced the water by half. Instead, I accidentally put in 1 1/2 cups water. The markings on our plastic liquid measuring cups as worn off, but I thought the one I used was only 1 cup. My daughter was helping me and pointed out it was 1 1/2 cups! Oops. 😄
We don’t have a pitcher type blender, but we do have an immersion blender, so that’s what we used. Our deep, 8 cup measuring cup was a good size for this, with room enough to keep anything from splashing outside the cup while being blended.
So far, only a few of the cats seem to like it, but the two we are most concerned about like it a lot, and they are why we are trying this! Yay!
The Re-Farmer
The Re-Farmer 
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