Cats are carnivores.

Carnivores don’t eat meat.

They eat prey.

That distinction is easy to overlook, yet it lies at the heart of the homemade cat food debate.

When people prepare homemade diets for cats, they naturally begin with meat. It is often overlooked that a prey animal provides far more than muscle tissue. Bone, organs, connective tissue and many other whole-body tissues all contribute essential nutrients needed to build and maintain a healthy body.

As a result, many homemade diets fail—not because homemade feeding is inherently unsafe, but because meat alone cannot supply everything a cat requires.

Veterinarians see the consequences of these nutritionally incomplete diets every day. Their concern is understandable, and it has become one of the strongest reasons many remain cautious about homemade feeding.

TCfeline solves that problem.

Before TCfeline, preparing a nutritionally complete homemade diet meant buying and measuring a long list of individual supplements every time food was made.

That worked.

But it was time-consuming, expensive and difficult to repeat accurately over many years.

By combining those carefully selected supplements into a single premix, owners could prepare complete homemade cat food simply by adding fresh meat and water.

Today the idea is familiar.

In 1998, it was something entirely new.

A premix is a carefully formulated blend of vitamins, minerals and functional ingredients that are added to fresh meat to recreate the nutritional composition of a natural prey diet.

It is the bridge between fresh meat and complete homemade cat food. Fresh meat provides the foundation of the diet. The premix supplies the nutrients that whole prey would otherwise contribute.

TCfeline bridges that nutritional gap.

Rather than buying and measuring numerous individual supplements every time you prepare food, the premix brings them together in one convenient product. Preparing homemade food becomes simpler, safer, more consistent and more affordable, while allowing you to remain in control of the ingredient that matters most: the meat.

The result is fresh homemade cat food with the the simplicity of a commercial product, while preserving the ingredient quality, flexibility and transparency that attract many owners to homemade feeding in the first place.

A premix is only as good as the knowledge behind it.

TCfeline was the first premix developed for preparing homemade cat food.

For more than three decades, Feline Future’s understanding of feline nutrition, the performance of homemade diets, and premix formulation has compounded.

That understanding has been built through ongoing nutritional research, continuous feeding trials, and the long-term observation of the Feline Future study cats.

TCfeline formulas are guided not only by established nutritional standards such as NRC (National Research Council) and AAFCO (American Association of Feed Control Officials), but also by original research into the nutritional composition of natural prey, like wild mice.

Every refinement begins as a nutritional hypothesis. It is introduced into a TCfeline premix only after demonstrating both its safety and intended function through continuous feeding trials with the Feline Future study cats.

Every improvement has been guided by one simple question:

How can homemade cat food be made safer and better for cats and the people who care for them?

The same TCfeline premix sold to customers continues to be fed to the Feline Future study cats, providing continuous in-house quality control and ongoing validation of the formulas.

This philosophy has never changed over 30 years.

At Feline Future, we celebrate the nutritional elegance of the prey model diet. That philosophy has guided every TCfeline formulation from the beginning.

As cats grow older, however, healthy ageing gradually becomes a higher nutritional priority than precisely reproducing the nutrient composition of natural prey.

That is why TCfeline is available in two formulas.

Fresh meat for homemade cat food is the same meat you would buy for yourself from a grocery store, butcher, or specialty meat market.

For most cats, I recommend choosing lean, ground red meats such as extra lean beef, bison, venison, mutton, or goat. Red meats are deliberately prioritised in the diet of the Feline Future study cats because they have consistently performed well throughout more than three decades of feeding trials.

Ground meat is also recommended because it is the easiest to prepare, is generally better accepted by cats because of its texture, and is more digestible than whole pieces of meat.

If those meats are not suitable for your cat or are difficult to obtain, there are many other options. Throughout this website you’ll find detailed information on poultry, rabbit, pork, and other meats to help you choose the approach that best suits your cat.