Homemade cat food

Catnip & Chicken Lick Mat Spread

A spreadable paste built for a textured lick mat, which turns thirty seconds of eating into ten minutes of licking — and licking is one of the few reliably self-soothing behaviours a cat has.

Difficulty
Easy
Time
15 min
Makes
10 mat servings

🧺 Ingredients

  • 200g cooked chicken thigh, skin removed
  • 60ml unsalted chicken broth
  • 1 tbsp plain full-fat yoghurt
  • 1 tsp dried catnip, crumbled fine
  • 1 tsp salmon oil

👩‍🍳 Method

  1. Poach the chicken thigh until cooked through, then let it cool enough to handle.
  2. Blitz the chicken with the broth to a thick, smooth paste — thicker than a purée, because it has to cling to the grooves of the mat rather than run off it.
  3. Blend in the yoghurt and salmon oil.
  4. Crumble the dried catnip between your fingers as you stir it through, which releases far more of the active oil than adding it whole.
  5. Test the consistency on the mat: it should hold its shape when you drag a spoon through it.
  6. Spread a tablespoon thinly across the mat and press it into the texture with the back of the spoon.
  7. For a longer session, freeze the loaded mat for an hour before giving it to your cat.
Nutrition: The value here is behavioural more than nutritional. Sustained licking lowers arousal in anxious cats, and a mat given before a carrier trip or during fireworks does more good than the same food in a bowl. The chicken and salmon oil keep it a real food rather than an empty distraction.

📝 Notes

Refrigerate up to three days, or freeze pre-loaded mats for a month. Roughly a third of cats have no response to catnip at all — it is an inherited trait and nothing to do with temperament — so if yours is unmoved, substitute silvervine powder, which reaches many of the cats catnip misses. Wash the mat properly between uses; the grooves that make it work also make it a good home for bacteria. Count the spread as part of the daily ration rather than an extra.

Catnip — crumble it between your fingers to release the active oil
Catnip — crumble it between your fingers to release the active oil
Anything that slows eating turns a meal into enrichment
Anything that slows eating turns a meal into enrichment

🎬 Related videos

⚕️ Before you cook for your cat

  • Homemade food must be balanced. Cats need taurine, and deficiency causes heart and eye disease.
  • Treat recipes are supplements to a complete diet, not a replacement for it.
  • Check any new ingredient against the toxic-foods list, and ask your vet before switching diets.

← Back to Feeding & Recipes