Homemade cat food
Baked Whitebait Calcium-Crunch Toppers
Whole tiny fish baked crisp until the soft edible bones crumble — a single-ingredient, high-calcium crunchy treat with the oily-fish smell cats adore, snapped into small pieces and used as a sprinkle or a training reward.
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time
- 25 min
- Makes
- A small jarful of tiny fish
🧺 Ingredients
- A small handful of fresh or defrosted whitebait (small whole fish such as sprats or young herring), unsalted
- Nothing else — no oil, salt or seasoning
👩🍳 Method
- Heat the oven to around 150°C (300°F) and line a tray with baking paper.
- Rinse the whitebait, pat them thoroughly dry, and spread them in a single layer so they are not touching.
- Bake for 18–25 minutes, turning once, until they are dry, firm and crisp right through and the tiny bones have gone soft and crumbly.
- Let them cool completely — they crisp up further as they cool.
- Snap into cat-bite pieces and offer one or two as a treat, or crumble a little over a meal as a topper.
📝 Notes
A treat, not a meal, and an occasional one — oily fish is rich but should stay a small part of the diet, at most a few small pieces a few times a week, so treats never exceed about a tenth of your cat's daily calories. Baking whole and dry is what makes the little bones soft and safe to eat and gives the calcium; never give a cat cooked bones from larger fish or meat, which splinter. Use plain, unsalted fish only, store the cooled toppers in an airtight tub for a few days or freeze them, and skip fish treats for cats on a vet-prescribed diet or with a fish allergy.
⚕️ 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.