You can buy raw meat for cats at grocery stores, local butchers, specialty pet food shops, and online raw food delivery services. The best source depends on whether you want to assemble meals yourself from individual cuts or purchase pre-made raw food that’s already balanced. Each option has different trade-offs in cost, convenience, and nutritional completeness.
Grocery Stores and Supermarkets
Your nearest supermarket is the most accessible place to start. The cuts you’re looking for fall into three categories: muscle meat (chicken thighs, turkey breast, rabbit), organ meats (beef liver, chicken hearts, kidney), and raw edible bones (chicken necks or wings). All of these are sold in the poultry and meat sections of most grocery chains. The key rule is to buy plain, unseasoned meat. Anything marinated, brined, or pre-seasoned can contain onion, garlic, or excessive salt, all of which are harmful to cats.
Chicken hearts and liver are particularly valuable because they’re rich in taurine, an amino acid cats cannot produce on their own and need for heart and eye function. A UC Davis analysis found that chicken heart and liver tissue contains roughly 1,179 mg of taurine per 100g of dry weight, compared to just 159 mg in boneless chicken breast. Beef heart is another excellent source of taurine, iron, and zinc. These organ meats are inexpensive and usually available at well-stocked supermarkets, though you may need to ask at the meat counter rather than finding them in the display case.
Meat sold for human consumption has been inspected by the USDA (or your country’s equivalent food safety agency), which makes it a reliable baseline for raw feeding. Look for “human grade” products, meaning the meat was sourced, processed, and stored under the same food safety standards that apply to restaurants and grocery stores. Avoid anything labeled for pet use only, as those products are processed in facilities with looser regulations and less frequent inspections.
Local Butchers and Farmers
Butcher shops are often the best source for harder-to-find items like whole chicken frames, turkey necks, rabbit, and organ meat in bulk. Many butchers will sell organ meats and bone-in cuts cheaply because demand from human customers is low. Some will even set aside scraps or offcuts if you become a regular. When buying from a butcher, confirm that the meat has remained frozen or properly refrigerated and is completely unseasoned.
Local farms and farmers’ markets can be another option, especially for pasture-raised poultry and rabbit. Some small farms sell directly to raw feeders at volume discounts. Social media groups focused on raw feeding in your area often share leads on local sourcing. Just specify in any inquiry that the meat must be unseasoned and USDA-inspected (or equivalent).
Online Raw Food Delivery
If you’d rather skip the work of balancing a homemade diet, several companies ship pre-made raw cat food directly to your door. Darwin’s Natural Pet Products, for example, offers meals made from chicken, turkey, beef, and rabbit, with free home delivery and options to build your own box or follow a personalized meal plan. Their Natural Selections line uses 100% real meat with no fillers, antibiotics, or grain. They also carry a veterinary-formulated therapeutic recipe designed for cats with kidney disease.
Other widely available commercial raw brands include Primal, Stella & Chewy’s, Vital Essentials, and Nature’s Variety. Many of these are sold frozen at specialty pet stores as well as online. For a 10-pound cat, commercial raw food typically costs between $0.61 and $2.16 per day if you buy locally, or $0.86 to $2.39 per day when shipping is included. That puts several raw options in the same price range as premium kibble, which can run up to $0.75 per day for some organic or grain-free brands.
How DIY Compares on Cost
Sourcing your own meat from a grocery store or butcher is significantly cheaper than buying pre-made raw food. A 10-pound cat eating about 2% of its body weight daily needs roughly 3.2 ounces of food. At $2 per pound for grocery store meat, that works out to about $0.40 per day, or roughly $12 per month. At $3 per pound, you’re still only at $0.60 per day. Compare that to commercial raw brands that commonly land between $1 and $1.50 per day after shipping, and the savings from DIY add up quickly, especially with multiple cats.
The trade-off is time and knowledge. Homemade raw diets require careful balancing to avoid nutritional deficiencies.
Getting the Nutritional Balance Right
Cats are obligate carnivores, so raw diets suit their biology well, but simply feeding chicken breast every day will create serious deficiencies. The widely used guideline for a balanced raw cat diet is 80% muscle meat, 10% raw edible bone, 5% liver, and 5% other secreting organs like kidney or spleen. This ratio mimics the composition of whole prey animals.
Taurine is the nutrient most likely to fall short. Cats fed taurine-deficient diets can develop a form of heart disease called dilated cardiomyopathy, along with vision problems. Dark meat, heart, and liver are your best natural sources. If you’re building meals from lean muscle cuts like chicken breast, you’ll almost certainly need to supplement. Many raw feeders add a powdered taurine supplement or simply include chicken hearts as a regular ingredient.
Commercial raw foods are generally formulated to meet these ratios without additional supplementation, which is their main advantage over DIY. If you’re making meals yourself, working with a veterinary nutritionist to design a recipe, at least initially, reduces the risk of gaps in calcium, taurine, or essential fatty acids.
Safe Handling Practices
Raw meat carries real bacterial risk. One study testing 25 commercial raw pet diets found Salmonella in 20% of samples, spanning beef, lamb, chicken, quail, and ostrich products. Separate research found Salmonella in nearly 45% of ground chicken and 50% of ground turkey samples. The risk exists whether you buy from a grocery store or a pet food company.
The CDC recommends these precautions for anyone handling raw pet food:
- Storage: Keep raw pet food frozen until you’re ready to use it, and store it separately from your own food in the refrigerator or freezer.
- Thawing: Never thaw raw meat on the countertop or in the sink. Use the refrigerator instead.
- Surfaces: Clean and disinfect all countertops, cutting boards, knives, and bowls that touched raw meat.
- Hands: Wash with soap and water immediately after handling raw food, before touching anything else.
These precautions protect you and your household, not just your cat. Cats themselves rarely show symptoms from Salmonella, but they can shed the bacteria in their stool, creating exposure risk for children, elderly family members, or immunocompromised individuals.
What to Avoid
Not all raw meat is safe for cats. Seasoned, brined, or marinated products are the biggest concern at grocery stores. Onion and garlic, both members of the allium family, damage red blood cells in cats and can cause anemia. Cats are more susceptible to allium toxicity than dogs. Heavily salted meats like cured bacon or deli cuts can cause vomiting, diarrhea, tremors, and dangerous electrolyte imbalances.
Raw eggs are sometimes suggested as an addition to raw diets, but they contain an enzyme that interferes with vitamin absorption, potentially causing skin and coat problems over time. Cooked eggs are a safer option if you want to include them. Raw fish in large quantities can also be problematic due to thiaminase, an enzyme that breaks down vitamin B1. Small amounts of fresh, sushi-grade fish are generally fine, but fish shouldn’t be the foundation of a raw cat diet.