If you’ve spent any amount of time exploring the small, sunlit villages scattered across Enshrouded’s open world, you’ve probably run into skittish stray cats hanging around farmsteads and abandoned cottages. A lot of new players don’t realize these strays are interactable, and feeding them gives small but surprisingly useful rewards that can save you time grinding for rare materials. If you’ve been wondering how to make cat food enshrouded, this guide breaks down every part of the process, from gathering materials to making the most of your finished batches.
Required Materials to Make Cat Food Enshrouded
You don’t need high-level crafting unlocks or rare endgame materials to make cat food. The recipe unlocks automatically within your first few hours of play, as soon as you pick up one of each required ingredient for the first time. The full list of materials you’ll need per batch of cat food is:
- 2 Raw Meat: Dropped by any passive wild animal, from foxes and wild boars to the larger deer that roam non-enshrouded forest zones. You don’t need high-quality star-rated meat for this recipe, so you can save your better cuts for cooking player meals that give stat buffs.
- 1 Honey: Harvested from beehives attached to large oak trees in the northern grasslands, or earned as a random reward for completing early quests for the farmer NPC once you unlock their settlement. A single full beehive gives enough honey for 4 to 5 batches of cat food.
- 1 Grain: Either looted from chests in abandoned farm buildings, or grown yourself once you plant grain seeds in a small farm plot at your base. Growing your own grain is far more sustainable if you plan to feed cats regularly, as seeds are cheap and only take 10 in-game minutes to mature.
You might see old early access guides online saying you need extra ingredients like berries or animal fat for this recipe, but that info is outdated. The current live version of the game only uses these three materials, so you don’t have to waste rarer resources on this craft.
Step-by-Step Cat Food Crafting Process
You can’t craft cat food in your personal inventory, so you’ll first need to place down a campfire cooking station at your base or a temporary outpost. The basic campfire unlocks at player level 2, so even brand new players can access this recipe right away.
First, make sure all three required materials are in your personal inventory or linked to the campfire via a nearby storage chest. Interact with the campfire to open the cooking menu, then look for the “Pet Care” tab at the top of the menu. I used to miss this tab for weeks when I first started playing, because I assumed all cooking recipes were under the “Meals” section, so don’t panic if you don’t see the recipe pop up right away. Select the cat food recipe, choose how many batches you want to make, and hit the craft button.
Each batch of cat food takes 10 in-game seconds to cook, so you don’t have to wait around long for it to finish. You won’t earn any cooking skill experience for making cat food, so don’t waste materials on mass crafting it to level up your cooking skill. Save more complex recipes like meat stews or fruit pies for that purpose.
Best Uses for Finished Cat Food
The most obvious use for cat food is feeding the friendly stray cats you find in non-enshrouded villages across the map. When you approach a stray, you’ll get a prompt to offer them a piece of cat food, and they’ll accept it as long as there are no hostile enemies nearby. Each cat you feed will give you a small reward immediately, ranging from extra healing herbs and minor health potions to rare crop seeds you can’t find easily in the wild.
If you feed the same stray three in-game days in a row, it will become a permanent base cat that travels back to your home automatically. Permanent cats will leave small random gifts on your front porch every in-game morning, including rare building materials and sometimes even high-tier weapon enchantment scrolls. I once got a rare flame protection enchantment scroll from my first base cat, which saved me hours of grinding dungeon chests for it.
You can also trade surplus cat food to other players in public settlement hubs for basic building materials like stone, wood, or fiber. A lot of players don’t want to bother gathering honey to make their own cat food, so they’re happy to trade excess building supplies for pre-made batches. Don’t try to feed cat food to the hostile wild cats you find in the southern mountain zones, though—they’ll attack you on sight even if you hold out food.
Common Mistakes to Avoid When Making Cat Food
One of the biggest mistakes new players make is crafting way too much cat food at once. Cat food doesn’t spoil, but it only stacks to 5 pieces per inventory slot, so if you make 50 batches, that’s 10 inventory slots you could be using for dungeon loot or rare crafting materials. I made this mistake early on when I found a cluster of 6 beehives and made 30 batches of cat food, and ended up having to drop half of it when I ran out of space exploring a crypt.
You also don’t want to use cooked or seasoned meat for the recipe. The game only accepts raw, unprocessed meat for cat food, so if you’ve already cooked all your meat for player meals, you’ll have to go hunt for more raw meat to make cat food. Save your cooked meat for your own meals, as they give far better buffs than you’ll get from feeding cats.
Finally, don’t waste cat food on strays in areas you don’t plan to visit regularly. If you feed a stray once in a remote village you’ll never come back to, you’ll miss out on the chance to unlock it as a permanent base cat. Save your cat food for strays near fast travel points or close to your main base, so you can easily come back to feed them for three days in a row.
Whether you’re looking to get rare crop seeds without grinding chests, add a cute permanent pet to your base, or just want to be nice to the stray cats you run across on your travels, learning how to make cat food enshrouded is a simple, low-effort task that gives surprisingly useful rewards. You don’t need high-level gear or rare materials to pull it off, and even new players can start crafting it within their first few hours of playing. Next time you’re out gathering materials, grab a little extra raw meat, honey, and grain to make a few batches to take with you on your next exploration run. You’ll be glad you did when a stray hands you that rare seed you’ve been searching for for weeks.