Making your own cat food is kind of a pain in the ass, but you're feeding your cat human quality food and saving money doing it (vs wet food, a bag of Purina kibble is cheaper). The wet food we were buying costs $7/lb. I try to get chicken breast on sale for .99/lb but regular price is around $2, plus a $20 vitamin supplement from AlNutrin that treats 44lbs. So, you come out ahead there. There's a couple other cat vitamin supplements but AlNutrin is the most cost effective one I found.

I have a kitchen aid stand mixer, but no grinder. That's another $60 for that attachment. I have heard some criticisms about the quality of kitchenaid's mixers these days. Ours hasn't had any problems but I guess they use plastic gears now. If you can find an older one they used to use steel gears.

https://www.reddit.com/r/rawpetfood is a good resource, even if you don't want to do raw. And the National Research Council has a pamphlet that outlines all the nutrients cats need if you want to do it all from scratch. They're considered the leading expert on pet nutrition. Along with an app like Chronometer you could formulate a food that derives all its nutrients from whole foods, which is considered more ideal.

I wouldn't call myself an expert, but if you have any questions about making pet food I'll do what I can to help.