Inexpensive canned food?

Many people have different opinions on this. My cats eat high quality dry, with "crummy" wet food. IMO, I'd rather they eat high quality dry & any quality wet food - than no wet food at all.

So while they eat Natural Balance, & Eagle Pack canned, they also eat Friskies, Fancy Feast, Iams, & Science Diet canned.

Do you have the swedish Bozita at your place?  I dont know how they are priced abroads, but here in Sweden they are NOT pricey - and yet - quite good.

I'm with White Cat Lover and will feed any wet food they will eat, which is primarily Fancy Feast and Friskies.  I have TRIED others, and they walk away. Mine are kibble lovers, mainly.

We feed 50/50 wet/dry and my cats are not picky eaters luckily. 

 

At Petsmart, the best affordable wet food I have found is Innova Cat and Kitten in 12oz which is $1.75 a can (12oz will be too large though unless you up the amount of wet food you feed your single cat),  Nutro Complete Care and Max Cat 6oz which are 99cents and 79cents respectively, and some of the better Authority recipes (chicken/chicken+lamb/chicken+liver/kitten lamb/turkey).    I try to avoid 3oz cans, as they are much more expensive for the exact same food inside.   Instead I remove 3oz from the 6oz cans, pop the can in the fridge in a small airtight container, and when ready for leftovers mix in a tablespoon of water and nuke it for 7 seconds.

 

Occasionally there are also sales or clearance items with great ingredients too, so I recommend just learning about reading nutrition labels (protein/fat) and ingredients so you know to spot a good deal when you find it.   I got a bunch of Evolve Chicken 6oz on clearance for 50 cents, which I see elsewhere sells for 99cents-$1.25 a can.  

 

The super cliffs notes version of reading labels:  protein+fat, more is better.   to ensure the protein is "good" protein and not cheap "filler" protein, read the first few ingredients.   Ideally you want them to be named meats, and not "meat byproducts" or "* gluten" (which is a cheaper plant protein replacement). Corn, wheat, and soy are common allergens most recommend avoiding.   A bit of rice is fine, but brown rice > brewers rice.

Sorry, what do you mean here?

 

Great post.

 

Btw, did you see Bozita in USA?  No point of me mentioning it if it isnt sold there...  Although I do know it is sold abroads.

 

Talking about by-products.

 

By-products as such doesnt need to be bad. After all, the mouse contains not just only muscular meat. Heart, lungs, stomach, kidneys, blood, fat, even some bones and cartilage,    All this is fine for cats.

 

The problem is, the law isnt as clear cut about defining by products as for defining muscular meat.

 

So in practice it is all too easily happen, when by products are mentioned and allowed, it will not be the best human grade by products, but the worst one. they couldnt use for anything else, not even for sausage "hot dog".  The left overs will probably be beaks, feets, connective tissues, veins. And also dust and other dirt climbed with blood.

 

So if you want to be safe of good contains - avoid by products...

I am trying with Perla - but she is addicted to Fancy Feast now. She just turns her nose up at anything else. And I feel that wet food IS better than dry any day, crappy or not Perla LOVES NV raw meat's though and I am starting to incorporate one meal a day raw for my cat's. I also give my cat's a teeny bit of Felidae dry Pure Essential's each day. It is very reasonable and a very high quality. 15 pd. for $32.00.

Brewers rice is just a by-product of rice milling, lots of little rice fragments missing the bran layers that has the good minerals and fiber which is put into cheap pet food rather than tossing it.  Not the end of the world, but just little things to look for. 

Amazon has good deals on 12 or 24 pack grain free cans, various kinds. Jinx loves HALO which is at Whole Foods and is about 25-50 cents cheaper per can than Tiki. Taste of the Wild is also great, and much cheaper. I find Tiki to be the most expensive other than Natural Balance, and between the two, Natural Balance wins out for him. HALO also offers two cans free to try if you print out the coupon and take it to Whole Foods. It's a great food, but does have veggies. Mr. Jinx seems to love his peas and carrots.

 

Also - look into Soulistic..... I don't feed that but saw it at Petco today and looked at the ingredient's. It is very reasonable. Much luck - Also, make sure you rotate the canned foods. Here is a great article on the subject of the importance of switching up the food's.
http://www.littlebigcat.com/nutrition/switching-foods/

I was at PetSmart today and saw they were offering their own brand of wet cat food. I looked at the ingredients and it seemed decent to me, at about half the cost of the premium brands. I picked up a few for my cat to see what he thought of it. So maybe that is something to look into?

 

Does anybody here have more info on their brand, Authority? Any positive or negative feedback?

I would like to second soulistic. It is the only decently priced wet food my cats will consistently eat ($1.29 for 5.5 oz at petco in downtown Chicago, which is phenominal. It always seems to be on sale, too, since it's petco's house brand). Also, I like that I can tell pretty much what is in there by looking at it. None of that pate stuff (my cats hate that), you can see the shredded chicken or the chunks of tuna and other fish. One recipe has shrimp and tuna in a gelatin base, and I have gotten multiple cans that had an entire, uncut shrimp in them, which I consider a good thing as that means the shrimp hasn't been processed beyond recognition.

Do all Petcos have Soulistic? I was just in there today and looked all over for it, but I couldn't find it anywhere, or even an empty space on a shelf for it. Would you remember what other brands it was near, maybe they shelved it somewhere similar here. (The associate didn't know, but they never do.)