overwhelmed, reading on nutrition for days!

We have introduced two new cats into our family. They are wonderful and have great personalities. My main concern now is that I am feeding them as healthy of a diet as is practical and affordable for me.

This is where I am running into trouble. I have literally spent days reading on dozens and dozens of websites (this forum included) and there is so much information. The common denominator is that many of you have clearly spent a long time, a lot of effort, and a fair amount of money to perfect an optimal diet for your feline friends.

I hate to come off like a lazy guy, but I could read until the end of time and still not know which way to go. Is there someone, somewhere, some resource that has a practical list that provides a user-friendly comparison of the different types of food?

- Dry

- Wet

- Raw

- Etc

I'm open to anything that is practical and affordable to me, the problem is there is too much information, spread too thin across too many resources, and none of it is compiled into one useful resource for reference (for a busy person like me).

Could use some guidance on this. Frustrated.

What kind of comparison are you looking for? I know LDG compiled a price list of many different kinds, but I don't think that's your main concern. She also made a spreadsheet of the protein/carb levels of a lot of different foods, and I'm sure she'll see this and post them .

For "best", forget about dry food. Kibbles are purely for human convenience (which can be a big deal for some people) and not for what's best for cats.

Hi, thanks for your response.

What would be really useful for someone like me would be a comparison chart of - let's say - wet foods that outlines most expensive to least expensive, kind of highlights those that have ingredients that a concensus consider to not be acceptable, etc.

I basically need a dumby version like those books "How to feed your cat well without investing two years into reading", lol.

Yeah, I hear ya. :lol3: I just became interested enough to want to do the research. :lol3:

OK - my comparison doesn't address quality at all. (And I found quality really isn't related to price!). But it does provide relative prices. It doesn't take into account sale pricing though.

The bottom line? If you can afford any frozen raw food that may be available to you locally, that's the easiest way to feed the healthiest diet. I started that way and moved to homemade. Nature's Variety Instinct and Bravo Balanced Blends are often available to people at local stores (not like Petsmart - you have to search for locally owned stores usually).

The healthiest commercial canned foods typically are rather expensive. IMO, they are Nature's Variety Instinct cans, EVO (though it's high fat for the price), By Nature 95% (an excellent food for the price), and Before Grain. Oh - and Ziwipeak. These make a great rotation - but it isn't cheap. It's less expensive to feed a variety of Nature's Variety Instinct frozen raw, quite frankly. And depending on where you live, it may be cheaper to order frozen raw ground whole animal stuff from Hare Today (even with shipping) - but it's best to have your kitties eating raw first before you give that a test run.

For cheap but still species-appropriate food, Fancy Feast classic varieties only, and Friskies pate-style foods are good. They are both high protein, low carb, no grain. In fact - including them in rotation with the others would lower the cost, but still provide a healthy diet to your cats. They just have a lower quality ingredient and use food coloring, etc. - but they use meat-based protein (OK, meat by-products, but cats EAT organs - and SHOULD eat organs!), not grain-based.

So... here's the price comparison. The carb content is listed (though I used the guaranteed analysis to calculate it, so it's not as accurate as the next link I'm going to post).

Canned & raw table: http://catcentric.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Canned-Raw-Table-1.pdf

Summary table - includes kibble, but has less info, so it's easier to get to the point (cost to feed and carb content): http://catcentric.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Combined-Products-Cost-Comparison-1.pdf

Now - Dr. Lisa Pierson put a HUGE amount of time into contacting commercial manufacturers for the average nutrient content of food - so her table for the protein/fat/carb content is much more accurate. Again - it doesn't address quality, but pretty much ANYTHING in that center column (the "DMB" - Dry Matter basis colum) that is high protein and low carb (less than 10%) is good for your kitties: http://www.catinfo.org/docs/Food Chart Public 9-22-12.pdf

Here is the article that goes with her table: http://www.catinfo.org/?link=cannedfoods


Oh - and here's the article that went with the tables I put together, just in case you want more reading. http://catcentric.org/nutrition-and...y-cat-or-i-can-afford-to-feed-commercial-raw/

...and if you want to include some kibble, the ONLY kibble I would even consider is EVO. It's expensive, but I mix it with 4Health (from Tractor Supply) to feed the feral colony I care for. (Though I use Fancy Feast classics and Friskies pate canned for them).

BTW, if you want to understand WHY pet food is so confusing - and why so many people are opting for raw or homemade food at this point, here's a good paper on it by a Harvard law student: http://leda.law.harvard.edu/leda/data/784/Patrick06.html

(I know, more reading. Feel free to give it a miss. :lol3: ). The bottom line is that there's no real regulation, pet food is made from the garbage of human food production - which was fine 30, 40, or 50 years ago, but now technology has progressed to the point that the garbage from human food production goes INTO human processed foods, so pet foods are made from the garbage OF the garbage... and the first commercial pet foods were made for dogs, and basically just adapted for cats, and then cheaper ingredients were needed... so we wind up feeding our carnivores stuff their bodies simply weren't meat to process all the time.

I mean ... cats hunt and eat the animals that raided our grain stores. Would people have ever let cats hang around if THEY were raiding the grain? I don't think so....

Wow, thank you very much. I absolutely intend to read all of the articles you linked to. That is exactly what I was looking for, quite frankly: Somebody who already did the work!

I care for my kitties - always have - and want to do what is best within my practical limits. Thanks for compiling these resources for me to read. When time allows, I will review them!

Cheers!

CatFella said:

We have introduced two new cats into our family. They are wonderful and have great personalities. My main concern now is that I am feeding them as healthy of a diet as is practical and affordable for me.

This is where I am running into trouble. I have literally spent days reading on dozens and dozens of websites (this forum included) and there is so much information. The common denominator is that many of you have clearly spent a long time, a lot of effort, and a fair amount of money to perfect an optimal diet for your feline friends.

I hate to come off like a lazy guy, but I could read until the end of time and still not know which way to go. Is there someone, somewhere, some resource that has a practical list that provides a user-friendly comparison of the different types of food?

- Dry

- Wet

- Raw

- Etc

I'm open to anything that is practical and affordable to me, the problem is there is too much information, spread too thin across too many resources, and none of it is compiled into one useful resource for reference (for a busy person like me).

Could use some guidance on this. Frustrated.

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I feed wet in morning dry at night I leave the dry out for all the kittys for like 3 or so hours and sometimes if I get hamburger in the house I give them a bit of half raw hamburger Might not be the best meat but my cats love it I don't do it often maybe like once a month me and my family ain't much of a meat eaters

FYI, feeding ground meat as a treat infrequently is probably OK. But it's not recommended to use preground meat for feeding cats raw food (unless you grind it at home). It's the conditions where meat is ground that can lead to bacterial contamination.

LDG said:

FYI, feeding ground meat as a treat infrequently is probably OK. But it's not recommended to use preground meat for feeding cats raw food (unless you grind it at home). It's the conditions where meat is ground that can lead to bacterial contamination.

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I feed my cats it once a week at the most and its like 2 or 3 bits and I never noticed any problems with it