Nutro Natural Choice Canned Wet-Minced Chicken

I'm sure the regulars on the CS know my male manx breed cat is a kibble addict. He has been all of his life and he just turned 16 years old three weeks ago. I've been trying for many years to get him to eat wet cat food.

I've tried raw, dehydrated, pate, shreds and chunks in a variety of brands and flavors. Everything was a "turn up his nose and walk off" act. The closest he ever came to eating wet canned cat food was Nature's Variety Instinct in the Chicken flavor. He ate that for two weeks, but he didn't eat it with much gusto if you get my drift and finally wouldn't touch it anymore.

Well, today my wife and I had to go to a small town about 12 miles from where we live. One of the stops in town was to Petsmart. But before we went, I scoped out some wet canned cat food brands on the internet which Petsmart carries. One that caught my eye because of the ingredients was Nutro Natural Choice-Minced Chicken in gravy. It was on sale for 90 cents for a 3 ounce can. I bought one as a taste test thinking this was not going to work and my next door neighbor's cat was going to be the beneficiary of this can since Tiger is a notorious gravy licker and normally won't eat the rest.

When 5 pm came, it was time to feed Tiger. I popped the ring top and opened it up. It looked good to me and it also smelled good to me. The can was packed full of small minced pieces of chicken. Within 15 seconds of time, Tiger smelled the canned wet cat food and he was meowing vociferously and was trying to climb to the counter top. This really surprised me since he had never done this before with any kind of wet cat food. I put 1/2 of the minced wet cat food on his ceramic plate. Since he was pawing my legs, I put the plate down on the floor where he always eats and went to get his Nature's Variety Instinct-Chicken dry kibble.

As I turned around and looked down, he had already woofed down half of the wet cat food. By the time I got the kibble onto his plate, he had already finished the wet cat food. I wanted to feed him the rest of the wet cat food, but the directions on the can said I should transition him. He was going to town licking his chops for a good 5 minutes. After he quit licking his chops, he came back to nibble on his kibble since he never eats all of his kibble in one sitting even though this portion was smaller due to the wet cat food.

The ingredients in canned wet Nutro Natural Choice-Minced Chicken looks very good to me since it is grain free and it has no carrageenan in it. The ingredients are below.

Ingredients and Guaranteed Analysis:

Chicken Broth, Chicken, Chicken Liver, Egg Product, Pork Broth, Natural Flavors, Minerals (Calcium Carbonate, Ferrous Sulfate, Zinc Oxide, Copper Proteinate, Manganese Sulfate, Sodium Selenite, Potassium Iodide), Guar Gum, Tetra Potassium Pyrophosphate, Vitamins (Choline Chloride, Thiamine Mononitrate [Vitamin B1], Vitamin E Supplement, Niacin, d-Calcium Pantothenate, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride [Vitamin B6], Vitamin A Supplement, Vitamin D3 Supplement, Biotin, Vitamin B12 Supplement, Folic Acid), Xanthan Gum, Taurine

Guaranteed Analysis

I'm hoping I've finally found a wet brand of cat food he likes and I'll try different flavors of this brand. Normally, he'll only wet cat food for two weeks and then it's back to being Mr Picky with regards to wet food, but I've never seen him act this way before with any type of wet food. I've got my fingers crossed and I'll be going back to Petsmart this upcoming Friday to get him 6 cans of canned wet Nutro Natural Choice in Minced Chicken and 3 cans of another flavor, Sliced Turkey.

Good luck! Let's hope he keeps enjoying this for a while. I think getting the turkey flavour too is a good idea. Keep offering him a variety of wet and he may not be so fussy about it.

Some folks may balk at the xantham gum, but it's pretty far down the list so unless your cat is sensitive to it then I wouldn't worry about it. Otherwise it looks pretty good.

Will he eat boiled or baked chicken? Instead of raw?

Tiger's favorite meat is roast beef from our grocery store's deli counter. He'll try to climb up to the kitchen counter top to get it. Deli chicken, deli turkey and deli ham are also big hits, but these meats from the deli could cause him health issues later on so my vet doesn't recommend a steady diet of it for him.

He does like baked chicken, baked turkey and baked ham too, but not as much as he likes his kibble. Odd thing, even though he loves deli roast beef, he won't touch cooked beef from the oven of any kind. Also, I wish I could figure out what this wet food is when compared to a dry food basis.

Tiger chose me as his favorite person and he's basically been my shadow since he's an inside cat. Wherever in the house I'm at, he's at. He's been with me for a quarter of my lifetime since I'm now 63 years old. I want to keep both of us together on the same journey for as long as I can and good food combined with semi-annual vet visits (blood work, etc) has kept him with me.
 

My cat loves the Nutro Natural Choice minced chicken and sliced turkey. In general, she much prefers the chunks in gravy to the pate style of wet food, though she does eat some pates -- I know a lot of "chunks in gravy" foods have too many carbs, but I use Dr. Pierson's list to avoid foods with carbs over 10%. It's good to know that the Natural Choice foods are good foods, since they're the only ones that I have that aren't on Dr. Pierson's long list of foods and percentages. I haven't gotten to the point of looking for carrageenan, and since most of my cans are the little ones, it's extremely hard to read the label. So, right now, I'm just tracking which foods she likes, and when I go to buy more, I will look those foods up.

Anyway, those are my (newbie) thoughts on these foods.

When I first started to look into canned wet food, I didn't realize how small the lettering was to read on a 3 ounce can. After the first time of not being able to read the ingredients, I took a magnifying glass into both Petsmart and Petco so I could read the ingredients wet canned cat food. Now, I do my reading on the ingredients on the internet although if there is new brand each store is carrying, I still bring into the store my magnifying glass.

Tiger is now on day 5 of Nutro Natural Choice. So far, he's only had the minced chicken and he's still meowing for it when I open the can. Unfinished portions still in the can are put into our refrigerator. When I take these out of the fridge, I put it onto his plate, cover the portion with a paper towel and put it in the microwave oven for few seconds on the "reheat" setting to warm it up to room temperature.

Tiger doesn't like cold wet food. He doesn't like pate that's for sure. I like the fact Natural Choice minced chicken is packed full with meat instead of it being mostly gravy. Also, the gravy doesn't turn a white color after it's been refrigerated. Natural Choice is the only brand of wet canned food he really likes (from his yowling for it) and I've tried many different brands and flavors on him. With other brands and flavors, it was either indifference or flat out rejection.

I went to Petsmart Saturday morning, got him 6 more cans of the minced Chicken flavor, but also picked up 4 cans of the sliced Turkey. He just finished his minced chicken can for breakfast and tonight he'll be getting the sliced turkey and I'm hoping he likes that too.

If he goes for the sliced turkey, then I'll try another flavor on him, minced Chicken and Shrimp and see if he likes that.

I like the sliced turkey even more than the minced chicken, because the turkey chunks are bigger. That's why I ended up going with the Natural Choice line in the first place. I thought it would be a good idea to have different textures: soft loaf (pate), chunky loaf (pate with chunks), minced (tiny pieces), and sliced (very small pieces, but bigger than the minced). Of course, my cat didn't much care for the soft loaf, and she wouldn't eat the chunky loaf. She and I both like the sliced the best because it has the largest pieces of meat, but we also like the minced better than a lot of other foods.

I used to have a magnifying glass, but I don't know where it is now (another casualty of moving). I'll be sure to check out the internet. Right now, I'm using Dr. Pierson's list and just seeing which ones she likes. Once I know what she likes, then I'll look up the ingredients online to check for things like carrageenan and stick with the ones she likes that are also good. I didn't have the list when I bought her first food, so I got the Natural Choice just because it looked like a good idea. I figure the reason it's not on her list is because it's a new formulation. Her list does have Natural Choice, but there aren't as many varieties and they aren't called soft loaf, etc. In the store, they had a sign up saying they'd changed from the old Natural Choice, and her list is from 2011, I think.

I must have looked so strange in the store, going down each aisle and checking for food types with this huge packet (wouldn't even staple) of paper!

Last night's dinner of sliced Turkey was a big hit just like it was with minced Chicken. Now he's got two different flavors he likes so I can rotate them. He gets chicken in the morning and turkey in the evening.

BTW, one other ingredient I look for in wet canned food is taurine. I make sure it's in there because cats need it.

Really glad to hear that the Natural Choice is appealing to his pallet.  The whole NC wet cat food line is grain free and they all have taurine since cats can't make their own.  I work for Nutro and my cats were guinea pigs when the different varieties came out because I wanted to know what they looked like and how my cats took to it so I could share the experience with customers in the store.  As you've seen the sliced is finely chopped and the minced has even smaller pieces.  The soft loaf will remind you of pate and the chunky loaf has pieces of real meat.  These 4 textures help enhance the cat's dining experience because, if I remember right, they hit all the tastes buds differently which prevents boredom at dinner.

NutroBricca

http://www.nutro.com/natural-cat-food/natural-choice-cat-food.aspx
 

I'm going to Petsmart this morning for some more Chicken, Sliced Turkey flavors. Along with these two flavors, I'm going to pick up a few cans of the minced Chicken and Shrimp flavor and try this out on him. I'd like to try out the Sliced Chicken and Tuna, but I'm leery of too much wild caught tuna since tuna is a predator fish and has a tendency to accumulate mercury which stays in their body meat.

BTW, he doesn't eat the whole 3 oz can at once. Since he was a kibble addict all his life and he's the only cat in the house, he's a grazer. If the unfinished food is left out too long, it dries out.

Finding a lid to fit the small 3 oz can of unfinished cat food was proving to be a problem. I've been using a small piece of aluminum foil to cover the open can of unfinished cat food when I put it back into the fridge. But my neighbor came over, saw my make shift lid and solved this problem for me. He later came back with a 66mm camera lens cap cover that snuggly fits the top of the 3 oz can perfectly.

I thought this lid suggestion might help others whose cats don't finish off one of these small 3 oz cans at one sitting.