New Wet Food Ideas?

Hello there! I've been practically tearing my hair out trying to come up with a new food for my cats. I went through a bit of a rough patch financially, so I regrettably had to feed them some cheap grocery store-brand dry kibble. But now that I'm getting things turned around, I'm looking to switch my babies to a high-quality diet!

I'd rather spend a little more, because we all know nutrition is important for long, happy lives. That said, I'm still not fabulously wealthy, and I have five cats, so trying to find a wet food that is both high quality and won't bankrupt me has been the real challenge. If you have any suggestions of what to buy (or where, for a discount!), please, please, please help me! So far petfooddirect.com seems to have been my best bet for ordering, but I wanna see what the more seasoned vets have to say.

A bit about my cats and what I'm looking for:

As I said, I have five cats. One is five, one is almost a year old, and the youngest three are almost six months old. Two of them are getting rather fat, and one is arguably a touch chubby. I attribute this to the dry food, and particularly, as of late, to the low quality dry food. Nevertheless, their weight is something to consider. They're all indoors. None of them are particularly picky. One of them has some weird urination issues; I think it's behavioral/stress, but just in case, I'd like to get something that'll help avoid any crystals, if possible.

I'd also like to find something grain-free, limited ingredient, without fish, if possible. So, to sum up:

1. Wet food
2. Grain-free
3. Limited Ingredient
4. No fish
5. Weight management
6. For indoor cats

7. As inexpensive as possible!

I know that's a tough list, so do your best, but any help would be much appreciated!

As you indicated, wet food is the way to go.

Personally, "weight management" foods tend to be higher in carbohydrates/fiber, that is by definition, not grain free.  Remember, "grain free" does not mean carbohydrate free or low.  Pea and potatoes (and fruits) are often added in these type of foods.  Foods marketed towards "indoor cats" run into the same scenario.  No fish is also definitely the way to go, especially with the cat who has weird urination issues.

Fancy Feast CLASSIC is a pretty good brand for the price.  If you can afford it, look into EVO, Nature's Variety (which also comes in limited ingredients) or B.G. [before grain].  Pet Smart's Authority is also decent.

I think the larger (12 or 13 oz) cans are your best bet. I know EVO and Hound & Gatos and a few others make them.

vball91 said:

I think the larger (12 or 13 oz) cans are your best bet. I know EVO and Hound & Gatos and a few others make them.

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Yes, I was thinking the same. I don't like Evo because they're owned by Proctor & Gamble now, but I will look into Hound & Gatos. Not finding their big cans so far but will keep digging.

Any other recommendations?

There is always raw. If you consider making your own, make sure to get a good recipe. This site is excellent: http://www.catinfo.org/?link=makingcatfood

I think the Nature's Variety Instinct (maybe other lines too in that brand?) have the same ingredients in both the dog and cat versions. The larger cans are often found in the dog food section.

From your user name, I expect you're vegan. I know the idea of preparing food for your little carnivores yourself may be anathema, but there are other vegans here making their own cat food. Meat used to make Wolcar sick. But it dramatically reduces your cost and increases quality while providing control. Just something to consider, because it is not as convenient.

I have thought about it, and it's very tempting, but... gosh, it's so over-whelming with so much info! It's not that I have a problem with feeding my cats what nature intends (though, okay, I'll admit - the meat grinder churned my stomach a bit), but it seems really complicated, at least to start! I'd be so afraid of getting things wrong and leaving out some crucial nutrients, or adding too much bone, or not enough skin and fat, or not enough B... idk!

I think most of us feeding raw know exactly how you feel. But you have TCS to help you if you want to explore the idea. I don't know if you grew up vegan, or made a conscious decision to become vegan. If you made the decision, were you worried about getting all your proper nutrition? You have to pay attention to certain B amino acids, I think, maybe phosphorus? and vitamin D (just guessing here). But eating a variety of grains, nuts, veggies and fruits pretty much covers the bases. It's not much different for cats, only replace "grains, nuts, veggies and fruits," with "proteins." Nutritional deficiencies take time to develop, so you're not in a rush to get things done correctly right out of the starting gate. And TCS has quite a few anally-retentive raw feeders on it, so there are plenty of people to help you get it right. :lol3:

When feeding raw, a grinder isn't necessary. It can be easier, because then everything they need is in there at each meal, just like canned. The recipe Dr. Pierson has up on her website is tried and tested by many cats, for a decade now. She's a paid feline nutritional consultant at this point, so if you're able to follow the recipe, there's not much to worry about. There's a very similar recipe (in fact, Dr. P adapted her recipe from Anne Jablonski's: Dr. P just likes things simple, as she says) that makes it "easier" to include a larger amount of proteins in rotation for variety. From a vegan point-of-view, I'm sure it would make you seriously squeemish to MAKE the food, but do it once a month or so, and it's over and done with.

There's another option I don't think has been mentioned yet: commercial raw food. If you're in MA, ordering from http://www.hare-today.com (steel yourself before heading over to view the site ) would add less than $1 per pound to the cost of the meat as listed on the site. They have a lot of whole ground animal options. Many people just order those, and add the supplement Alnutrin for meat/bones/organs to the dethawed chubs, and that's all you need to do (well, portion the mixes, and re-freeze, then dethaw as needed to serve). Makes it worry-free IF you have the freezer space for it. That's always a consideration when feeding raw. We live in an RV with 8 cats, so we had to buy a small chest freezer to keep outside. :lol3: (We bought one from craigslist for $35). This is pretty much like making your own - only a lot easier.

Then there's prey model raw - where you feed meat, bones and organs in certain percentages. You can use a bone replacement instead of fresh bone, so you're not left guessing at whether or not they're getting the right amount of calcium. Some of us use eggshell powder; others use freeze dried bone. Either way we can tell you exact measurements for the amount of meat. From the vegan perspective, this probably has the highest "ick" factor, because of having to actually handle the organs to measure them into the right proportions. I'm not vegan, and at first I had the ick factor play a role.

As to canned, I'm pretty sure Tiki Cat has just chicken canned food now that doesn't cost an arm-and-a-leg. There's a thread about the food Hounds & Gatos, which I think fits the profile you seek, if it's available there. Weruva has some just chicken (and beef?) flavors, but they're pretty expensive. I feed my ferals the Friskies pates (they do have rice in them and are primarily by-products, other than the Poultry Platter, which has chicken as the first ingredient) and Fancy Feast classics (no grain, but food coloring & made from by-products). Another idea is to just include higher cost foods in rotation with the lower cost ones. :nod:

No matter what you feed, your kitties will benefit from egg yolks being fed once or twice a week, especially if you have farmers with local eggs from pastured chickens. Nutrition-packed little packages with lots of healthy omegas (and some naturally sourced vitamin D) for kitties. Something else to consider is either adding 500mg of salmon oil to their wet food daily, or feeding them a sardine (packed in water, no salt) once or twice a week. The foods we have to feed them have an omega 6 to omega 3 ratio that is just so far off "natural" for them (and they lack the digestive enzymes necessary to process plant-based omegas into the useful EPA and DHA). :nod: Another thing I'd be doing if I were still feeding canned (I do this now, feeding raw) is add a human quality probiotic to their food daily (something with at least acidophilus+bifidus, and around 10 billion CFU daily). This helps keep their insides healthy and their immune systems "tuned."

That's some great info, thank you! I was not raised vegan or even vegetarian, but I guess I figured that if I messed up my own diet, I would know! Whereas kitties can look sick, but can't say, 'Hey Mom, something feels icky and I think it's because of my new food!'

I'm a vegan because I love animals and believe in limiting my participation in animal cruelty. But I'm an omnivore (or herbivore, depending on the studies you read!), so I can opt out of the consumption of animal products, and I can monitor my body's progress to know if I'm missing anything. I recognize kitties are obligate carnivores, and I want to feed them whatever will best nourish them, because I love them!

What does your typical shopping list look like, in terms of the raw meat and the supplements? Do you follow Dr. Pierson's recipe? How much would you say it costs to feed each of your kitties per month/have you noticed a change in cost? Have you noticed any visible health benefits for the kitties?

Freezer space isn't an issue. I'm just one person living with my animal friends, and I don't buy a lot of frozen food for myself, so I could theoretically dedicate a whole freezer in a standard refrigerator to this.

Well, for Dr. Pierson's recipe, ingredients, and thus shopping list, that's here: http://www.catinfo.org/?link=makingcatfood

There is a member of TCS, a college student, peaches08, that uses Dr. Pierson's recipe with just chicken thighs (and liver) (Dr. P uses rabbit as well, but that can be difficult for many to source and/or prohibitively expensive). peaches08 figures the payback on the grinder was just 8 months, and if I recall correctly, to feed this it costs her less than $0.50 per day per cat.

I probably have the weirdest shopping list of just about any raw feeder. Not because of exotic meats or anything, but I provide my cats with some prey model raw meals balanced with either eggshell or freeze-dried bone; I also provide some bone-in meals and some ground whole animal stuff I source from Hare Today. I have 8 cats ranging in age from 6 or 7 years to 11, most with some kind of health issue (we rescue, and kept the health-compromised kitties).

My supermarket shopping list is canned sardines (water, no salt), boneless chicken breast, boneless chicken thigh, chicken gizzards, chicken livers, beef and pork loin. I only buy everything but the gizzards and liver (which are cheap already) when they're on sale for $1.99 a pound (though the beef is usually $3.99 a pound on sale), and I stock up. If you're willing to debone, it probably costs less, but I don't know how much the bones weigh and I'm not willing to put the time into it. I buy chicken wings for bone-in meals. I buy butterflied lamb leg and deboned turkey breast at the butcher. From Hare Today, I source ground rabbit and llama. I also source venison, turkey thigh, duck hearts, beef kidney (they don't sell it locally :dk: ), chicken hearts & turkey hearts, and beef pancreas (ground) when they have it. I'm kind of a nut about variety of proteins. Most people feed some poultry and a red meat (usually beef) and chicken liver and beef kidney. :nod: Some supplement with taurine; others feed hearts instead (or do both).

I buy local eggs from pastured chickens.

My supplements (from Amazon) are taurine, manganese, dry vitamin E, standardized iodine from kelp, and a Hi-potency B-vitamin. This is my homemade vitamin mix (I use a coffee grinder dedicated to the task). I also buy salmon oil (7 of the cats get 500mg daily) and krill oil (one gets this instead of salmon oil daily. She has almost no ball joints left in her hips, and it really makes a difference in her mobility, where the salmon oil didn't). Ummm... NOW calcium hydroxyapatite (freeze dried bone), Whole Life freeze dried chicken, Stewart's ProTreat freeze dried chicken liver, and Etta Says freeze dried chicken liver and beef liver (I have a couple of cats that eat freeze dried liver, not fresh liver). Oh - I buy their probiotic on Amazon. I just switched from Natural Factors double-strength acidophilus+bifidus to Nexabiotic 20-strain (I use 1/4 capsule 2x a day vs the Natural Factors 1 pill once a day). I buy the eggshell powder from http://www.knowwhatyoufeed.com's e-shop.

I buy egg yolk lecithin from Swanson's site. That's for hairball control, not an integral part of the diet.

I supplement with the homemade vitamin mix, because I don't completely discount AAFCO guidelines (if you feel like reading a discussion on that, we just recently had one here: http://www.thecatsite.com/t/261571/the-problem-with-home-made-diets-and-how-to-analyze-your-diet . I don't mean to make your head spin, I really don't! :anon: But as long as it's already spinning... this is the thread that made me decide I had to go raw: http://www.thecatsite.com/t/239691/nutritionally-complete-assurances-for-our-pet-food )

Personally, I had no plans to feed prey model raw, but a few of my cats had issues eating ground raw (they stopped liking it once they'd eaten some fresh chicken chunks LOL - though one prefers it), and I wanted control over their diet, so it was PMR or nothing. That said, I still "make" them eat 4 meals of ground raw each week, because those particular kitties also hate egg yolks, and that's a pretty integral part of a PMR diet (for the vitamin D which isn't in meat or at high enough levels in the organs). I use the ground to get egg yolks into them.

So I'm like the last person to look to for a shopping list, because I make everything complicated. I did, however, start out simple. I fed them Nature's Variety frozen raw. It was still cheaper than the canned to feed, because on raw, those that ate 5.5 - 6oz of food a day eat 4.2 - 4.5 ounces of raw food (they don't need as much, more of it is bioavailable to them). Then I started feeding meals of just chicken breast. Then I started balancing that with eggshell powder. Then I alternated between eggshell powder and freeze dried bone powder. Then I added a few more proteins. Then I added taurine... etc. It just kind of grew into this.

Though I do have one cat that won't eat any organs consistently. Well - two. One I feed just meat with a supplement that makes it complete. This is too expensive for all the cats, but as he's my cancer survivor, he's worth it. :heart2: The other one will sometimes eat freeze dried liver (and no kidney) so to make sure she gets her vitamin A, she gets cod liver oil pills. It's not perfect. But I still think it's better than the alternatives. :dk: But that's part of the reason I decided to use the homemade vitamin supplement: it makes sure they get what they need even though they're not necessarily eating "everything they should be." So this just evolved as I got comfortable with things and adpated to my cats' individual needs. :rub:

In the end, apart from ingredient quality, I switched to raw because it was going to cost me less to feed it to my cats. When I first looked at it, my decision maker/breaker was - is it going to cost more, the same, or less? If it was the same or less, we were going to do it. If it was going to cost more, we weren't (we couldn't afford it - we couldn't really afford to feed the diet we were LOL). I was feeding them (all canned) Nature's Variety, EVO, Ziwipeak, Weruva, some Wellness... I don't remember what else, at this point. My cats each ate about 1 (5.5 oz) can of food a day, and the "average" can cost about $1.50 or so. Some less, some more. It cost me about $12 a day to feed my cats. When I include even the expensive stuff I feed now, with ALL of the supplements I use (including eggs, sardines, probiotics, salmon oil for 7 of them and krill oil for 1, etc.), it costs me $1.34 per day per cat. If I remove the expensive stuff and replace it with less expensive things like chicken thighs, etc., it costs $1 per day with all the supplements (and both numbers include the shipping cost for the frozen stuff I have sent).

The benefits? Higher moisture content - so healthy for their organs, bladder, ,etc. Less volume of poop and no smell - none. That, more than anything, convinced me the diet was meant for their bodies. It is SO bioavailable, their bodies use most of it and excrete very little out. My cats have a bowl movement every 2 - 3 days now, and they're not constipated. Their coats are insanely soft. They have more energy. They're nicer. I'm not kidding. I totally did not expect that. But I live in an RV with 8 cats - it's a small space. One of our cats was a feral so aggressive, we deemed him unadoptable. he's been OK since coming inside-only, but he has his moments. Just before starting raw, he'd been terrorizing one of our other kitties for no reason - going out of his way to find and attack her. That just stopped. We have more cats sharing the same beds, or just being closer to each other, more tolerant of each other. I know some have really cuddly, "cat pile" kitties. Ours were not. But you made the switch to being vegan. Did you feel better? Less cranky? Have more energy? It's the same thing for our kitties. :nod:

ETA - Chumley hit "submit" before I was ready. Fixed it. :lol3:

Oh - and a P.S. We switched to raw when Lazlo was finishing his chemotherapy for a large, cancerous mass in his stomach. The chemo made it go into complete remission. He's been in remission for 1.5 years now; average is 9 months. Does the raw diet have something to do with this? :dk: I like to think so. I have an FIV+ kitty that had explosive diarrhea and "allergies." He can eat anything - no diarrhea, no itchies. No more runny eyes, no more sneezing. I have a kitty that had an autoimmune disease that causes anemia. He was basically in remission prior to the raw diet, but since the raw diet, his hematocrit has gone from usually 36% to 45%. His vet was just floored at how great he's doing (the one vet we have that was a little skeptical about the raw diet. Long story, we work with several different vets and different vet practices). ALL the cats shifted their body shape: they're more muscular. Because I pay SO much closer attention to portions, they're all healthy weights now (well, I spoil the FIV kitty, and I've started cutting back on his portions. :anon: ) - and I had one kitty that was 10-11 pounds at her peak, and her healthy weight is 7.5 - 8 pounds. She was FAT. She's thin and sleek now - and even more of the little imp with all that extra energy. :lol3:
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thevegancuddler said:

Yes, I was thinking the same. I don't like Evo because they're owned by Proctor & Gamble now, but I will look into Hound & Gatos. Not finding their big cans so far but will keep digging.

Any other recommendations?

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It looks like you're going for the raw, which I encourage, but if Hound and Gatos still interests you:

http://www.gotpetfood.com/catalog/

Oh, another canned food idea is By Nature Organics!

FYI, some raw feeders keep canned foods in rotation for various reasons. One of the main ones is travel. Much easier for most sitters to feed canned. (Though if you have meal sized portions, raw really isn't such an issue).

I have a kitty (the one that prefers ground) that goes on raw food strikes from time-to-time. I no longer keep higher end canned foods, so I just feed her the Fancy Feast classics I keep here for the ferals when she goes through her phase. My only point here is that just like people who don't always stick to their healthy diet goals, it doesn't have to be all one or the other, either. Even just some fresh fruits and veggies are healthier for us than none.

I'm about fed up with EVO. Bought five cans of the 95% chicken and turkey tonight. Opened one up for Caesar, since that's all he'll eat. It smelled bad, it looked bad, and the consistency was like mucus. Caesar wouldn't go near it. I'm returning the rest of the cans.
 

I thought of another canned food. I think it is Petco's store brand, Soulistic. It's made by Weruva, but it's not as expensive.