The best brand for both my cats...

Okay, 

So I have a Petland and a Petco near me and if I could choose food from there, it would be wonderful. I can get to a Petsmart once a month if need be, but you get the idea. 

Here is the issue. I have a 3 and a 2 year old. The 2 year old is a champion of eating anything that fits in her mouth. She eats boxes and paper, etc. You can't keep things out of her mouth. So, that being said, she's not picky. She'll try almost anything. She's got a couple of weird issues that the vet can't diagnose (coughing, all tests run) etc. 

The 3 year old is a good eater, but picky. She eats with her paw. And she isn't afraid to turn her nose up to things she doesn't like, but she'll give it a try first... But if she doesn't like it, that's it. No more. She's my problem child. She throws up 2 or 3 times a week. Two out of the three are usually hairballs. She's brushed regularly. My vet has recommended cutting out wetfood completely, but I don't think that's it (we tried cutting back. they used to get a small sized can between the two of them a night and they get about one a week right now) The vet said she has a sensitive stomach and as she gets older, it can be hard on her tummy to digest wet food. They have been on Purina ONE dry food and Fancy Feast wet food for a long time. Anytime I switch up their wet food, we've had problems (I usually go with other small can options like Sheba, Friskies, etc.) with throwing up from over eating. 

So, I read where someone said their cat stopped throwing up when switched over to a more expensive grain free food. I'm all for it if it will help.

My question is- Do I necessarily need to shoot for grain free for a cat with digestive issues or should I just look at healthier food in general?

I'd like to keep them on wet food and dry food. I am not home enough to feed an all wet food diet like a lot of people recommend. Dry food is always available to them and I feed wet food at night when I get home. 

Some brands I'm looking at are Halo, Nature's Variety, and Natural Balance. 

I'd love to hear your thoughts. 

many will tell you grain free. 

I would Definitely suggest at the very least going CORN free. My own cats have sensitive stomaches, and cutting corn has had a dramatic effect on their health. In one case, I actually saw the stomache problem sort itself out after removing corn from his diet.

Best of luck

Here is an article by vet that has some very good information about hairballs. Read the comments too, because she goes into a lot more detail in one of her replies.

http://consciouscat.net/2010/04/28/some-startling-new-thoughts-on-cats-and-hairballs/

A small excerpt:
 

Why would we think that “lubrication” of the gut with petroleum products would help? A cat is not a car. And in no way could a cat have naturally evolved to require the dosing with “lubricants” to survive or to thrive. Likewise, cats in the wild would never eat a “high-fiber” diet, and so would seem unlikely to benefit from one. On the contrary, it would appear logical that a cat would thrive better on what a cat has been evolved to eat – namely a mouse or a reasonable facsimile thereof – and that feeding a cat something wildly different from the diet it has evolved on is more likely to result in harm than in good.

No, she says, I think it likely that a “hairball,” far from normal, is probably a common early symptom of Inflammatory Bowel Disease. Impaired motility of the gut would account for the balling up of hair that should pass right through, if stomach-emptying time is the 0.2 – 2 hours it is reported to be in a normal cat. A cat shouldn’t be able to swallow enough hair fast enough to outrace normal stomach emptying time.

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Here's another vet's take on it. http://healthypets.mercola.com/sites/healthypets/archive/2013/01/16/chronic-hairball.aspx

I wouldn't recommend any dry food for a cat with a sensitive system. To me, a cat who vomits both hairballs and food and is picky about food most likely has an impaired digestive system. Dry food with its grains and starchy vegetables are not going to help. Feeding a wet, meaty species-appropriate diet will most likely help and certainly not hurt.

Any idea why the vet would recommend cutting out wet food when it seems counter productive to the issue? =\

My cats have no problem drinking water and I catch the 3 year old in the toilet drinking often (she likes it better than the water dishes that our 2 year old prefers so we let her. )

So, I can't see me being able to cut out dry food completely, but I can definitely cut back on it by offering wet food a little more often. 

So, by products like corn are a big no-no. I think I'm going to try to start with Halo brand. It looks the most appealing to me. 

The truth is that most vets don't receive much nutritional education at school (usually a semester covering all animals), and usually that education is provided by the big pet food manufacturers. There are still a lot of traditional vets out there that believe that dry food is good for teeth and wet food is bad for teeth and wet food causes soft stools, none of which happen to be true. It's still amazing to me that a vet can recognize that a cat is an obligate carnivore and yet recommend dry food full of grains and very little meat.

vball91 said:

 
The truth is that most vets don't receive much nutritional education at school (usually a semester covering all animals), and usually that education is provided by the big pet food manufacturers. There are still a lot of traditional vets out there that believe that dry food is good for teeth and wet food is bad for teeth and wet food causes soft stools, none of which happen to be true. It's still amazing to me that a vet can recognize that a cat is an obligate carnivore and yet recommend dry food full of grains and very little meat.

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and on top of that, some vets are partnered/sponsored by certain dry frood companies-and so they push the food in return.

When I got Matt he had chronic diarreah. after ruling out parasites, and looking at the list of ingredients in the Hills Science diet food the shelter sent him with, I switched him to a different food. still had problems, so I checked again a couple more times and noticed the common ingredients were corn and corn gluten at the top of the ingredient lists.

So I changed him over to a food without corn. Top 3 ingredients were MEAT. Within 2 weeks the diarreah was gone and he wasn't gassy any more.

the very next time I went to the vet, they put him right back on HILLS dental food.......and he had diarreah within 24hours! So he went back onto his corn-free food and eventually onto a mostly wet food diet.

Whatever caused his inabilty to tolerate corn seems to have healed now, as he was able to eat the Royal Canin dental  kibble for awhile about 4months back, but we all prefer wet, since he's a kibble-monster and I can better control his weight on wet food.

You said that they will eat Fancy Feast wet food? Their classics variety are good and are free of grains/veggies. Egg yolk lecithin may help with hairballs.

Right now I'm mixing it up extremely. We are about 50% dry on natures variety instinct chicken meal formula (grain free) and I have tried natures variety wet food (we are still testing all the flavors), dick van patten natural balance, halo, natures recipe, wellness signature selects, and canyon creek ranch. Again everything grain free. They seem to like the dick van patten brand the most right now though. I noticed some brands have things like carrots and peas. They leave those for last, but they do eat them eventually. We had one throw up incident the first night when Sophie threw up the last of her icky old dry food. So, so far besides shelling out lots of money, I am happy with the results. Lol. I did notice someone's poo is a little runnier than i would like. Is this okay or will she adjust over time and it get better?

Thanks for everyone's advice. I love this forum. It's a god send.

She should adjust over time, but try keeping track of what you feed them and how their litter box looks afterwards.

I ruled out certain brands/flavors based on Matt getting runny on one tin, but he was fine with 3 other kinds of the same brand. There seemed to be an issue if there was crab/shrimp in Matts food, and it went down well if it was fish or poultry. He can eat fish flavored friskies,EVO(beef ,not venison), Merrik, fancy feast classics, Natures variety. California Naturals,but some  other types have  corn gluten and that seems to be his main issue. So we have a nice selection to go from after a few months' trial and error.

We had a throw up incident with beef formula for nature's instinct. Both times I fed it to her, she threw it up shortly afterwards. I'm hoping it was that. I fed her something different and we've had no accidents. Weirdly enough, I almost didn't feed it bc I didn't like the watery consistency it had. Should've went with my gut. 

Thanks for the advice about checking litter after each brand. That's a good identifier. 

peekasoph said:

 
We had a throw up incident with beef formula for nature's instinct. Both times I fed it to her, she threw it up shortly afterwards. I'm hoping it was that. I fed her something different and we've had no accidents. Weirdly enough, I almost didn't feed it bc I didn't like the watery consistency it had. Should've went with my gut. 

Thanks for the advice about checking litter after each brand. That's a good identifier. 

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Some cats just can't tolerate beef.