Need advice! Just starting to feed my kitten.

Hi everyone! I'm new here. Here's my story: after being petless for the last 15 years, I've adopted (as of yesterday) a beautiful female kitten, Melba. She's 6 1/2 weeks old, and I'm naturally obsessing about her nutrition, care, etc. Right now what I'm most worried about is her nutrition. Well, not so much worried as impatient to determine proper nutrition. I figure if I get things right from the get-go, there'll be less chances of trials and tribulations for her down the road.

IMPORTANT NOTICE: I live in Argentina, so many, many brands and/or types of food that can be obtained elsewhere simply CANNOT be found here. Also, standards and expectations for how much to spend on your pet are not the same as in the U.S.

The friend from whom I adopted Melba was giving her dry food (Cat Chow/Whiskas) and milk.  The folks at my vet place told me to get her off the milk but to continue to give her dry food. I asked what was the best brand they had and they recommended me Top Nutrition for Kitten (an Argie brand, website in Spanish).

These are the ingredients:

Poultry by-product meal, rice, corn, animal fat, gluten meal, poultry liver digest, fish meal, beet pulp, fish oil, dry whole egg, beer yeast, DL-methionine, L-lisine, fructooligosaccharides, MOS, Marigold flower extract (lutein source), phosphoric acid, choline chloride, vitamins (A, D3, E, C, E3, niacin, B1, B2, B6, folic acid, biotin, B12), minerals (salt, zinc oxide, copper sulfate, manganese oxide, ferrous sulfate, sodium selenite, calcium iodate, cobalt carbonate), organic minerals (zinc, copper, manganese, selenium), yucca extract, taurine, natural tocopherols, lecithin, rosemary extract, BHA, propyl gallate, citric acid.

And here are the nutrition facts:


Melba is having about 50 g/day (that's 1.8 oz) although I haven't yet seen how much of that she eats. Why? Because the girl at the vet (I don't know if she's actually a vet herself) told me to moisten the dry food with some warm water before serving it, so I've had to throw some of the food away after a certain time and refill the bowl, so that the food doesn't spoil.

I've been reading all day long about the controversies surrounding dry/wet food and also about hydrating dry food. A sensitive topic, apparently.

1) Regarding dry vs. wet: There's nothing I'd like more than to give her good wet food exclusively, but the food I've seen available for her age costs 10 times as much as the dry food I'm currently giving her. That would mean spending 20% of my salary just in cat food. The price does go down slightly for adult formulas. I think that would explain the difference in expectations for pet diet I mentioned earlier. I don't think I could even afford supplementing her diet with wet food for the moment, unless it's a really small amount. Then again, she doesn't eat all that much right now, so if I gave her, say, a tablespoon of wet food every day along with her dry food, wouldn't it be a bit silly? Given all that, right now I'm only considering selecting the best dry food brand available (and maybe offering her the occasional wet food as a treat), but I'm obviously open to suggestions regarding wet food! Anyway, here is the other brand I'm considering. It's Royal Canin Babycat 34 (website in Spanish).

These are the ingredients:

Poultry by-product meal, rice, animal fat, purified vegetal protein, poultry liver digest, mineral salts, purified cellulose, beet pulp, beer yeast, vegetal oil, vitamins, fish oil, L-lisine, fructooligosaccharides, dry egg, zeolite, choline, oligo elements, MOS, chelated oligo elements, DL-methionine, Marigold extract (luthein-rich), taurine.

These are the nutrition facts compared to those of my current brand:


I think there's not a huge difference between both. Other brands include IAMS (30% protein, 47% fat, 23% carbs) and Whiskas (30% protein as well). I know... dreadful, right? I'll continue to look for cheaper wet food alternatives.

2) Regarding hydrating the dry food: I've read and read about this, and although it makes sense to hydrate the food, it would only seem safe if the food is in the open for only an hour or two at most. More than that and I'd be risking bacterial growth. So hydrating her entire daily allowance and serving it in the morning for free feeding is off the table. BUT, there's also no way I can change small amounts of food in the bowl so many times a day, AND I wouldn't want to give her spaced meals while she's so young. So i think I'll hydrate some of the food in the morning when she's hungry, clean the bowl and leave some more dry food before I leave. Does that sound like a reasonable compromise?

Anyway, thanks for reading this wall of text. Any and all advice you can give me will be much appreciated.

Apparently I can't edit the post, so yeah, what I meant to say was "fewer chances".

The food you are talking about has a lot of grain in it. Try to find one that has much less grain or is grain-free. Also, the wet is better than the dry. I don't know if it is available there, but the Friskies Pates, and Fancy Feast Pates are better than the kitten food that was recommended.

You can't edit your posts until you reach Kitten status    www.thecatsite.com/t/242191/promotions-and-benefits

And when you answer your own posts, it bypasses the unanswered post filter.

Cook up chicken livers and purée
PetGuard and Weruva are brands I use here in US
My vet recommends PetGuard
Whole Food sells but I get online

mymisucat said:

Cook up chicken livers and purée

Click to expand...

This is very dangerous advice without any qualifiers. Chicken liver is high in vitamin A, and too much can cause toxicity. Chicken liver alone is not a balanced diet, not even close.

It is a healthy SNACK, and depending on the quality of the meats you can purchase, you don't even need to bother cooking or pureeing.

Does it make any sense to consider making your own cat food for her? In the U.S., that often works out to be much cheaper than canned. It does need to be done right, but it's not that difficult. We have a forum dedicated to it, if you want to check into prices for sourcing the ingredients you'd need (meat, liver, kidney if possible, hearts if possible)... bone meal or eggshell for calcium, some bone-in meals.... Here's the forum: http://www.thecatsite.com/f/65/raw-home-cooked-cat-food

Of course, if you need to go with dry due to cost, you can supplement the food with a few meals of fresh meat - kind of like living on cereal, and having a piece of fruit every once in a while. :nod: If you limit the amount of fresh food that isn't balanced nutritionally to 15% of your kitty's total diet, it's a nice supplement.

So just putting that out there for your consideration.

Ultimately, if you need to choose between dry foods, do look for one that has no grains, one that is high protein, and it's better that it have a reasonable amount of fat rather than carbohydrates. Look at the ingredient list: you want chicken meal or poultry meal, etc. to be main sources of protein, meaning, look for meat-based foods to provide the main source of protein rather than plant-based options. If at all possible, avoid soy as an ingredient, it has the potential to cause hyperthyroid when your kitty is older.

I agree with LDG--raw might actually be the way to go and can't be any more expensive than dry food.
I seem to remember Argentina is famous for the quality of its beef. Maybe you could supplement the dry food with raw beef and organs from beef. Can you get green tripe?
If quality /safety of protein/meats is a concern, you can cook your raw food. The forum LDG linked to provides good information for that option.
PS: never ever feed cooked bones to your cat. Like as in NEVER.

catspaw66 said:

 
The food you are talking about has a lot of grain in it. Try to find one that has much less grain or is grain-free. Also, the wet is better than the dry. I don't know if it is available there, but the Friskies Pates, and Fancy Feast Pates are better than the kitten food that was recommended.

Click to expand...

I see. Well, after a thorough search for better dry foods in my area, I came up short. The are no grain-free dry foods here, and from what I could tell, the protein content in my brand is the highest available. Now, regarding wet food, I can maaaaybe get Fancy Feast, but only the gravy kind (which I read wasn't very good), not the patés. BUT I did find a wet food brand which sounded promising: Whiskas for kittens.

These are the ingredients: water, beef offal, pork offal, poultry by-product meal, poultry oil, thickening (Kappa-carrageenan, guar, cassia gum), taurine, vitamins (D, E, B1), minerals (salt, copper sulfate, calcium iodate, potassium chloride), coloring, stabilizer (sodium tripolyphosphate), antioxidants (EDTA).

Humidity: 80%

Proteins (min) 9%

Fat (min) 8%

Raw fiber (max) $0.8%

Total minerals (max) 2.5%

Calcium (min) 0.3% (max) 0.5%

Phosphorus (min) 0.2% (max) 0.4%

How does it sound?

LDG said:

Does it make any sense to consider making your own cat food for her? In the U.S., that often works out to be much cheaper than canned. It does need to be done right, but it's not that difficult. We have a forum dedicated to it, if you want to check into prices for sourcing the ingredients you'd need (meat, liver, kidney if possible, hearts if possible)... bone meal or eggshell for calcium, some bone-in meals.... Here's the forum: http://www.thecatsite.com/f/65/raw-home-cooked-cat-food

Of course, if you need to go with dry due to cost, you can supplement the food with a few meals of fresh meat - kind of like living on cereal, and having a piece of fruit every once in a while.

If you limit the amount of fresh food that isn't balanced nutritionally to 15% of your kitty's total diet, it's a nice supplement.

So just putting that out there for your consideration.

Ultimately, if you need to choose between dry foods, do look for one that has no grains, one that is high protein, and it's better that it have a reasonable amount of fat rather than carbohydrates. Look at the ingredient list: you want chicken meal or poultry meal, etc. to be main sources of protein, meaning, look for meat-based foods to provide the main source of protein rather than plant-based options. If at all possible, avoid soy as an ingredient, it has the potential to cause hyperthyroid when your kitty is older.

Click to expand...

That's incredibly helpbul, thanks! What do you think about the Whiskas food I mentioned? I could make food for her, I think. It'd be an unpleasant task for my mother (she can't even stand the sight of ribs because of the bone!) but I could easily freeze the food for later use. But I don't know how easy it is to find stuff like bone meal here, and meat grinders are not too cheap. But it's definitely an option.

I was thinking about making some sort of progression towards homemade food: how about feeding her 50% of her current dry food and 50% of the Whiskas cans I mentioned until she grows a bit and starts to eat more? (Putting the wet food on her bowl in the morning when she's hungrier, and then leaving the dry food for the rest of the day (I read it's unadvisable to give kittens spaced meals) sounds ok?) Then I could either make a trainsition of all-wet food, or start making the homemade food. I don't think I could continue with the all-wet regimen for too long due to cost, so I guess it all comes down to how easily I can make the homemade food. I would want her to have wet food for a couple of months only to go back to dry aftewards!

If the Whiskas can I mentioned sound a bit unhealthy, I could continue giving her the dry food and supplementing with 15% fresh meat, like you suggested.

Ritz said:

I agree with LDG--raw might actually be the way to go and can't be any more expensive than dry food.
I seem to remember Argentina is famous for the quality of its beef. Maybe you could supplement the dry food with raw beef and organs from beef. Can you get green tripe?
If quality /safety of protein/meats is a concern, you can cook your raw food. The forum LDG linked to provides good information for that option.
PS: never ever feed cooked bones to your cat. Like as in NEVER.

Click to expand...

It is famous, indeed. It's also become more and more expensive since the whole country is now growing soy (due to prices it currently commands internationally) instead of raising cattle. But I'm sure it wouldn't be that expensive for a kitten, specially if you don't use only the meat, but also the organs. I can't get green tripe, only white tripe.

Never give her cooked bones. Gotcha.

Oh, by the way, "offal" in that ingredient list is a rough translation for a Spanish word (menudencias). I know "offal" is understood to mean some organs and not others, but I don't know exactly what those "menudencias" would include. Point being, don't take it too literally.

Ok, just started giving her wet food in the morning. She seems to like it just fine, but she doesn't eat all of it so I end up throwing it most of it away. Thanks for all your advice!

I, personally, think the Whiskas for Kittens is better than the dry foods.  And if she doesn't eat it all in one sitting, you don't have to throw it out, just cover it and put it in the fridge.  Depending on how you store it in your fridge, you can gently warm it up and re-serve it. OR, she might even like it cold, who knows.  If not,  If you were to put it in a ziploc bag, you could just put the bag in warm water.  Or you could microwave it on LOW power for a few seconds, or just leave it out on the counter for a few minutes before serving. 

As to "offal", we raw feeders know that terminology .  I've never seen it listed like that on a cat food label, but then again, I've never seen "moisture" listed as "humidity" either. 

mrsgreenjeens said:

 
I, personally, think the Whiskas for Kittens is better than the dry foods.  And if she doesn't eat it all in one sitting, you don't have to throw it out, just cover it and put it in the fridge.  Depending on how you store it in your fridge, you can gently warm it up and re-serve it. OR, she might even like it cold, who knows.  If not,  If you were to put it in a ziploc bag, you could just put the bag in warm water.  Or you could microwave it on LOW power for a few seconds, or just leave it out on the counter for a few minutes before serving. 

As to "offal", we raw feeders know that terminology

.  I've never seen it listed like that on a cat food label, but then again, I've never seen "moisture" listed as "humidity" either. 

Click to expand...

I served her the Whiskas cold today and she ate most of it! Fortunately, she seems to wake up pretty hungry.

Oh, "humidity" is another artifact from my sloppy translation to English, hehe.

That's a shame about beef becoming expensive.  A kitten will eat a lot, but maybe you could feed half raw/half canned?

Offal could be anything from liver and kidneys (relatively common, especially in raw feeding) to the giblets, gizzards, head, lungs, testicles, ovaries, crop, tendons, etc.

Could include thyroid gland but hopefully not:  too much thyroid can cause problems with the cat's thyroid.