General Questions

hi! I'd like some experienced/educated opinions on what and how much I feed my cats...Mourek and Mici each get one 5.5 ounce can per day, half in the morning and half in the evening. I give them Trader Joe's canned food; Oceanfish, Salmon, & Rice dinner, and Turkey & Giblets dinner. 

These are the ingredient lists for each:

Oceanfish, Salmon, & Rice:

Ocean Fish broth, Ocean Fish, Salmon, Animal Liver, Chicken, Brewers Rice, Oat Bran, Lecithin, Salt, Potassium Chloride, Guar Gum, Minerals (long list), Vitamins (long list), Choline Chloride, Carrageenan, Calcium Carbonate, Taurine.

Turkey & Giblets:

Turkey broth, Turkey, Poultry giblets, Ocean Fish, Chicken, Oat Bran, Rice Flour, Fish Protein Concentrate,  Lecithin, Salt, Potassium Chloride, Guar Gum, Minerals (long list), Vitamins (long list), Choline Chloride, Carrageenan, Calcium Carbonate, Taurine.

Both have 9% crude protein, 5% crude fat, 1% crude fibre, 78% crude moisture, 1.9% ash, 0.025% magnesium, and 0.05% taurine.

I am just wondering if this is the best plan for my babies. Mourek will occasionally "return" his food by effortlessly and silently throwing it up immediately after eating it. I don't know if this is normal or if the food doesn't agree with him like it should. It happens about once every two weeks or so. He also often does not finish his bowl, and I don't know if he doesn't like it or isn't hungry. Mici has an iron stomach and will vacuum everything up happily!

So any thoughts please? I will happily add any information if it's wanted

Thank you!!

http://catinfo.org/  is a good website that has a lot of good info about nutrition.  It also has a list of commercial cat foods with percentages of protein, fat and carb.  You want a food with low carbs.  Generally the pates are lower in carbs.  It really depends on what you are able to spend as to what is best.  With the grocery store brands Friskies pates and Fancy Feast Classics are pretty good.  Then it kind of goes on up to brands like Nature's Variety Instinct which is one of the highest priced foods.

It's really good that you are feeding an all wet diet and with most foods 1 six ounce can split between meals is about right for an adult cat.

Sometimes cats will vomit right after eating if they are eating to fast.  With the pates if you kind of spread them out in the dish that will slow them down some.

With fish based foods it is best to only feed them maybe once a week.  http://healthypets.mercola.com/sites/healthypets/archive/2012/01/03/fish-as-a-protein-source.aspx  Fish can cause a lot of problems in cats.  Make sure you read the Catinfo website, it has a lot of awesome information.

Some people like the Trader Joe's brand cat food.  I, personally, think they are a little  too high in carbs.  But, as Denice mentioned, feeding canned is much better than feeding kibble, so better Trader Joe's than kibble, again in our humble opinions (Denice's and mine, among several others) .  Don't get me wrong,overall  Trader Joe's is a pretty good food, it's just that I like to keep the carbs below 1% (lower, actually), and both of those 2 foods you mentioned are at 1.16 on a dry matter basis.  But Wellness Core Turkey has carbs at 1.63%, so based on that, it looks darned good

As to the throwing up, have you been able to identify if it is ONE flavor he is throwing up, or both?  If one particular flavor, then I would try stopping it for a week or so and see if the vomiting stops.  Also, I would definitely see if you can slow him down because eating too fast can cause a cat to do the silent vomit thing.  Or too much running around night after eating can do it to.  One of mine did that just the other night.  Not sure which one because we were playing and all I did was turn my back to fetch a different toy, and when I turned back around, here was a big pile .  But all three were still just running like nothing happened, so I never did figure out who did it .  So now I'm playing with them  BEFORE meals rather than after.

Thank you all so much! The fish article was very enlightening, I'll try feeding fish much less often from now on. Kibble is not an option for my kitties, so no worries there - I have read so much about kibble and how even the "worst" canned food is better than the best dry food.

I really don't think Mourek throws up just one food, it happens with both. The odd thing is that he eats super slowly - it takes him about 6 minutes to finish his 2.25 ounces. I did notice early on that he much prefers the pate food when it's smashed and stirred, not in a chunk (Mici loves tearing apart the chunk of food, so I don't smash up hers).

Mourek is a bit of a puzzle I guess. It looks like the thing to do now is look for some higher protein, lower carb, non fish food and see what happens!

Thanks again