purina pro paln vs nv instinct

efterpi

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Recently I adopted dedalus a 8 minth kitten. The guys over at the shelter fed him purina proplan and they gave me a bag of.it. I am thinking of changing it to instinct because my ferrets are on it as well. Do you think.it.will be a good change? Is instict better nutricially speaking than purina? Also I am thinking that if I cahnge to instinct at least I can give him purina wet food just to keep a variety? Do people do that?
 

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Congrats on the new addition!

Almost anything would be better than a Purina dry food. Purina dry foods tend to be higher in grains and starches than other foods, and Instinct is a pretty good food. It's grain-free and has some pretty good protein sources in it. I always see corn/corn gluten/corn gluten meal as one of the top ingredients in Purina products, so I avoid them. They try and pawn it off as a protein source, but it's not a sufficient protein source for obligate carnivores and in my experience, it made the cat's poop disgusting.

It would definitely be a good change, and for cats, is much better than Purina. Lots of people, myself included, like to offer variety in both brand and flavour/recipe, so go for it! It helps to make the cat more adaptable if anything comes up, like a financially rainy day, recall/discontinuation of food, or recipe change. Make sure you make it a slow transition - most cats won't accept a cold turkey change in dry food. Add some of the new food to the old food, and as time goes by, start to add more and more Instinct and less and less Purina until he's made a full transition to readily eating Instinct. Wet food is excellent for cats regardless, so the more wet food you can get in little Dedalus, the better for his health.
 
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efterpi

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My friend used to feed her cat friskies dry food and friskies qet fpod. I knw that the simple friskies wet food is ok and probably.I will give mine some but I don't know about the dry???
 

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Dry Friskies is crap, to be honest. The first three ingredients for almost all their dry recipes are all corn or variations of corn. Actual meat doesn't appear in the ingredients until the third to fifth ingredient, and they're surrounded by corn or soy meals anyway, which means those corn meals and glutens and junk are all in higher concentrations than the first meat that appears, which is usually chicken byproduct meal. The guaranteed analysis for protein is only 30%, and most of that is what they say comes from the corn, whereas Instinct has around 45% protein, and you can see in the ingredients list that most of that protein is animal-based.

This is how I personally gauge a food: I look at the first 3 ingredients. If they're all meat sources, then I'll look through the rest of the ingredients, analysis, and price per pound. 3 top ingredients being meat makes it a contender in my books. If I see corn in the food, I tend to toss it - if it's high on the ingredients list (top 5), I toss it for sure. I don't mind some grains, but they have to follow more than 2 meat sources.
 
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efterpi

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oh ok. so i will just switch her on instinct and throw cans of wet food every other day just to have a variety. another dumb questions is about tuna. do you think that an actual can of tuna humans consume is better that the friskies/9 lives etc brands of fish wet food? more nutritious?
 

pinkdagger

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If you plan on feeding cans of tuna as meals, I think I would lean towards Friskies or 9 Lives ( as far as I can tell, their wet food isn't so bad either) since they have taurine and other vitamins that make a more "balanced" diet whereas human-grade tuna doesn't. You'll want to be careful of feeding too much fish though - it's a concern for a lot of owners due to mercury levels, and in some cases, UTIs due to high phosphorus levels. As a treat, some infrequent human-grade tuna can be okay.
 
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efterpi

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I wwad thinking of giving friskies and tiki cat for canned food (chicken etc) but I will try tuna twice per month and maybe once every two months actual tuna.
 
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