What food do you feed your cats?

kittylover315

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I'm getting my first cat(s) soon and I want to make sure it has a great diet. One of my dogs died from liver faliure and I don't want that happening with any other pets.

I've done a lot of researching, and it says wet food is better than dry food? Is this true?  The cat would be from the shelter, and they feed whatever is donated to them (a lot of crappy food). 

Is it okay to feed wet and dry food or is one better than the other? I was looking at the wellness complete health indoor adult cat food. I would feed the cat that in the morning, and any wellness canned food at night, or feed wet in the morning and evening, and have dry out all the time. 

What brand, how often, and how much do you feed your cats (indoor cats.).
 

Kat0121

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I'm getting my first cat(s) soon and I want to make sure it has a great diet. One of my dogs died from liver faliure and I don't want that happening with any other pets.

I've done a lot of researching, and it says wet food is better than dry food? Is this true?  The cat would be from the shelter, and they feed whatever is donated to them (a lot of crappy food). 

Is it okay to feed wet and dry food or is one better than the other? I was looking at the wellness complete health indoor adult cat food. I would feed the cat that in the morning, and any wellness canned food at night, or feed wet in the morning and evening, and have dry out all the time. 

What brand, how often, and how much do you feed your cats (indoor cats.).
Hi and welcome!!  I have 2 cats (indoor only), sisters and both are very picky eaters. Sophie is pickier than her sister Lilith. I feed wet food only.

Lilith eats:

Wellness Healthy Indulgence pouches

Wellness Divine Duos

Natural Balance Platefuls pouches

Weruva Cats in the Kitchen Chicken Frick a Zee

Nutro Natural Balance sliced/minced varieties

Sophie eats:

Soulistic Good Karma chicken (Petco brand)

Soulistic Harvest Sunrise chicken & pumpkin

Natural Balance Catatouille

Pride by Instinct Lucky's Lamb

Pride by Instinct Rockstar's Rabbit

Pride by Instinct Daredevil's Duck

Weruva Cats in the Kitchen Chicken Frick a Zee

 I just added a case of Nature's Variety Prairie Homestyle duck & chicken stew to my Amazon subscribe and save. Hopefully they like it. I think they will. They both will not touch the Nature's Variety Instinct. 

You can get a ton of great information about feline nutrition both here in the forums and from http://catinfo.org

Good luck and congratulations on your new furbaby!! May you have many happy, healthy years together. 
 
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nora1

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Congrats on your new kitty!!

First off, I believe in a rotation of wet food! Brands, proteins and textures!

Secondly, keep in mind that because the food you pick is awesome, and you love the ingredients, you're cat unfortunately may not like it. 

Thirdly, when switching dry foods, remember to do it slowly (mixing old with new), for a week or longer to help the kitty adjust to the new food.

I personally feed:

-Halo Turkey (dry), in the morning for breakfast.

-A wet canned meal for dinner either: Halo, Wellness, Organix, or Nature's Variety Instinct (proteins include - chicken, turkey, lamb, rabbit and duck).

I like feeding both dry and wet. It's a good balance as my cat loves her dry kibble, but then she gets the added moisture with her wet food at dinner.

Mixing up wet/rotating brands and flavours will help you in a situation where if the store is out of your regular food, you can pick up something else. It also helps prevent a cat from becoming picky or develop intolerances. However this being said, some cats definitely have their favourites, and there's no way around it lol!
 

pinkdagger

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Oh boy, I hope this won't be too offputting. I'm about to post a book!


Wet food tends to be higher protein, lower carb which is better for a cat's system which is carnivorous and generally expectant of receiving adequate moisture from its food, rather than external sources like drinking out of a stream or water bowl. If you want to know the carb content of any food, you can use this tool. Kittens will need food practically all the time, but as cats get older a lot of people phase out free-feeding kibble. Free feeding dry is a common contributor of obesity in pets. If you haven't seen the site @Kat0121 posted for CatInfo, it's a great read to learn about cat food! Dr. Pierson's page about commercial cat foods starts off with this quote:
Before you get too confused when reading this page, I will say at the outset:  I would much rather see a cat eat any canned food versus any dry food - regardless of quality level of the canned food.  This includes Friskies, 9-Lives, Fancy Feast, etc.
I would argue if you can get your cat to eat wet over dry (or at least, the more wet the better), it can save you some trouble in the future (potentially with kidney and urinary problems). However, creating a diet for your specific cat will be a trial and error process that you may put a lot of time and effort into and they still may only begrudgingly eat the higher end foods. Additionally, some foods are quite expensive to feed, so you'll need to work out your budget too. The foods I feed are on varying scales of high and low end, but I mix them together when feeding. I tend to have two cans open at a time so they'll get some better quality food mixed with some lower quality food of different flavours.

Before I answer, here are some handy links that relate to what @Nora1 has posted:

Choosing The Right Food for Your Cat and you

How Much Food Should I Feed My Cat?

How to Compare Cat Foods & Calculate Carbs: Dry Matter Basis

What Makes the Best Canned Cat Food?

Choosing the Right Dry Cat Food

Transitioning Your Cat from Kibble to a New Type of Food (Canned, Raw, or Homemade)

Can I feed my cat a fish-based or fish-flavored diet?

These are all listed in the Cat Health articles section, if you haven't already given them a read.

I feed, in wet:

- Performatrin (beef, chicken, kitten formula chicken, lamb)

- Friskies (turkey and cheese**, chicken, chef's dinner, ocean whitefish*, mariner's catch*)

- Health Diet (chicken gumbo, turkey and giblets, beef, beef + liver + bacon)

- President's Choice (beef, beef and chicken)

- Wellness (beef and chicken, chicken, turkey and salmon)

In dry:

- Petcurean's Go! Fit + Free Turkey and Duck

- Chicken Soup for the Cat Lover's Soul Adult

In raw:

- Nature's Variety lamb chub, cut into 0.3oz chunks and thawed

- Nature's Variety duck bites, thawed

- homemade raw: my current recipe is pork-based, uses beef liver, and chicken hearts

- small chunks of chicken liver, heart, breast, thigh, neck

I've worked out that our older cat Mo at 10lbs but needing to gain weight needs around 300 calories a day (he's a senior too, so it's a bit harder for him to keep weight on), whereas our little Kismet at 5lbs needs more like 160-180 calories a day because she's also a skinny minnie and is more active. Mo is like a garburator, he'll eat anything I put in front of him. Kismet is picky and doesn't like receiving the same things two meals in a row so I have to mix the foods in different proportions for each meal or add different pieces of raw to get her to eat enough. Like @Nora1 said, feeding a variety and having a good rotation can help with pickiness and prevent boredom with the same flavours, but it will teach cats to be accepting of different foods in case they choose one food to like and eat. If that food were to be recalled or discontinued, you would have some "backup" foods your cat can still eat.

Most of wet foods I feed and the homemade raw average out to 29 calories per oz, so Mo gets 2.5 oz per meal for 4 meals a day (I've found a soup spoon that measures out to 1.5 oz when heaping so I use that for every meal) and Kismet gets 1.5 oz per meal for 2 meals, and then she gets a treat of 0.5 oz of dry kibble in a rollable Kong so she can chase and bat the food out when I go to bed. She goes CRAZY for kibble though.

* at maximum, I feed one can of fish-based food per week. Usually they'll get a fish flavour every few weeks, but since I bulk packs that include two fish flavours, I'm building up quite the fishy-food hoard


** the turkey and cheese Friskies food is shredded, and the cats won't eat the shreds, so I just blend it all up for them and mix it into their pates
 
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helsic

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if you give dry food to your kitten be sure he or she drinks plenty of water! I live in China so there isn't to much options for feeding my kittens so I'm forced to feed them dry food like Whiskas. I trained my kittens to drink water when I snap my fingers so they get the liquids they need for being as healthy as possible.
 

chromium blues

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After years on Techni-Cal (we ALL still miss that great food), we are now feeding our cats:

Nutram Adult dry food (made right here in Ontario)

except for:

Montgomery, who eats Hill's w/d wet and dry as its the only thing his system can digest

Oliver, who eats Natural Balance wet and whatever else he wants, as he's in stage four renal failure and he should enjoy what time he has left.

Squeek! my incorrigible alley cat, who eats mostly Whiskas with a lot of people food (like roasted chicken) and temptations. Last night he bagged himself a mouse and there's no living with him to-day.

Raspberry, who is eating Royal Canin Special33 in an effort to fix her digestion.

As for canned food, anything goes, except for Iams, Eukanuba, Inova, and anything else that Proctor and Gamble makes. The favourites are:

Performatrin Ultra Chicken Stew

Hi-Tor Felo

Holistic Select Salmon and Shrimp

Friskies Chef's Dinner

April will only eat Weruva Paw Lickin' Chicken...

They also get chicken, tuna, and sardines.

Sometimes feel like I'm running a restaurant!
 
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