Can't afford my Weruva & Natural Balance - Picky Eaters - Ideas PLEASE??

tuxedocatsmom · Jan 22, 2015

So I have two cats, 14 and 10 lbs, who won't eat any pate style wet foods. They are fed solely wet food (one of them has urinary tract issues) and I have been feeding them Natural Balance pouches and Weruva 12oz cans, both of which are fairly inexpensive per ounce for good food. I only want to feed them grain-free brands.

For a couple years they would only eat Weruva because of being picky about texture (paw lickin chicken-shredded chicken texture, or the fishy flavors-flaked fish-which I limited due to mercury etc). Now for about the past year or so I have been able to get them to eat a variety of the Natural Balance pouches which are the soft meaty squares in gravy, because it is slightly less expensive per ounce than the Weruva.

We go through 4 cases (24 pouches per case) of the Natural Balance every two weeks, plus about a quarter or third of a case of the 12oz. Weruva cans. I feed the Weruva when they start to refuse the pouches. They are at stable weights and the vet is happy with their weights so I don't think I am overfeeding them (I guess calculated they each get around 12oz of wet food daily, spread out over 4-6 feedings). I buy my food off of the Chewy website which has great prices, free shipping, and I get the auto-ship discount on most of what I order. But I still am spending around $160 PER MONTH to feed my two kitty babies.

Money is getting really tight due to some bills unexpectedly increasing and an expected (human) baby coming in May.

Any ideas for how to reduce the financial impact further? Any brands for wet food that I am overlooking that are still good quality, and NOT pate style? Like I said they like shredded meat textures or the soft meaty squares in gravy.

Thanks in advance.

2cats4me · Jan 22, 2015

Have you looked at Daves ? There are a few " shredded in gravy " style in that brand .. Not sure what the cost is in your area but around here it is $1.29 for a 5.5 oz can .. You can buy it on Chewy as well.

Another one is Earthborn Holistic , all shredded in gravy ..

jano437 · Jan 22, 2015

Have you tried Simply Nourish? It is Petsmart exclusive and there Stews are shreaded meat. They are about 1.29 a can, but frequently go on sale. Right now they are .99 cents. My cat loves them

ruaryx · Jan 22, 2015

Maybe you can buy cans in bigger sizes. I believe some come in 6 oz and 13 oz cans. If your cats aren't too picky, maybe you can just buy whatever grain-free is on sale at the time and get a rewards card. Additionally, you can buy a cheaper canned food to supplement their diet so that it doesn't hurt your wallet too much. I know this isn't ideal though. Good luck!

lisahe · Jan 22, 2015

tuxedocatsmom said:
Any ideas for how to reduce the financial impact further? Any brands for wet food that I am overlooking that are still good quality, and NOT pate style? Like I said they like shredded meat textures or the soft meaty squares in gravy.

Our cats love a couple of Nutro's Natural Choice foods: minced chicken and sliced turkey. They are grain-free and carrageenan-free. They're not super-cheap at around $1 a small can but they seem to be more filling (for our cats, anyway) than Weruva. Their favorite Weruvas are the Cats in the Kitchen line, which strike me as a much better value than the regular Weruva foods (whatever they're calling them now!). If you haven't tried it already, you might also look into Soulistic, which is sold only at Petco and made by Weruva. They're a little carby and they're not super cheap ($1.09, I think, per pouch) but the Autumn Bounty pouch is a favorite around here and the Good Karma pouch also gets eaten quickly. Our previous cat loved some of Soulistic's canned foods, too.

Good luck!

bonepicker · Jan 22, 2015

12 oz sounds like a lot to feed one cat. My big male gets 6 oz a day and a few purbite treats! I feed pride by instinct, it Is close to raw and filling, more so than Weruva. Pride comes in minced and chunky no Pate. Mine love rabbit, duck and lamb. My big boy weighs 16/17 lbs. For chicken, we go for tiki cat (similar to Weruva). My two cats split two 5.5 oz cans a day of Pride, slightly more to big male., he is lazy but twice the size of female who is more energetic. It is on clearance now at Petsmart. Try a couple of cans. I think you need to feed more dense less ounces of food and they will be fuller on less. You could also try mixing a little Weruva on top of a Pate and water it down like I do. Mine will eat Merrick Pates.

lokhismom · Jan 22, 2015

I feel your pain. I have 2 kitties on an all wet diet and I'm spending about the same as you each month (around $160) I'm looking for ways to reduce my bill too. I'm fortunate in that they eat pate so I'm able to throw in a couple of cheaper options. Last month I ordered a case of FF Classic turkey and Sheba chicken both of which are half the price of the other brands I feed. I wish we had more cheaper grain free options.

Wellness has pouches which are the morsel type and 2 of them are grain free pouches. Unfortunately, they are a bit more expensive than Natural Balance.

bonepicker · Jan 23, 2015

Do your kitties like Turkey FF? Mine would not eat that one!

2cats4me · Jan 23, 2015

Yep , I hear ya .. Feeding cats an all wet diet is definitely expensive ..

I have tried many brands low to high end and they refuse all but Fancy Feast ..

Even that is not cheap .. 2 cats = 4 cans per day = appx $70.00 per month . I could not afford more than that ..

I order 3 cases per month on Chewy.com for convenience , and buy the rest weekly with coupons .

lokhismom · Jan 23, 2015

bonepicker said:
Do your kitties like Turkey FF? Mine would not eat that one!

Yes, both scoffed it up like they do Natural Choice. Yay. Which FF do you feed? I think I'm going to add another one to their rotation.

Even that is not cheap .. 2 cats = 4 cans per day = appx $70.00 per month .

My kitties are still young too so eating more food. They both are just under 1 yrs old. Right now they both eat around 10-12oz of food a day. I'm going to try and reduce that as they get older but one of mine is a big kitty and I think is always just going to eat a lot of food. He bothers me everytime I go into the kitchen. Never had a cat eat want to eat so much. haha

lisahe · Jan 23, 2015

Originally Posted by Lokhismom

My kitties are still young too so eating more food. They both are just under 1 yrs old. Right now they both eat around 10-12oz of food a day. I'm going to try and reduce that as they get older but one of mine is a big kitty and I think is always just going to eat a lot of food. He bothers me everytime I go into the kitchen. Never had a cat eat want to eat so much. haha

This is what our cats were like at that age, too! They ate constantly! Even more so because they'd been severely underfed when we adopted them. That was about a year ago and, thank goodness, they've leveled off some now that they're almost two. Certain commercial raw foods have turned out to be economical for them because they seem to get filled up better, plus they eat everything. It also helped to realize they preferred shred canned foods over pates!

marc999 · Jan 23, 2015

Can you please clarify for me.

You mentioned you're feeding 12 oz (3/4 of a pound) of wet food per day, per cat. That seems like a lot of food to me. But maybe your guys are super active or just feeding machines

I feed my cat ~ 200 - 220 kcal per day, spread out over 2 feedings. In my case, that's ~ 5.5 - 6.5 oz of wet food per day. Depending on kcal per can, some 13.2 oz cans @ 500 kcal for example.

bonepicker · Jan 23, 2015

Marc999 said:
Can you please clarify for me.
You mentioned you're feeding 12 oz (3/4 of a pound) of wet food per day, per cat. That seems like a lot of food to me. But maybe your guys are super active or just feeding machines

I feed my cat ~ 200 - 220 kcal per day, spread out over 2 feedings. In my case, that's ~ 5.5 - 6.5 oz of wet food per day. Depending on kcal per can, some 13.2 oz cans @ 500 kcal for example.

I agree marc

tuxedocatsmom · Jan 23, 2015

So the pouches are 3oz each and I don't see kcal info anywhere on them, but the feeding guideline on the pouch is "Feed 2 pouches per 5 lbs of body weight per day". So 4 of the 3oz pouches for a 10lb cat daily, which is 12oz. That's about how much they are fed, spread out over multiple feedings a day. Neither will eat a big portion at a time but request food often (I am home during the day). One is particularly active and food obsessive, the smaller cat. The bigger cat is less active but at a stable weight, but could probably lose 1-2 lbs and still be healthy.

What wet food do you feed and what size are your cats? Just curious if maybe the nutrient density is the difference or cat size or a mixture of factors.

tuxedocatsmom · Jan 23, 2015

I just found on Natural Balance's website that each pouch has approx 70 kcal per 3oz pouch. So they each getting about 280 kcal per day.

siold · Jan 23, 2015

tuxedocatsmom said:
So I have two cats, 14 and 10 lbs, who won't eat any pate style wet foods. They are fed solely wet food (one of them has urinary tract issues) and I have been feeding them Natural Balance pouches and Weruva 12oz cans, both of which are fairly inexpensive per ounce for good food. I only want to feed them grain-free brands.

For a couple years they would only eat Weruva because of being picky about texture (paw lickin chicken-shredded chicken texture, or the fishy flavors-flaked fish-which I limited due to mercury etc). Now for about the past year or so I have been able to get them to eat a variety of the Natural Balance pouches which are the soft meaty squares in gravy, because it is slightly less expensive per ounce than the Weruva.

We go through 4 cases (24 pouches per case) of the Natural Balance every two weeks, plus about a quarter or third of a case of the 12oz. Weruva cans. I feed the Weruva when they start to refuse the pouches. They are at stable weights and the vet is happy with their weights so I don't think I am overfeeding them (I guess calculated they each get around 12oz of wet food daily, spread out over 4-6 feedings). I buy my food off of the Chewy website which has great prices, free shipping, and I get the auto-ship discount on most of what I order. But I still am spending around $160 PER MONTH to feed my two kitty babies.

Money is getting really tight due to some bills unexpectedly increasing and an expected (human) baby coming in May.

Any ideas for how to reduce the financial impact further? Any brands for wet food that I am overlooking that are still good quality, and NOT pate style? Like I said they like shredded meat textures or the soft meaty squares in gravy.

Thanks in advance.

Why not feed a dry food? Ask your vet about C/D for the urinary issues. I prefer to feed grain-free, too, but over that I prefer my cats to be healthy. I looked at the ingredients in Weruva and I'm not sure I would want to feed my cat something with sunflower seed oil in it. I wouldn't feed my cats "xanthan gum" either.

As far as the Natural Balance; I wouldn't feed a food that contained chicken broth either. That is too much salt. I also buy my food from Chewy. I spend almost $900 a month to feed my 34 cats.

I understand that some people have a problem with money.

I recommend Hill's. They make great quality dry and canned food. Their food comes in minced or chunks and gravy.

Good luck!

Willowy · Jan 23, 2015

The chicken broth in pet food wouldn't have salt

. Broth just means the water meat was cooked in; it doesn't mean it's salted or seasoned.

What, in your opinion, would make sunflower oil or xanthan gum worse that anything that's in Hill's food?

bonepicker · Jan 23, 2015

I don't think going dry is the answer, not Hills especially with corn,oats,rice, too much grain.

bonepicker · Jan 24, 2015

Lokhismom said:
Yes, both scoffed it up like they do Natural Choice. Yay. Which FF do you feed? I think I'm going to add another one to their rotation.

My kitties are still young too so eating more food. They both are just under 1 yrs old. Right now they both eat around 10-12oz of food a day. I'm going to try and reduce that as they get older but one of mine is a big kitty and I think is always just going to eat a lot of food. He bothers me everytime I go into the kitchen. Never had a cat eat want to eat so much. haha

Mine like two the best, they are liver and chicken Pate classic brown label and chopped grill Pate classic green label. Neither one has any fish. They must be More popular, Amazon charges more for those two, but price is same in stores.

Freedom · Jan 24, 2015

PetCo has their own brand of canned, Soulistics. Decent price, grain free, high quality. My cats will ONLY eat the formulas in gravy, they are not interested in the ones in gel / gelee.

Yep my clowder love Weruva but I can't afford it for 7 cats on a regular basis.

Can't afford my Weruva & Natural Balance - Picky Eaters - Ideas PLEASE??

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