What the heck do I buy now?

So, tonight, in a bout of insomnia, I start researching cat food.  I dearly love my cat, Calvin.  He's a tabby cat, he's been mostly healthy but has had some issues.  He has a problem with his teeth where his gums are always red an inflamed.  The vet has had to remove some teeth, so now he does not quite have a mouth full.  He also had a kidney issue a few years ago, which seems to happen to every cat in this town.  He vomits maybe once a month or less.  His digestion seem to be healthy, I've never seen diarrhea or anything weird from him.  He seems to be sleeping a lot more often a playing a lot less lately, he's probably about 3 or 4 pounds over weight as well..  He also seems to be snoring a lot in his sleep lately.

Anyway, the vet at Alpine Animal Hospital here in town has recommended that Calvin eat Science Diet.  I took the recommendation very seriously and he has been eating nothing but Science Diet for years.  Years ago my moms' cat had to be rushed to the vet, I can't remember the symptoms but the vet said "your cats kidneys are failing and there is nothing we can do".  We had to get a second opinion, so we took her to Alpine Animal Hospital where they had her on fluids and some prescription drug for her kidneys.  They also said "Misha needs to eat this Science Diet Kidney Health for the rest of her life".  That cat lived happily for like four more years after that.  So of course, I go on believing Science Diet is this miracle cat saving drug.

Until tonight...

I find all of these blogs and forums talking about how Science Diet is full of cat junk food and bad carbs.  So, I came very close to just impulse buying some Orijen kibble and Blue Buffalo canned food after some brief googling.  I find that on Amazon Blue Buffalo has this one review (out of four) that is awful.  I am compelled to look into it and I find a massive amount of horror stories regarding Blue Buffalo basically almost killing, or killing, thousands of peoples' pets. I also find that there are seven lawsuits against them for falsely advertising that their food does NOT contain the evil bad carbs and poultry-meal.  

I then go on to look for info on Orijen and find out about that massive recall in Australia after their irradiated (irradiated because of quarantine measures in use by the gov't of Australia, but still, Orijen should have tested the product before allowing it to kill everything that consumed it) food hurt tons of peoples pets.  How do I buy their food after reading that?  What happens to it before they ship to me in America?   

I don't know who to trust anymore, the organic nutrition nerds, that I want to believe, stand behind products like Blue Buffalo and Orijen but I read about all this insanity with both those brands.  Is there an honest pet food manufacture out there?  Are all the horror stories about Blue Buffalo even true(I was checking ConsumerAffairs.com for all these reviews)?  Are the ingredients in Science Diet actually bad for my cat?  

I want to buy the most nutritious food with quality ingredients, but I don't want to risk poisoning my cat because I sacrificed quality control for quality ingredients.

Where do I go from here?

i don't feed dry so my recommendations will be all canned. I do keep a bag of Nature's Variety (mentioned below) LID Turkey and they eat it on the very rare occasion that I won't be home to give them canned but they aren't thrilled about it. 

Nature's Variety is very good food and they have both canned and dry varieties. The Nature's Variety Instinct canned line is strictly pates and my cats like them. I have 2 very picky eaters and one very good eater. NV also has a line called Pride by Instinct and this one is also very good and comes in quite a few flavors of minced and flaked varieties for those kitties who don't like pates. Then NV has a line called Prairie Homestyle which look like stews. My cats eat foods from all of these lines. 

Some other good foods that mine like are:

The Nutro Natural Choice line. This is a line that a lot of people have had success with including me. They have a lot of various textures and flavors. I have not had any success with Nutro's MAX line though. 

Red Barn- so far I have only given them the Tricky Chicky but it got the seal of approval from all 3 cats

I and Love and You- This is another good line

Weruva

Soulistic (made by Weruva and is Petco's house brand)

Merrick pates 

Wellness Divine Duos

I also give my cats some commercial raw foods. This may also be an option for you. They like Rad Cat more than Primal but they will eat the Primal if I mash it up into the canned. I use freeze dried raw (Stella and Chewy's tummy ticklin turkey and Pure Bites chicken breast) as toppers and also as treats. 

Good luck. Finding the perfect food is a constant battle for me, too. Not because of health issues thankfully but because I have 2 divas who change their minds a lot. 

It's definitely an issue knowing what to buy.  I, also, only feed canned, so cannot really recommend a good dry food, and even if I did, it could be recalled tomorrow .  I think you can only do what you are doing...research and buy what you think is good at the moment.  If there IS a recall, you will learn about it, and fortunately, they really are few and far between. 

BTW, you will be able to find horror stories on just about ANY cat food out there if you just google the brand.  A persons cat may get sick for any reason and they will blame the food.  Justified?  sometimes yes sometimes no. 

Maybe this article will help you in your search:  http://www.thecatsite.com/a/choosing-the-right-dry-cat-food. 

There's nothing wrong with Science Diet.  The only company that does more quality control tests is Nutro. Have a look at Royal Canin and Solid Gold, too. If you have questions, call the company and speak to someone directly.

Kat0121 said:

i don't feed dry so my recommendations will be all canned. I do keep a bag of Nature's Variety (mentioned below) LID Turkey and they eat it on the very rare occasion that I won't be home to give them canned but they aren't thrilled about it. 

Nature's Variety is very good food and they have both canned and dry varieties. The Nature's Variety Instinct canned line is strictly pates and my cats like them. I have 2 very picky eaters and one very good eater. NV also has a line called Pride by Instinct and this one is also very good and comes in quite a few flavors of minced and flaked varieties for those kitties who don't like pates. Then NV has a line called Prairie Homestyle which look like stews. My cats eat foods from all of these lines. 

Some other good foods that mine like are:

The Nutro Natural Choice line. This is a line that a lot of people have had success with including me. They have a lot of various textures and flavors. I have not had any success with Nutro's MAX line though. 

Red Barn- so far I have only given them the Tricky Chicky but it got the seal of approval from all 3 cats

I and Love and You- This is another good line

Weruva
Soulistic (made by Weruva and is Petco's house brand)
Merrick pates 
Wellness Divine Duos

I also give my cats some commercial raw foods. This may also be an option for you. They like Rad Cat more than Primal but they will eat the Primal if I mash it up into the canned. I use freeze dried raw (Stella and Chewy's tummy ticklin turkey and Pure Bites chicken breast) as toppers and also as treats. 

Good luck. Finding the perfect food is a constant battle for me, too. Not because of health issues thankfully but because I have 2 divas who change their minds a lot. 

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I and love rabbit on sale is it good?

I don't think many - if any - foods are safe from recalls or bad reviews. There comes a point when there's such a large production of food that if something goes wrong, or if they suspect something has gone wrong, the best thing they can do is recall it. Accidents do happen, and that's just a reality of buying commercial foods; it happens with the best of brands too. With that said, there are also foods that make some cats sick while others are fine. Just like people, every cat is different and they won't all tolerate the same foods. One food could make a cat vomit immediately, while dozens of other cats are fine, and the same can occur vice versa.

If you're worried about kidney problems, a big contributor of that is low hydration. Many cats don't drink enough water on their own, so supplying a source of moisture through their food is both a path of least resistance for cats and an easy way to consistently ensure your cat is getting enough water. I prefer feeding a wet diet for both cats' meals as well. I use kibble as a treat, and the brands I use are Petcurean Go! and Petsmart's Simply Nourish. They're not perfect either, but I think they've got good ingredients and it's a pretty safe compromise from what I've read in terms of safety.

bonepicker said:

I and love rabbit on sale is it good?

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I have only given them the chicken so far. The rabbit is next. They loved the chicken.

Kat0121 said:

I have only given them the chicken so far. The rabbit is next. They loved the chicken.

Click to expand...

I just requested free samples they are sending rabbit, turkey and chicken.

It's a matter of sorting out what you are comfortable with and matching that against cost, availability, etc.  For some this can begin and end with just grabbing something from the store.  If you're posting here and asking, you're already doing more reading than a great majority of folks.  Personally I believe it helps to be as informed as possible about different options even if there's some reason I can't ultimately feed what I think is ideal.  For example, I wouldn't mind feeding more raw food and potentially making my own cooked or raw cat food, but right now that's not going to happen time-wise.  I take small steps at it though, like buying one small tub of Rad Cat, which in first try my two cats didn't have any interest in eating.

I started looking into foods more closely in Amber's later years; she is a cat I lost a couple years ago.  First she ate better dry food, then I tried to get her to eat canned food some.  Then when we got two new cats a little over a year ago, I knew they were going to eat only canned food or other food that contained moisture.  Within that, I look for better ingredients and what they like to eat and what is within what I find a reasonable maximum cost.  That last bit is somewhat flexible for me so I'll try things that are a bit of a reach sometimes.  Right now they eat a lot of Stella & Chewy's freeze dried raw, rehydrated so they get a lot of moisture in it.  And I throw in a meal here and there of their favorite Tiki Cat Puka Puka Luau chicken which is somewhat more expensive.

But mainly, you're wondering if all this recommendation of Science Diet or some other brand is based on anything really concrete.  From my personal investigation of this, I believe it is.  Cats are what is called obligate carnivore.  They must eat meat, their physiology is designed entirely around eating meat, and they get no useful nutrients from carbohydrate ingredients.  They also are tuned to get most of their moisture from food, and this is why even the best dry food with high protein and such is already a big compromise for a cat.  (Note that this is different from dogs; dogs are a little more flexible in this area.) Canned food is more easily made without so many carbohydrate ingredients.  But despite that many canned foods still contain lots of rice or corn or so forth.  This is where Science Diet falls flat in my opinion.

Pet food is regulated in certain specific ways but essentially only like other animal feed.  It's not regulated like human food.  Particularly, claims made on the packaging don't have to be proven.  On top of all that, nutrition has not been a big part of veterinarians' education for much of the time.  This may have changed for more recently schooled vets, but the source of a lot of their info comes directly from the pet food companies.  Pet food is a large business and a lot of the differentiation of different foods (e.g. indoor formula, senior formula, etc.) is entirely down to marketing to humans and not to any real benefits for a cat.

So what do you buy?  Again it is down to your comfort level and cost.  Personally I look for cans without carbohydrate ingredients, without carrageenan, and without fish ingredients.  My cats tend to like chicken, although I would like to get more variety of protein into their diet.  I'm also using the freeze dried raw food, which is pretty convenient because I measure out just enough out of a bag, then add water.  There are possibilities in cans at various price points I think, even with these constraints.  I have tended to avoid the large producers of pet food (Mars, Purina, Hills, etc.) but that's not a guarantee of anything either way.  I'm not a particular fan of the Blue Buffalo company regardless of whether or not they've done anything wrong.  Amber ate a few bags of their dry food back in the day but I wouldn't choose it now.  She also ate a fair amount of Orijen, and I have bought Orijen recently to use as treats.  I'm not familiar with the Australia story you mention about them.  Orijen is made in Canada and they only make dry food that I know of.

One thing I'm pretty confident of is that it is NOT a choice between ingredients and quality control.  Choosing food from smaller company that doesn't sell in large pet superstores does not mean lower quality control.  Something like Weruva, which is made in a human food plant (yes, in Thailand, but the plant makes human food to US and European standards), I feel would have tighter safety standards than anything made in a big pet food plant that starts with meat that wouldn't be fit for human consumption. But choosing to feed a food that is made with said meat doesn't make you bad.  It's just a choice.  Some of the staunchest "you must feed canned food" people will say look, even if it's full of by products, that's still better than the best dry food for your cat.  So if you're looking for what is best for your cat, look for meat meat meat in wet form (or food designed to be rehydrated, which dry kibble is not).  You can find this at various price points from various manufacturers.  Fancy Feast comes up often, as does Nutro Natural Choice.  These come from the largest producers of pet food (Purina and Mars).  

No pet food manufacturer wants to hurt pets, but a small producer can afford such a mistake the least.  They have the most to lose.  A big company has a much bigger cushion to deal with a problem.  Given this, I believe smaller producers will be more on top of catching any problems before they hurt our cats.  But regardless, the real quality of ingredient you're trying to get to is not so much that it comes from the feel-good small producer and/or needs to be carefully selected human grade food (although that may not hurt) but simply that it's MEAT and not corn and rice and soy and such (which are ingredients found in Science Diet).  If it's still coming from one of the big guys, so be it.

Even with all that, in the end, longevity of a cat and susceptibility to disease (like kidney disease) can be as much genetic as it is what they eat their entire life.  Amber was 17 years old when she passed from her various ailments (first hyperthyroid, which was controlled for over 3 years, then kidney disease and congestive heart failure).  That's not an overly short life, despite the fact that she ate dry food most of her life.  But maybe she would have lived longer if she ate more wet food over the years?  On the other hand, it's possible my current cats, despite a constant diet of wet food from age 5 when they came home, will not live as long due to some other genetic predisposition.  But that doesn't mean I'm going to up and start feeding them dry food.

PS  I find that this is a never ending process, and I go through bouts of taking in more info and trying new foods periodically.