Affording wet food?

I have lurked around here forever, and I know that an all wet or mostly wet diet is best, but I'm just trying to figure out how people with multiple cats afford it. I have 9 cats. All adults, most are "senior" in age, but not in actions. They have always eaten a high quality grain free dry food, but I was just doing the math, and figured that even if I fed something inexpensive, like Friskies, which is currently 48 cents for the 5.5 ounce can at Wal-Mart, I'd spend approximately $10 a day feeding all my cats, or $300 a month. Even if I only fed them 1 can a day, and fed the rest dry, that's still $150, which is absolutely out of my budget. So how do you guys afford to feed all wet if you  have several cats?

I have a high multiple house as well. Because of this, I feed a combination diet to everyone, except my oldest who eats 99% canned only. Everyone gets 4 oz of canned (with added water) daily. I do supplemental feeding of dry and also add in freeze-dried raw (Stella & Chewy's).

It absolutely gets expensive for me, especially since
1.) I feed grain-free only and avoid by-products

2.) I have several with food allergies/intolerances, so avoid anything with carageenan/agar-agar, pork or beef.

I average about $65-70 cat/month.

Have you considered buying Friskies in the 13 oz cans? That would come out cheaper than buying the 5.5 oz cans.

Aside from this, some people can get the price/cat down significantly by making the food at home. I'm not in a position to do that, so stick with the combo diet.

like CatPack said, get two 13 oz Friskies per day divided among your 9 cats and each cat cat would get almost 3 oz per day for $2 a day. . 

detmut said:

like CatPack said, get two 13 oz Friskies per day divided among your 9 cats and each cat cat would get almost 3 oz per day for $2 a day. . 

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Yep. I have a lot of cats and that's the way to do it. The 13-oz cans are significantly cheaper per ounce than the smaller cans. A 13-oz can of Friskies is 98 cents at Walmart.

Grreat Choice (Petsmart brand) costs even less than Friskies and is about the same quality.

epwv82 said:

 
I have lurked around here forever, and I know that an all wet or mostly wet diet is best, but I'm just trying to figure out how people with multiple cats afford it. I have 9 cats. All adults, most are "senior" in age, but not in actions. They have always eaten a high quality grain free dry food, but I was just doing the math, and figured that even if I fed something inexpensive, like Friskies, which is currently 48 cents for the 5.5 ounce can at Wal-Mart, I'd spend approximately $10 a day feeding all my cats, or $300 a month. Even if I only fed them 1 can a day, and fed the rest dry, that's still $150, which is absolutely out of my budget. So how do you guys afford to feed all wet if you  have several cats?

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I get food through my Amazon subscribe and save. They have some good deals. You can also get deals through chewy.com, wag.com and pefooddirect.com

Check out the prices at Chewy's & buy in bulk at other stores or on-line.  ANY wet food is better than dry.  Wet food is expensive but dealing with IBD is more expensive & in my case heartbreaking.  Some cats live a life time on dry & don't have any problems but I won't take this chance again.

Willowy said:

Yep. I have a lot of cats and that's the way to do it. The 13-oz cans are significantly cheaper per ounce than the smaller cans. A 13-oz can of Friskies is 98 cents at Walmart.

Grreat Choice (Petsmart brand) costs even less than Friskies and is about the same quality.

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and $1 at Dollar Tree

Riley1 said:

 
Check out the prices at Chewy's & buy in bulk at other stores or on-line.  ANY wet food is better than dry.  Wet food is expensive but dealing with IBD is more expensive & in my case heartbreaking.  Some cats live a life time on dry & don't have any problems but I won't take this chance again.

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also, feeding a male cat exclusively dry would make me too nervous about an eventual blockage down the road. 

I bought a few 13 oz. cans, but I didn't really bother to check the price on it. I used to portion feed my cats, they got their dry food twice a day, right before work and right after work. After doing this for awhile, I noticed that when the bowls were empty, I had horrible cat fights. So, I did and experiment and got a continuous feeder and voila...fights abruptly stopped. I'm afraid if I started feeding them wet food, and then only left out a limited portion of dry food, that the fights would come back...and honestly, I'd rather feed them dry food forever than deal with the repercussions of 9 very unhappy, hungry cats. My oldest is getting wet food now, as I started him on Cosequin for his arthritis, so he gets wet twice a day so I can mix the powder in. I'm going to experiment with how much each cat eats and how long it takes to feed them wet (time is a big factor, as I have very little of it).