Balancing cost with nutrition with foster kitties

I just got approved to do foster care with our local Animal Aid. Yay!

I'm giving some serious thought to food, though. My own two cats are on grain free wet food (other than some grain free dry that I'm slowly trying to get rid of) and obviously buying exclusively wet food for a 3rd cat is going to add up.

I'm thinking, though, that I could keep costs down by doing more of the 4 Health grain free wet food (it's 69 cents for a 5.5 oz can) or possibly supplementing with Friskies wet food. Maybe I could reduce costs by not buying as much Wellness, Merrick, Blue Wilderness, Tiki, etc.

I thought about using more dry for the foster cat but it's been a bit of an effort to wean my cat off dry and I don't really care to have it around, once my container of Taste of the Wild dry food is gone.

If you have several cats, foster, or feed ferals with all wet, what kinds do you use and how much does it cost?

How about adding some water in the grain-free kibble you have? I found that Orijen kibble is more than 5 times more cost-effective compared to Weruva and similar wet food.

We use 4health grain free with all of ours. It is very cost effective for an all wet diet. Our vet said it is a good food as well. Ours love it!

There's nothing wrong with feeding Friskies. If it were me, I'd just keep that as part of the rotation to keep costs manageable

Does Friskies have any grain free varieties?

I think the pates are mostly grain free.

Friskies does contain rice
I include it in my rotation anyway b/c it's the only grain and I don't believe it is in the first 5 ingredients.. just FYI, I haven't looked at all the flavors in the pate style friskies, I've been feeding poultry, no fish flavors or beef flavors.

Ah - I may be mixing Friskies up with Fancy Feast patés. Still getting my head around American food brands.

I ended up buying 12 cans of Friskies pates to help the budget.

I suppose that a little bit of rice probably isn't any worse for the animals than the vegetables in Wellness brand canned food.

crazy4strays
That is my exact thought regarding the rice in Friskies

My foster cat is kind of frustrating and picky. She will hardly touch the wet food. One time she ate it with some dry food sprinkled on top, the other time she didn't want to. The only wet food that she was really enthusiastic about was the tuna and crab Tiki cat stuff and I'm not going to be giving that as a daily staple.

I've gone to free feeding the dry grain free kibble to my foster cat because of her pickiness. I hope that the next cat will be less picky, so that I can phase out the kibble from my home altogether. Inevitably, my own cat went in the foster cat's room and ate some of her kibble.

Fussy cat is a less expensive alternative to tiki

We've had good luck with the authority brand wet (petsmart's brand). It also has rice but that's the only grain. It seems to have a higher protien content than many brands in the same range.