Kitten Food

sparks17 · Sep 15, 2015

Hello! I had a question about feeding my 6 month old kitten, Sophie. Sophie is the first kitten I've ever raised, and I'm wondering how long I need to feed her kitten food for.

She currently eats Chicken Soup for the Soul dry kitten food, and I'm working to get her to eat a good grain-free canned food, but she's picky. She really doesn't seem to care for canned kitten foods, but every time she's eaten wet adult cat food, she's gobbled it up. Would it be ok to start transitioning her to adult food, or should she be on a kitten diet for awhile longer? Also, not sure if this is relevant but she is spayed and weighed 5.5 lbs at her vet visit last month. Thanks!

jade14 · Sep 15, 2015

From what I understand there is nothing wrong with feeding some adult food, especially after they are spayed/neutered. I still feed my kitten kitten food, but he loves it so I have just not changed him yet. You could continue feeding the dry kitten and feeding adult wet. Whatever it takes to get her to eat wet.

lisahe · Sep 16, 2015

jade14 said:
From what I understand there is nothing wrong with feeding some adult food, especially after they are spayed/neutered. I still feed my kitten kitten food, but he loves it so I have just not changed him yet. You could continue feeding the dry kitten and feeding adult wet. Whatever it takes to get her to eat wet.

I agree! The only thing I might watch is that you're feeding plenty of caloric foods so Sophie gets filled up nicely. (Foods can really vary a lot in calorie counts.) But I would sooner feed more lower-calorie wet foods than all dry food so, yes, "whatever it takes to get her to eat wet"!

Have you tried Nutro Natural Choice's kitten food? Someone in another thread had asked about kitten feeding and I mentioned Nutro; that person's cat loved the kitten food. I think most of Nutro's Natural Choice foods are about the same calories: our cats really love their minced chicken, sliced turkey, and chunky chicken. I also bought them a can of the chicken pate kitten food to try, even though they're now (allegedly) young adults. They love Wellness Core's kitten food, too, though I only feed them that occasionally since I try to avoid carrageenan.

One other thing to consider: you might want to try a variety of food textures (shreds, pates, chunks, etc.) out on Sophie. Some cats can be rather picky about the form of their foods.

Good luck!

sparks17 · Sep 16, 2015

Thanks for all the advice!

@LisaHE Thank you for the tips! I haven't been keeping track of the calories, but I do measure Sophie's food. She gets between 1/2-3/4 of a cup of dry food a day to nibble on, since I'm at work or school during the week, and she gets wet food twice a day. The problem I was having is before, she would either ignore the wet food entirely, or she would only eat a little bit of it. Just a few weeks ago, I gave her some adult canned food, and she licked the bowl clean!

So far, she really likes Simply Nourish Source Foods, which I think is PetSmart's version of Nature's Variety. I did give her a couple of cans of Nutro a few months ago, if I remember correctly, she did like the minced salmon. I'll pick up a few cans and try some of their other flavors and textures, though! I really want her to eat more wet, but I'm also trying to keep it lower-cost, since I'm in college and money is a bit tight right now. I'm trying to get a wet-food rotation set up to balance the cost some. I just bought some Weruva and something called "Fussie Cat", that I'm going to try with her as well! Thanks!

lisahe · Sep 16, 2015

Sparks17 said:
Thanks for all the advice!

@LisaHE Thank you for the tips! I haven't been keeping track of the calories, but I do measure Sophie's food. She gets between 1/2-3/4 of a cup of dry food a day to nibble on, since I'm at work or school during the week, and she gets wet food twice a day. The problem I was having is before, she would either ignore the wet food entirely, or she would only eat a little bit of it. Just a few weeks ago, I gave her some adult canned food, and she licked the bowl clean!

So far, she really likes Simply Nourish Source Foods, which I think is PetSmart's version of Nature's Variety. I did give her a couple of cans of Nutro a few months ago, if I remember correctly, she did like the minced salmon. I'll pick up a few cans and try some of their other flavors and textures, though! I really want her to eat more wet, but I'm also trying to keep it lower-cost, since I'm in college and money is a bit tight right now. I'm trying to get a wet-food rotation set up to balance the cost some. I just bought some Weruva and something called "Fussie Cat", that I'm going to try with her as well! Thanks!

You're very welcome! That's so funny that Sophie hasn't liked the kitten food but likes the adult food. It can be so difficult to figure out cat tastes: our cats seem to change their minds about their foods by the hour!

A rotation is a good way to go to help balance the costs. I buy a range of prices for our cats, too. I'm not sure which Weruva you bought but our cats are pretty consistent in liking the chicken-based foods in Weruva's Cats in the Kitchen line. They're some of Weruva's cheapest foods (other than the BFF, which generally has a lot of tuna, which I don't like to feed) plus they don't have potato, which one of our cats can't eat!

Let us know how Sophie does with some of those foods!

sparks17 · Oct 23, 2015

Hi! So here's an update on Sophie: She's 7 months old today and weighs between 7-8 lbs now! At her last vet check up, I asked them about the kitten dry food, and they told me to keep feeding it to her until she's 18 months old! They said that kittens are still growing and developing until 1.5 years, and that they benefit from the extra nutrients and calories.

As far as the wet food goes, I've started a rotation of foods and I'm starting to figure out what she likes and what she doesn't. She seems to love foods in aspic, but the majority of them I find have tuna, so I'm trying to space it out in the rotation. Nutro Natural Choice was also a hit! However, there are specific foods she refuses to eat. I tried to give her some Wellness Kitten food and she would NOT touch it, not even if I heated it up for her. However, I'm feeding a stray cat outside, so there's no food going to waste!

Thanks again for all the advice!

lisahe · Oct 23, 2015

Sparks17 said:
Hi! So here's an update on Sophie: She's 7 months old today and weighs between 7-8 lbs now! At her last vet check up, I asked them about the kitten dry food, and they told me to keep feeding it to her until she's 18 months old! They said that kittens are still growing and developing until 1.5 years, and that they benefit from the extra nutrients and calories.

As far as the wet food goes, I've started a rotation of foods and I'm starting to figure out what she likes and what she doesn't. She seems to love foods in aspic, but the majority of them I find have tuna, so I'm trying to space it out in the rotation. Nutro Natural Choice was also a hit! However, there are specific foods she refuses to eat. I tried to give her some Wellness Kitten food and she would NOT touch it, not even if I heated it up for her. However, I'm feeding a stray cat outside, so there's no food going to waste!

It sounds like the vet visit went well. Growing, yes. Our kittens, whom we adopted at about 10 months, kept growing until around their two-year birthday! They're now about 2.5 and seem to have stopped, though they continue to eat A LOT. Particularly for such small cats. (They're 7-8 pounds each.)

I'm glad to hear some of the wet foods work for Sophie. I agree about the aspic-based foods: there just aren't enough without tuna. And the Nutro foods, yes, they're very popular around here, too! Odd, though, about the Wellness kitten food: was that the Core food or the regular grain-free? Our cats love the Core food but would barely eat the other stuff. It's great, though, that you can feed the stray some good food.

Kitten Food

sparks17

TCS Member

Thread starter

jade14

TCS Member

lisahe

TCS Member

sparks17

TCS Member

Thread starter

lisahe

TCS Member

sparks17

TCS Member

Thread starter

lisahe

TCS Member

Latest Posts

Connect with us