Good canned senior food?

Bowie is going to be 9 this month, so I'm looking to switch him over to a senior food. I currently feed everyone Wellness - Bowie and Sable get Complete Health, and Calvin gets the kitten. Wellness doesn't have a senior focused canned food, so I'm looking at others. 

Top of my list is Blue Buffalo. Bowie has a history of UTIs, so I have to feed him non-fish flavors to minimize the issue. 

Any other suggestions besides Blue Buffalo?

There's no guidelines or AAFCO recommendations for a senior cat food, the companies put whatever they want into them and market them as senior. Are you having issues with the current food? If not, I don't see a benefit in changing.

The FDA says, "Occasionally a product may be labeled for a more specific use or life stage, such as "senior" or for a specific size or breed. However, there is little information as to the true dietary needs of these more specific uses, and no rules governing these types of statements have been established. Thus, a "senior" diet must meet the requirements for adult maintenance, but no more."

No need to feed him 'senior' food just feed him good quality canned food. Age appropriate food is mostly a gimmick other than kitten food which is usually higher in calories. I would avoid blue buffalo because there are several recalls and issues with their food quality. I like this list of wet foods. I feed my senior mostly raw and some freeze dried Primal.

http://www.naturalcatcareblog.com/2010/12/the-7-best-natural-commercial-cat-foods-so-far/

Yeah after posting that, I did start reading more that the senior food was a bit of a marketing ploy. He's not having any issues with his current food, I just want to make sure that he gets what he needs going forward as he gets older. Are there any supplements that would be beneficial? He doesn't seem to have any arthritis or anything, so aside from the occasional dose of a digestive supplement when he has an upset stomach, he doesn't get anything. 

I have been thinking about transitioning to a raw diet if I can make it financially feasible.  I will keep Calvin on the kitten food until 1 year, then try to transition him. 

Reading on raw diets, it might be easy to make my own later once I know they're moved over to it. Currently, they get Wellness canned that I water down some and a few sprinkles of the Wellness dry on the top just because that seems to make Bowie eat his food better. Then in the evenings, they get treats, but I want to start doing just regular cooked chicken for their treats instead of the store-bought processed stuff. It's just like junk food for them. 

Here's a good article about feeding senior cats: on The Conscious Cat, here! Here's another one that's more technical: on the Feline Nutrition site, which is big into raw food. The big thing -- as with all other ages -- is to feed plenty of protein and not many carbs so they can maintain healthy weight without gaining from empty carb calories. There may be nuances in minerals (particularly phosphorous, because of kidney disease), but I don't know. 

I don't think you mentioned how old Calvin is but it's fine to feed raw food to a kitten, too. We got our cats started on it before they were a year old and I think the fact that they were young helped them get used to it quickly. (They came to us as underfed kibble fiends: they were ten months old.)

I also love the food lists on the Natural Cat Care blog that missmimz linked to: it's a great place to start in looking for options.

I got on here to ask the same thing. My Boogie Bear is 10 and Sgt. Pepper is 9. For their dry food, I feed a mix of Science Diet senior formulas, Natures Recipe grain free indoor chicken, & Iams grain free chicken or salmon. Their wet food lately has been Halo spots pates (chicken, turkey, & salmon) & Impulse pates (rabbit, quail, guinea hen, chicken/egg), & Iams purrfect delights (chicken, turkey, salmon).

I took Boogie Bear to the vet for her annual exam this past Friday. She has gained a lot of weight in the last year or 2. She is pushing 12 lbs now & never really was a fat cat before. The vet suggested a senior or lite formula wet food. A year ago, I ordered a case of Friskies senior lamb & rice. Neither would eat it & I still have about half the case that I try to give them every once in a while, but it just gets thrown out. I only found a few options that weren't chunks at my local Petco on Friday, .

Nutro Max Cat:

senior - soft loaf chicken - they ate 2 3.0 oz cans with no fuss on Saturday

senior - soft loaf cod

senior - chicken & lamb

adult lite - turkey & chicken 

Science Diet: - minced (not pate)

adult light - chicken & liver -  they ate 1 5.5 oz can yesterday (Sunday) with a few bits lefts in the bowl this morning

senior - beef - fed half a can this morning. Boogie Bear sniffed it, stared at me & walked off. Sgt. Pepper came & ate on it. I'll see what's left when I get home.

senior - turkey

senior - chicken

I'll see how the others go in the next few days. But does anyone have any suggestions for Senior or Lite/Weight Management pate style wet food I might of overlooked? I'm not not a fan of Blue Buffalo, so I didn't look at their stuff. 

It sounds like the issue here, @CatMinionJess, is weight more than age, isn't it? If so, I might suggest checking the calorie counts of the various canned foods you're feeding and focusing most on low-calorie ones. One that I might recommend is Merrick's LID foods: our cats love the duck and turkey and they're only around 130 calories per 5.5 ounce can. (By comparison, some of their other pates come in at around 200 calories per can.)

Honestly, I'd probably also suggest switching to only wet food: it's the carbs in dry food that really tend to push up the calories (they're essentially empty for cats, who need protein and fat more) and the weight. (We went through this with our previous cat: dry diet foods were particularly useless!) For wet food, go as minimal on carby ingredients-- wheat, corn, rice, potato, peas, and the like--as you can.

If there are ways to get the cats playing (catnip, anyone!), that's great, too!

Good luck!

LisaHE said:

Merrick's LID foods: our cats love the duck and turkey and they're only around 130 calories per 5.5 ounce can. (By comparison, some of their other pates come in at around 200 calories per can.)

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Just to clarify the Merrick LID cans are only 5oz not 5.5 

missmimz said:

 
Just to clarify the Merrick LID cans are only 5oz not 5.5 

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Oops, yes, they are!

Thanks @LisaHE. Yes, the only concern is Boogie Bear's weight. She had a little tartar build up, but not enough that she needs a dental scaling. She had one in 2012. Everything else was good.

I actually have some Merrick LID cans that I bought for my kidney cat, Jumbo. He hates the Rx food, but I try to get him to eat it. Sometimes I mix other food into it. Other times I just let him have something else for a day or 2. The Merrick LID hasn't upset his tummy. I might of given Boogie Bear and Sgt Pepper the salmon or chicken ones before. 

Boogie Bear and Sgt Pepper had finished all but a few dried up bits of the Science Diet senior beef when I got home. I gave them the rest of the can and Boogie Bear ate it this time. I'll see how they like the chicken & turkey. Maybe I'll pick up another can of each to see if I should bother ordering cases. We'll see how the Max Cat ones go in a few days.

As for switching to wet food only, I don't see that working with my schedule or their grazing eating habits. Before this past August, I only gave them wet food on the weekend and that was usually Friskies or Iams. August about when Jumbo's kidney problems came to light and I started looking for good wet foods for him. I started giving them wet in 1 bowl and dry in a 2nd bowl in the morning and again when I got home from work instead of 2 bowls of dry for each feeding. I didn't want them to sit there and watch me prepare his bowls and not get any wet food too. Jumbo stays in a "cat room" during the day and is fed separately than Boogie Bear and Sgt Pepper because they fight if left unsupervised.