Cat Food for a potential allergy kitty?

Hi Everyone! I've been browsing your forums for a few days but finally decided to join and post today.  I have a nine year old cat that lives in my dorm room with me at college as an anxiety support cat.  I've had her since she was a baby but only recently brought her with me to school.  She moved in with me in October and around once every month, she'll start puking around 7am and puke until around 12pm, maybe six or seven times total.  All stomach acid.  She's eaten Evolve Chicken and Brown Rice for the past two years or so but I thought that maybe she had some sort of intolerance to her food.  I switched her to Nature's Balance Grain Free Salmon and Potato recipe about a month ago to see if it helps.  When she puked again about a week after being on it, I took her to the vet to get their opinion.  Our vet thought our most likely causes were a food allergy or stress and gave me a free sample of Royal Canin Hydrolyzed Protein Veterinary Diet to try her on as well as the suggestion of getting her a calming collar.  She's had the calming collar on for about two weeks now and seems really content.  I haven't started her on the royal canin because I've heard such terrible things about it and the ingredients still include chicken further down on the list.  She's had two isolated incidents of vomiting since the vet visit, both have included food rather than just stomach acid.  I'd like to keep feeding her a diet that doesn't include chicken, just in case that is what's been making her sick but as a broke college student, I can't really dish out a ton of money on cat food each month.  I've read around on Good Natured food from PetSmart and wondered what everyone thought of it.  Obviously, if she keeps puking each month, she'll go back to the vet for more tests

So, I guess my questions are:

1. Has anyone else had a cat that gets sick like this?  What did you do for it?

2. What does everyone think of Good Natured Dry food from Petsmart?

3. Do you have any other recommendations for me?

thanks for any help you guys can give me!​

**the only wet food I've ever found that she'll eat is the BFF cat food pouches, we've tried a ton of other varieties and she'll drink the liquid out of them and then move on.  If they're not in a liquid and are just the solid chunks of food, she ignores them all together**

She's also extremely overweight.  I don't know if that helps anyone with anything but we've been working on her losing weight and she's dropped approx. 6oz since October. 

Hello and welcome! 

Finding a moderately priced dry food that doesn't contain chicken is tough. I looked over the ingredients list of the Good Natured Salmon & Barley (I'm guessing that this is the one?) and it contains poultry fat. I am going to guess that this is chicken fat so if your cat is indeed allergic to chicken, this wouldn't be the one. The food also has a lot of fillers. If your cat is overweight, I would try to keep the dry food to a minimum. Cats are obligate carnivores and require a diet that is high in protein and low in carbohydrates. Most dry foods do not provide this. Dry foods can lead to weight gain because most contain things that cats simply do not need. 

I understand that she doesn't like a lot of canned foods but in her case, it might be better to see if you can get her to at least try to eat more of them. Since she can't have chicken, have you tried other proteins like duck or turkey?

I just looked over the ingredients list for the Royal Canin and I'm SMH. The first ingredient is brewer's rice followed by hydrolyzed soy protein and chicken fat. I would not feed this to any cat, much less one that cannot have chicken. I'm not a fan of RC to begin with and this didn't change my mind at all. 

RC Ingredients list:

Brewers rice, hydrolyzed soy protein, chicken fat, natural flavors, powdered cellulose, dried plain beet pulp, monocalcium phosphate, fish oil, potassium chloride, calcium sulfate, calcium carbonate, vegetable oil, sodium silico aluminate, fructooligosaccharides, taurine, vitamins [DL-alpha tocopherol acetate (source of vitamin E), inositol, niacin supplement, L-ascorbyl-2-polyphosphate (source of vitamin C), D-calcium pantothenate, biotin, pyridoxine hydrochloride (vitamin B6), riboflavin supplement, thiamine mononitrate (vitamin B1), vitamin A acetate, folic acid, vitamin B12 supplement, vitamin D3 supplement], choline chloride, DL-methionine, marigold extract (Tagetes erecta L.), trace minerals [zinc proteinate, zinc oxide, ferrous sulfate, manganese proteinate, copper proteinate, copper sulfate, manganous oxide, calcium iodate, sodium selenite], rosemary extract, preserved with mixed tocopherols and citric acid. 

What canned foods have you tried other than the BFF? 

Petsmart carries Simply Nourish Salmon & green pea and it does not contain any chicken. It's more expensive than the Good Natured but it's closer to what she needs. There are other dry foods out there that do not contain chicken, but the prices are going to up. 

http://www.petsmart.com/food-health...36-catid-200028?var_id=36-20986&_t=pfm=search

Regarding her weight, does she like to play? I would invest in a wand toy such as Da Bird (available on Amazon and other online retailers) or a laser pointer to get her active. 

Thanks so much!  I've been looking at the Simply Nourish a lot recently as that's what my friend feeds her dog and I decided to try it.  I have a bird toy and a laser for her that she'll play with on occasion.  I think that's part of why she's lost a little bit of weight. 

Thanks again!

That's good!! She's a beautiful cat! If you would like to try some other canned foods, I can recommend some. A good way to save money on canned foods is to buy a can or 2 from Petsmart or Petco if you have one and once you find some that she likes, buy in bulk from online retailers such as Amazon or Chewy.com. Both have autoship programs that save money. Chewy has free shipping on orders of $49 or more. Amazon gives free shipping on all subscribe and save orders. It's 3-5 days standard and 2 days if you have Prime and the items are Prime eligible. That's what I do. 

I would love it if you could recommend some!  It's worth giving it a shot if she'll eat it and it'll make her healthier in the long run

What kind of testing did your vet do? Blood work? How did the vet rule out a medical issue? It could be a food allergy or stress, but you didn't say whether or not your vet ruled out something else. 

I think you need to put her on a limited ingredients food like Merrick's LID or Nature's Variety. I would not feed her kibble. Kibble contains too many ingredients and it is too hard to avoid things that can be triggers. 

Have you tried pate food? You can make it soupy by adding water to it and smushing it down with a spoon. That way your cat can lick it up and still get food. Pouched foods tend to be mostly liquid with little actual food so they're not really worth it, IMO. You can try adding a little pouched food as a topper to the soupy canned food to make it more appealing.

BFF is mostly seafood based so try not to feed it often. Seafood can cause urinary issues in some cats, tends to be low in protein, and some cats get addicted to eating it . The company that makes BFF also makes Cats in The Kitchen pouched foods which are available in both meat and seafood varieties as well as regular canned food and a few other lines of canned foods, including Soulistic which is sold only at Petco.

 It it's chicken that is causing the vomiting, your cat may have a food allergy or sensitivity to it. You'll need to try a limited ingredient diet as Missmiz suggested.

To help with weight loss, you need to feed your cat the appropriate amount of calories daily. The general rule is 20 to 25 calories per pound of ideal body weight daily. You could be more conservative and do maybe 30 calories per pound of ideal body weight ot prevent fatty liver disease. Do you know what your cat's current weight is and what she should ideally weigh?

missmimz said:

I think you need to put her on a limited ingredients food like Merrick's LID or Nature's Variety. I would not feed her kibble. Kibble contains too many ingredients and it is too hard to avoid things that can be triggers. 

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Personally, I'd try that first, if it's at all possible: taper off on the dry food to feed more wet food, then only, wet food. As missmimz says, kibble contains lots of ingredients -- wheat, corn, even potato -- that can make cats barf. It's much easier to narrow down the list of culprits with wet foods. Anecdotally speaking, I've noticed a lot of people say that when they stopped feeding their barfy cats dry food, the cats stopped barfing.

Since you asked if anybody's had a cat barf like yours does: Yes, we have. One of our cats pretty much stopped barfing when I took the potato out of her diet. She also barfed stomach acid most of the time. Edwina's acid vomits stopped completely when we started feeding her more meals, about five a day, including a largish supper and then a decent-sized bedtime snack. She puked up the acid when her stomach got empty. (Now her only problem is that she sometimes eats too fast...)

I second the idea of the Merrick foods: our cats love the canned LID duck and turkey.

Another reason to go for canned foods over dry: weight control!

LTS3 said:

BFF is mostly seafood based so try not to feed it often. Seafood can cause urinary issues in some cats, tends to be low in protein, and some cats get addicted to eating it . The company that makes BFF also makes Cats in The Kitchen pouched foods which are available in both meat and seafood varieties as well as regular canned food and a few other lines of canned foods, including Soulistic which is sold only at Petco.

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I'd particularly recommend Cats in the Kitchen, particularly the canned foods, which are very meaty, making them a pretty good value. They're shreds with a sort of glop that I wouldn't quite call gravy, juice, or aspic. Most of them do have chicken (or fish), though. Soulistic's also not bad: our cats really like the chicken dinner in gelee (swanky!!), which is a sort of pate/shred combination.

Good luck!