Fancy Feast Chicken Florentine or Friskies shred turkey?

is it ok to feed my male cat with urinary issues, Fancy Feast wet food such as chicken florentine or Friskies shredded turkey? He doesn't eat many canned foods.

He had a blockage of crystals last summer and had catheter etc... my vet said these brands were the worst for a cat is this true??
Some cats have eaten this type of food for years and lived to 24 yrs.

That is my cat in my profile pic.. he looks healthy.

The single biggest thing you can do to help prevent crystals is keeping your cat well hydrated. Wet food is one of the best (and certainly the easiest) way to do this - especially if you add a little extra water to the wet food.

I don't like to get hung up on brands. Instead, I look at ingredients. I want to see meat as the first (and primary) ingredient. If it's a named muscle meat that's even better, but 'meat and meat by products' (or similar) is just fine - especially if you're on a budget. Other than that, I would want to avoid grains/starches/carbs as far as possible - cats don't need them, and they aren't designed to process them. They are obligate carnivores after all

As a general rule, patés are the lowest carb foods (regardless of brand), and gravy or sauce style foods are the most likely to contain grains (flour of some sort is commonly used to make the gravy).

Having said all of that - no food can do any good unless the cat will eat it. The best food in the world is useless if it stays in the tin!

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Thank you for posting this! I was going to ask that question too. also my cat loves fancy feast pate in her elderly age. Shes almost 17 and used to only eat hard food. we have now gotten to 50/50 wet/dry and hope to make dry much less.

The one thing I recommend with canned-sometimes they dont like it right out of the can-I add water and use a large fork and mash it until it is pudding like consistency-she wont eat it unless I add water. If kitty gets constipation a 1/4- to 1 teaspoon of canned pumpkin plain-not pie filler with sugars added to the wet food helps keep it moving. Not sure what it is but it works like a charm. I always recommend starting at 1/4 teaspoon as some cats dont like the taste or smell but if you start with a toothpick size or so they will not know its there..and fiber is a good thing..at least in my experience its worked very well to keep those you know whats moving!

In the end-WATER is the key-the more moisture the better.

Thank you Columbine and foxxycat for those new links and tips.

My cat will not touch pate.. he loves that gravy. It is hard to get him to eat a good canned food. We tried many from expensive to budget. Trying to get him to eat more wet foods. Basically he eats Purina Pro Plan Urinary dry each day which seems to be just as good as the dry RC vet brand

And yes, I do add warm water with each wet food portion.
He has a drinking fountain which he uses often.


note:
Tynk (born Aug 2012) had the sediment build up on Aug. 2015 and did not have any probs since.
No surgery.

My old boy (my avatar pic) used to be a confirmed, dyed in the wool gravy lover too. I managed to (finally) transition him onto pate foods by really thinning them down water from a recently boiled kettle (making them stinkier too ) so they were a thickish gravy consistency. Over time, I've been able to reduce the water and he'll now eat pate foods quite happily. It took a while though.

For what its worth, he had really bad crystals when he was about 3 (he was totally blocked and needed an emergency operation). He's been fine ever since, and he's 14 later this year! I only got him off the gravy in the last year (we got a new girl and he finally showed an interest in her food ).

I truly think hydration is the biggest key to keeping cats crystal free. If your boy primarily eats dry food, he needs to be drinking around a cup/250mls fluid a day (it just helps to know these things ).

[article="31138"][/article]
This has some great ideas for getting cats to eat different foods - never give up...my boy proves that

I agree with Columbine's assessment: it's preferable not to feed wet foods with ingredients like wheat gluten but, given the choice, I'd sooner feed wet food with wheat gluten than an all-dry diet if my cat didn't have any food sensitivities and absolutely refused to eat any wet foods without grains or other carby ingredients.

And now for the "have you tried this food" game! All these foods are grain-free and low-carb, despite having some sort of gravy or sauce, which is our cats' preference, too. So! Has Tynk tried Nutro Natural Choice canned foods? Our cats love the minced chicken and sliced turkey, both of which have gravy. They also like the chunky chicken, a pate with decent-sized pieces of chicken. There's chunky turkey, too, but they don't like it as much. The cats also eat a fair bit of Weruva (mostly Cats in the Kitchen) and Tiki foods.

One other tip, in case you haven't tried it... They will also eat almost anything at all if I sprinkle a little bit of freeze-dried meat treat on top. If you haven't tried Pure Bites or something similar (Good Lovin' freeze-dried chicken heart treats are very popular around here, too), that might be worth a go!

Good luck!

Hello LisaHE, we tried quite a few but not sure if we tried Nutro brands.
Tynk likes Weruva's, Cats in the Kitchen chicken/pumpkin. I buy that on rotation for variety.
Tiki brand is another one I could try as it was written about here or on another site. That one is a little hard to find.
And will have to try Good treats too for the coaxing topping mix .
Thanks so much for your good suggestions.
All the better for fussy palates.

tynk15 said:

Hello LisaHE, we tried quite a few but not sure if we tried Nutro brands.
Tynk likes Weruva's, Cats in the Kitchen chicken/pumpkin. I buy that on rotation for variety.
Tiki brand is another one I could try as it was written about here or on another site. That one is a little hard to find.
And will have to try Good treats too for the coaxing topping mix

.
Thanks so much for your good suggestions.
All the better for fussy palates.

Click to expand...

Great that Tynk likes Weruva: it's very decent food. Tiki can be hard to find; I think someone else in Canada had mentioned that, too. It's expensive but worth it, at least for our cats, because it keeps them full for a long time and they finish the food!

Fussy eaters really can take some effort to figure out but @Columbine is right that, with time and a lot of human patience, it's possible to get them to eat nutritious foods!

Again, good luck!