cat food confusion!

Well my head is about to explode so I thought I would get some opinions, you guys seem to know more than your average cat person.

I had a cat for 17 years, I fed dry because she was on a prescription diet & then after getting cancer & having beginning kidney failure, I decided if I got more kitties, I would only feed wet.

I researched food night & day before I brought the new fur balls home. I read endless articles, studied things like Dr Pierson, this website, Tanya's CKD website, feline-nutrition.org, & others that I can't remember. I felt that I was learning SO much, I mean I never even considered carb content before, I started copying all the pet foods from Petco & Petsmart & made lists at my local pet store of the foods they carry. I created excel spreadsheets with all the guaranteed analysis numbers & then calculated to find the dry matter carb content. I even contacted quite a few companies & asked for the dry matter numbers because I was under the impression that those were more accurate & I could make a good decision based on all that. I'm picky about what I would feed, I didn't want carrageenan, artifical colors/flavors, dairy, fish, grains, vegetables/fruit.

From everything I just learned, I decided on Nature's Variety Instinct & Weruva. NV was high fat & the Weruva was low fat so I would mix a little from both & whala, the perfect cat food. My cats have been on these foods for 2 years now. I actually stopped the Weruva a few months ago & switched to a chicken only Soulistic (they're made by the same co) for financial reasons. One of my cats is getting fussy about the NV. She is already so thin, she barely eats & only likes like 2 of the flavors. I thought maybe I should just can the NV & stay with the Weruva but it's really expensive! I then thought I would check Dr Pierson's food list again & that's where I made my mistake.

She updated the list in 14 & put right on it to ignore the DM data & pay attention to the calorie values. I didn't know anything about calories, I wasn't concerned or felt I needed to know about that. So of course I go through her list & pick out the foods with 12 or lower for carb calorie, & I then make another list. So I'm researching the foods on there & throwing this one out & that one out due to this or that that I don't want to feed & then I get down to the NV numbers. The DM numbers don't match anything I have so then I started thinking, how did she figure out the calorie numbers. So I go to her website & read the instructions, perform it myself on NV & the numbers still don't match. I've tried guaranteed analysis numbers & dry matter numbers & nothing matches.

So now I'm here. I kinda feel defeated, don't know where to go, what to research. All I'm trying to do is find a good food that won't break the bank.

thanks

You could make the food yourself. Get some meat, I think It'll be cheaper if you buy it in bulk. Then you freeze it, then thaw it when you need to cook it. A lot of people feed it raw since it's what they ate in the wild, but you can cook it too.

Honestly, good food is pricey. What's your budget? Have you tried Tikicat? Weruva is really almost the best canned food out there. Have you thought about raw something like Rad Cat? Which is a good option for a CKD cat. Although Rad Cat is not cheap. You could make your own food but it's not as simple as buying meat. You could hope over to the raw and homecooked forum for more info on that. Ezcomplete would be a good supplement to use and then you could bargain shop for meat (which is what most people do) to lower the cost. 

I feed Merricks Whole Earth Farms beef or duck, Lid chicken or duck and regular pate chicken or duck. I feed Soulistic chicken dinner in gelee and I feed pride by instinct rockstar rabbit. I also treat with instinct ultimate 95% kibble or freeze dried Purebites chicken (dog size). They seem to like Friskies Pates, which the ferals get, so I feed it to my cats occasionally. I had two cats live to be 20 eating friskies pates

I feed raw only as a treat, I don't want to deal with every day. I've been considering TikiCat since it's basically a lower priced Weruva.

Bonepicker - I hope you know that all the NV Pride varieties are very HIGH in carbs.

Actually Soulistic is the lesser expensive version of Weruva because it is made by the exact same company http://www.soulisticpet.com/ You can find this at Petco.

Here is a food chart you can refer to for nutritional content of many brands of canned foods: http://catinfo.org/docs/FoodChartPublic9-22-12.pdf

You can't calculate actual nutritional value using guaranteed values. You need to use "as fed numbers" and have to specifically request that when contacting a company. There are various online calculators you can use to convert eh as fed numbers into actual nutritional value. Here is one.

Carbs isn't a big deal unless your cat is required to be on a low carb diet for medical reasons. It's ok to feed up to 20% carbs or so for heathy cats, IMO. Try to stick with lower carb foods as much as possible and feed a higher carb one as a treat once in awhile. Gravy based foods tend to be on the high end of carbs because of the starches used to thicken the gravy.

Here are thread about carrageenan free foods:

http://www.thecatsite.com/t/240335/canned-food-without-carrageenan-or-guar-gum

http://www.thecatsite.com/t/319516/grain-carrageenan-free-foods

Making your own food, either raw or home cooked, is the only way to avoid all the things you don't want in yoru cat's food.

Yes LTS3, I know, I wrote about stuff you're suggesting in my original post. There is another post when carrageenan comes up, http://www.thecatsite.com/t/282697/looking-for-grain-free-cat-food-comparing-wild-calling

Still hoping for an advanced answer. Someone that understands what I'm dealing with & can give some solid advice. After reading losts of posts, seems that dorimon is on the same page as we've both created our own food lists with a lot of the same columns. Maybe I'll send a message.....

Do your current cats have CKD, or your previous one? Are you dealing with a current health problem or trying to prevent future ones? (This hits home for me, as I lost my soul-kitty, Anastasia, to renal failure when she 17. She ate dry most of her life because it was all I could afford and also I didn't know any better. Now I obsess about feline nutrition and try to give my current kitties the best possible foods. I so wish I could have a do-over with Anastasia.)

Ok, not an answer, much less an advanced one, but I do understand the food confusion.

You're sort of asking for something that doesn't really exist. Good food on a tight budget isn't out there. Weruva, tikitcat, maybe ZP, those are the top canned foods. Everything else has bigger issues. Raw isn't actually hard to feed and fits everything you want so you really should consider feeding raw. Or homecooked, which is even easier than raw. Using alnutrin or EZcomplete and it takes a very short amount of time to make and feed daily. 

Suzanne F - you hit the nail on the head. I went through a very similar situation, I don't know if you read the 1st post. I totally want to do as much as I can for my kitty babies now. I feel that I have learned loads in a couple years but am definitely not an expert. No, they don't have any health issues now, they are all about 2 & I'm hoping to keep them as healthy as possible.

missmimz - the reason why I don't want to feed raw is because I'm paranoid of having meat dragged everywhere. In the instances where I have given my cats baby quail, chicken necks, turkey necks, liver & other chunks of meat, they take it in their mouth & then run off & chomp it up & drop it all over the floor. It's gross. Some people have told me to spread a towel out, I have tried that. Some people have told me to feed in the bathroom, I have done it. It's just the fact of it's messy & I don't want to have to scrub the floor every time the kitties get fed. Plus you aren't supposed to leave it out too long, what happens when I leave for work? If I come home & there's still food, I have to throw it away.

The reason why I don't feed cooked meat is because that's not good enough nutrition for cats. They need vitamins & stuff, I don't know what to give them & what doses. That's why I think cat food is the best choice for me right now. Maybe I will have to go with a lower quality food until I start working. I was buying Weruva about every 3 months & the bill was about $450. To me, that is pretty pricey. I have 3 cats by the way.

msserena said:

missmimz - the reason why I don't want to feed raw is because I'm paranoid of having meat dragged everywhere. In the instances where I have given my cats baby quail, chicken necks, turkey necks, liver & other chunks of meat, they take it in their mouth & then run off & chomp it up & drop it all over the floor. It's gross. Some people have told me to spread a towel out, I have tried that. Some people have told me to feed in the bathroom, I have done it. It's just the fact of it's messy & I don't want to have to scrub the floor every time the kitties get fed. Plus you aren't supposed to leave it out too long, what happens when I leave for work? If I come home & there's still food, I have to throw it away.

The reason why I don't feed cooked meat is because that's not good enough nutrition for cats. They need vitamins & stuff, I don't know what to give them & what doses. That's why I think cat food is the best choice for me right now. Maybe I will have to go with a lower quality food until I start working. I was buying Weruva about every 3 months & the bill was about $450. To me, that is pretty pricey. I have 3 cats by the way.

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Feed ground, which is what I do. Buy pre-ground from a company like Hare Today, so that its ground and flash frozen and totally safe to feed raw, or buy meat and grind yourself. I leave raw meat out for awhile without issue. Usually an hour. If you come home and there's food out yes, you should throw it out, but I would throw out canned food that sat out all day too. If you use a pre-mix like Ezcomplete that's designed to replenish the vitamins and minerals that are degraded during cooking, cooked food is fine. Raw is ideal, but sometimes that doesn't work. EZ works with cooked or raw. Take a look around their site. The pre-mix was designed by a former member here that knows a lot about cat nutrition. She's very active on facebook and there are a lot of EZ users over there. I use EZ in rotation sometimes cooked but mostly raw. It would no doubt be cheaper than canned. Dr. Pierson's website is great, but it's kind of outdated in terms of pre-mixes and things like that.

http://www.foodfurlife.com/

Hmmm the EZComplete Fur Cats doesn't even have any taurine in it. Every canned food has it because when you cook meat, the taurine amount pretty much goes away. I think this product is more for raw diets. I have bought a vitamin supplement from Wysong before but think I will just buy the canned food which has everything in it.

I've bought meat before from haretoday but you have to buy so much & I don't have my freezer set up. I actually have baby chickens & 2 bags of baby quail that need to be eaten up first. My cats do love RadCat, I wrote the company & asked if they will make a bigger container but there are no plans for that anytime soon. I buy the biggest one but it's gone in 3 days.

msserena said:

 
Hmmm the EZComplete Fur Cats doesn't even have any taurine in it. Every canned food has it because when you cook meat, the taurine amount pretty much goes away. I think this product is more for raw diets. I have bought a vitamin supplement from Wysong before but think I will just buy the canned food which has everything in it.

I've bought meat before from haretoday but you have to buy so much & I don't have my freezer set up. I actually have baby chickens & 2 bags of baby quail that need to be eaten up first. My cats do love RadCat, I wrote the company & asked if they will make a bigger container but there are no plans for that anytime soon. I buy the biggest one but it's gone in 3 days.

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It has taurine, it's right on the ingredient list. I can tell you lots of people use it for cooked food without issue. It's for cooked and raw. 

Ingredients: Dried Chicken Liver, Eggshell (Source of Calcium), Dried Egg Yolk​, Pork Pancreas Glandular, Green Lipped Mussel (NZ), Digestive Enzymes (Bromelain, Lipase, Amylase, Cellulase), Taurine, Vitamin E, Chelated Iron, Zinc, Chelated Manganese, Vitamin B Complex, Chelated Copper, Vitamin D3, Potassium Iodide (Iodine) 

Oh good, I'm glad I missed it. Thanks! Maybe I will buy a bag & see how the kitties like it.

msserena said:

 
Oh good, I'm glad I missed it. Thanks! Maybe I will buy a bag & see how the kitties like it.

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If you're interested in more reviews or tips on raw feeding join the facebook group Raw Feeding for IBD. You don't need to have a cat with IBD to be part of it, and one of the mods is the co-creator of EZcomplete and super knowledgeable about raw feeding. The members there could give you some tips that might help you figure out how to feed raw or cooked full time on a budget that's less than what you're paying for canned. 

https://www.facebook.com/groups/RawFedIBD/

I remembered last night that I have bought food from haretoday before. I bought venison & rabbit & tried giving it to my kitties raw & then cooked, they wouldn't touch either. I think I ended up feeding it to my dog but she wasn't thrilled about it. I've tried some of the blends, halshan, bravo, primal, fresh pet, wysong & small batch. The only raw food they will eat is rad cat & I buy a bucket of turkey, chicken & lamb & mix them all together then put them back into the buckets. They won't eat the turkey by itself but they will eat the lamb & chicken.

One day they'll eat a piece of bacon or turkey & the next time I try to give them some they'll turn their nose up at it. One of my cats is my little eater, I can get her to eat anything pretty much anytime.

So this sends me back to why I posted this in the first place, if calories are a better place to figure out protein, fat & carb content, what numbers do you start with? TA, GA or DMB?

msserena said:

 
I remembered last night that I have bought food from haretoday before. I bought venison & rabbit & tried giving it to my kitties raw & then cooked, they wouldn't touch either. I think I ended up feeding it to my dog but she wasn't thrilled about it. I've tried some of the blends, halshan, bravo, primal, fresh pet, wysong & small batch. The only raw food they will eat is rad cat & I buy a bucket of turkey, chicken & lamb & mix them all together then put them back into the buckets. They won't eat the turkey by itself but they will eat the lamb & chicken.

One day they'll eat a piece of bacon or turkey & the next time I try to give them some they'll turn their nose up at it. One of my cats is my little eater, I can get her to eat anything pretty much anytime.

So this sends me back to why I posted this in the first place, if calories are a better place to figure out protein, fat & carb content, what numbers do you start with? TA, GA or DMB?

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Transitioning to raw doesn't happen over night for some cats. The EZcomplete is very palatable, which makes me a good choice for some cats that haven't liked meat with something like alnutrin. Most cats need toppers as well to eat raw. Mine, which have been eating raw for awhile, still need toppers on their raw food. 

When I look at nutritional information, I look at dry matter carb figures, though you often have to contact the companies to get numbers for calculations. I don't pay much attention to calories rest because our cats are at healthy weights.

As for the food, there's also nothing wrong with feeding raw, homecooked, and canned foods: that's what we do and it works out well for us and the cats. They get freeze-dried raw and frozen raw, homecooked with Ezcomplete, and an ever-dwindling bunch of canned foods that will soon be reduced to (mostly) Tiki Cat, I think.

I, too, had a cat whose illnesses (thyroid, IBD, kidney) taught me more than I ever thought I'd know about feline nutrition and cat foods. That turned out to be a very good thing because when she was gone, we ended up adopting two Siamese mixes with (little did we know) very sensitive stomachs! I, too, feed no carrageenan, carby vegetables or fruits, and very little fish, plus I'm working on getting rid of canned foods with gums, too. Fortunately the cats like Tiki Cat, lots of raw foods, and homecooked chicken, turkey, and pork with EZcomplete.