Comprehensive cat food poll - what do you feed your cats?

Mine get Royal Canin kibble to snack on. Sam gets Nutro Gourmet tins, Bailey gets the Nutro "Natural Choice" pouches. She used to eat the tinned food, but since she was on antibiotics, which I fed her mixed in tuna, she will only eat the more expensive food from the foil pouches. And I could give her the same as Sam, but she just has a few mouthfuls and walks away, then Sam finishes hers, and gets fat, or we just have to throw it away. And then she tanks up on the kibble, and gets fat. She's really got me over a barrel on this one!

JC gets dry in the morning: currently Felidae, Solid Gold and Almo Holistic.
Canned in the evening: Nature's Variety Prairie, Innova, Almo and Miamor Feine Filets (the latter two are European varieties).
He also gets roast beef or lamb, and sometimes shrimp or calamari as a treat.

He also gets roast beef or lamb, and sometimes shrimp or calamari as a treat.

Click to expand...

JC eats better than I do

My four furbabes eat wet food for breakfast, usually Whiskas, and I have been wondering since reading The Cat Site, why people are against it. Would anyone like to fill me in on that one as I don't want my babies to be poorly. They eat free during the day on Iams dry, sometimes the hairball one sometimes the original. At tea time I give them either pilchards, a bit of tuna, Hi Life or I cook them some coley or cod.

Mix of Evolution dry and canned; we have VegeCat and VegeYeast around and will make some of the recipes someday...like...tomorrow...or the day after...or the day after that...

Originally Posted by jcat

He also gets roast beef or lamb, and sometimes shrimp or calamari as a treat.

Click to expand...

Calamari?? Holy CRAP! I don't even eat that good!?!

Mine get dry Royal Canin in the morning (for senior cats). In the evening they have canned food; a mixture of Natural Balance and Innova. I have not seen dry Natural Balance around here.

Switched the boys to Wellness light from Royal Canin recently & frankly the LOVE it. I'm afraid I've turned them into food snobs because while they still like chicken baby food if given a choice they'd rather eat their kitty food.

Originally Posted by rescuekitty2

Calamari?? Holy CRAP! I don't even eat that good!?!

Click to expand...

You're the second person to say that here. What can I say - he's our "only child", and he loves the stuff (so do I, but batter-dipped; he gets it plain).
This is a good poll - it's really interesting to see the various diets available, and which are the most popular.

Cilla, in a nutshell, a lot of people object to the by-products in supermarket brands like Whiskas. I think if you browse through the old threads, you'll find a lot of the arguments used. And please note: The people who live next to my in-laws have a 23-year-old cat who is in terrific shape - and she has been fed Whiskas, supplemented by what she can catch, all her life. So I don't think you're doing your cats any harm feeding them it. Commercial cat food was not available in the old German Democratic Republic (East Germany); studies done since reunification have shown that cats' life expectancies have at least doubled since commercially prepared brands like Whiska, Friskies, etc. became available there. While dogs' life expectancies haven't doubled, they've increased significantly.

my cats eat hill's prescription c/d dry.

for canned they get fancy feast, pro plan, and sometimes petguard (my 2 fussy ones have decided they only like 2 flavors after eating 4 flavors for a while). so it looks like i have to drive to the feed store 20 minutes away and see if they like eagle pack again. they're kind of weird cats. they like a brand of canned for a while, then they get bored of it. so i switch brands. the homeless kitties at the shelter probably really like our donations. i always buy a variety of flavors, but generally i stay away from beef flavors.

Tiger Lilly (outside cat) is eating Chicken Soup Dry.

Sassy and Buddy are on a diet, so each one gets: 1/3 cup Chicken Soup Lite dry and 1.5 oz Nutro or Natural Balance wet food a day. No supplements. Treats are either the new Nutro treats or Bil Jac.

Originally Posted by Goblin

I am happy to see that we don't have to many vegitarian nuts. Cats are carnivores. They need a meat diet. I will agree that in the United States too many people eat as though they were carnivores. Humans are omnivores. Meat should only be a small part of our diet. That is probably why so many Americans are over-weight. We eat too much meat.

Goblin

Click to expand...

Dude, that is totally not cool that you called vegetarians "nuts".

We feed Blue Seal http://www.blueseal.com not sure where it falls in your poll its made local to us , and is very popular around here

Well, having received my first advice about what to feed, from a vet, some 20-odd years ago (before all the premium brands were on the market), I began feeding "any good quality cat food" -- translation: any of the supermarket brands. This devolved into part canned and part dry, and the cat for whom the advice was given lived to the ripe old age of 21, with nary a health problem. So, it won't be a big surprise that every cat thereafter has had essentially the same diet.

Today, what that translates to is free feeding Whiskas dry, plus a 3-oz can of a variety of brands shared 3 ways morning and night. Until fairly recently, the can was Fancy Feast -- one of four flavours in rotation. Then the monsters started exhibiting boredom. So for the last couple of months, we've been sampling a wide variety -- pretty much anything that comes in the 3-oz cans. And the Mum has been keeping careful records, and having sampled pretty much all there is in that category, it's time to start eliminating the ones that aren't successful.

Slightly less than half have found favour: some of the Wellness flavours, though on the whole it's not popular; some of the supermarket house brands; Iams Chicken, but no other Iams; some new Fancy Feast flavours; some California Natural flavours. Nutro, and almost anything else with chunks or slices in sauce, is a bust: they eat the sauce and at the next meal time, I scrape the meat into the garbage; Innova is a bust; Science Diet is a bust; Solid Gold is a bust; Max Cat is a bust.

Surprisingly, three cats who previously wouldn't have given a thankyou for anything to do with fish, have shown at least some interest in several fish flavours, most notably ones from Natural Value, in which you don't have to wonder where the fish is: it's completely recognizable, and needs to be broken down for them. They've done a fine job on Sardines with Shrimp and Crab this evening.

And they do supplement with mice and birds. They don't always eat what they catch, but there was only the head and a few feathers left from the bird the other morning

Originally Posted by Dana

We feed Blue Seal http://www.blueseal.com not sure where it falls in your poll its made local to us , and is very popular around here

Click to expand...

We checked out Blue Seal's website and some of their cat food looks to be human-grade, so picking human-grade is fine.

Sierra eats Innova canned in the morning and Amore raw rabbit, salmon and veggie in the evening as well as suppliments. She gets a small amout of Innova in her talking treat ball when I work and enjoys Chicken Soup canned and Spots Stew as treats. We've also been trying new treats and she really loves sardines! Haven't tried Calamari yet, jcat!

I must be very, very poor I don't even know what calamari is.

Originally Posted by Cilla

I must be very, very poor I don't even know what calamari is.

Click to expand...

Squid! Doesn't "calamari" sound more appetizing?

Originally Posted by dawnofsierra

We've also been trying new treats and she really loves sardines!

Click to expand...

Our original trio, Shasta, Nibs and Gryphon, used to absolutely adore a sardine treat. It was interesting, though, after Gryph and then Shasta died, and Nibs was on his own, he just wasn't much interested -- almost as if it was "fun food" and not much fun if your buddies weren't there to enjoy it with you.

Originally Posted by rapunzel47

he just wasn't much interested -- almost as if it was "fun food" and not much fun if your buddies weren't there to enjoy it with you.

Click to expand...

Aaaww, poor Nibs!