Tough to choose a decent cat food!

There are so many cat foods out there that I got a little confused on what would be best for my two kittens. My kittens are about 4 months old, neutered, and they stay indoors.....I really wanted to get a good kitten food that I could stick with until they are a year old. Can anyone recommend a decent food that will keep them healthy?

Innova is the best dry food brand in my opinion but I feed Purina One because I have one cat that only does well on that brand. You might have to try a few different brands to find what fits your kittens. All cats are different and might require different nutrients.

You are going to get as many recommendations as there are foods out there. The best thing is to educate yourself by reading some of the previous posts on this subject in this forum, read the labels of the foods available in your area and choose the best you can from that. That's no guarantee your cats will eat what you choose though. They can be finicky.

Also if you are changing your cat over to another food you should do it slowly over a period of about 4 weeks, i.e., adding the new food to the old food a bit at a time and gradually increasing the amount until you have converted to the new food.

Originally Posted by johnson_22

There are so many cat foods out there that I got a little confused on what would be best for my two kittens. My kittens are about 4 months old, neutered, and they stay indoors.....I really wanted to get a good kitten food that I could stick with until they are a year old. Can anyone recommend a decent food that will keep them healthy?

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Where do you by cat food the grocery store or the feed or pet store??

what are they eating now ?? do they like it?? Do they have hair balls??

I like Natural choice but that is cause my cat likes it and the ingrediants are good..

good kitten foods that have no grd corn , no by products and no chemicals

Nutro( Natural choice and Max )

California Natural

Innova

Chn soup

Royal canin( has corn but very good overall)

Felidea

these have dry and most have wet ... it is not a complete list but I will let others add

I feed my kitties a wide variety of foods. Are you talking wet food, dry food, or both? Twitch & Lily get 50/50 wet/dry right now, but I am increasing the wet. As Twitch is an adult, & Lily a kitten, I have been feeding mostly Felidae as it is all ages. They really like it. I also have Nutro Indoor Kitten formula. I love it & they both love it. I bought Innova adult food & both kitties love it. I just got a bag of Innova EVO today. I left it on the counter & when I returned 15 minutes later Lily had ripped into the baga & was munching away contentedly. I think that means she likes it. The EVO, however, was quite pricey. I believe I paid $5 for a 2.2 lb. bag. The 7 lb. bag was $35. It is an awesome food, though, IMO.

If you are looking for the most bang for your buck, I would go for Nutro. That's only my opinion, though. I have heard good things about Chicken Soup, but never tried it. I have seen bags of Wellness dry food, but never tried it. I have also seen bags of Eagle Pack kitten food, but never tried it either. My two don't like the canned Eagle Pack, so I don't know if they will like the dry.

As far as being confused, I think you, me, & menagerie mama are all in the same boat. It is quite confusing & takes a lot of time to learn this stuff, but eventually you will get the hang of it. I am starting to. Oh yeah, sharky has excellent advice, too. Sharky's helped me out a lot! Thanks sharky!

I personally love California Natural. My 2 kitties were eating it since May or June, and I had to switch to Felidae when I took in a kitten who can't handle California Natural. So far, Felidae is doing fine for the 3 kitties, but when the new kitten leaves for her new home, I might go back to CA Natural.

I was overwhelmed too...I thought I was feeding the best until I got on this site. With everyone's help, I'm getting more knowlegable about it. It's a lot to process. Take it slow or it will overwhelm you!

I agree, there are many quality foods discussed on the forums. The main thing to consider is what your cats are willing to eat on an ongoing basis. My cats initially liked nutro and felidae, but then stopped wanting to eat it anymore. The only thing they've showed ongoing interest in is innova evo. They love it and haven't become finicky about it at all. The only downside is that it costs me $40 for 15 lbs. I'd ideally like to pay less, but I guess I'll be sticking with it, I'm very happy with the ingredients and the cats are crazy about it.

If you want to avoid by-products:
Natural Balance
Innova(Natura Pet Products)
Nutro Natural Choice kitten food
Nutro Max Cat kitten food
Felidae

If you're not worried about by-products:
Eukanuba
Iams
Purina One

I wouldn't go any lower than Iams or Purina One. I love Natural Balance, Nutro brands and Natura Pet Products the best. I believe California Natural can also be fed to kittens, it has 36% protein but the bag says adult cat food so I'm not sure.

Royal Canin is the best IMO. It works well with my Persians sensitive tummies, and comes in a lot of different varities for different breeds of cats, indoor cats, outdoor cats, old cats, young cats, to improve health. The list is endless.

I would just go look at the ingredients of different foods and see what you like the best.

Felidae is a good one, and it covers all ages, so you could feed it to your cats for forever.

Innova is said to be the best food out there, Evanger's has really good cat dinners, whole mackeral and a pheasant dinner [it's canned], Natural Balance.

There's plenty more, just go with what you want to feed ingredient wise, and what your ickly fur babies will eat.

I am currently working on a project that I hope will go through. If it does there will be a major pet food company consultant to give a two-week open forum about pet food. I have told the consultant that this will not be an easy task, because many will literally eat her alive because of all the controversy surrounding the "pet food industry." I am waiting to hear back if this will fly.

Id say do some research but you can do all the research you need and have the best quality food in the world and there still is a chance your cat may hate it. Personally I would not go for dry food alone. Ours have wet with some dry to nibble on. As there kittens you really need to keep them on Kitten food untill there a year old.

Hissy your project sounds interesting. Tho that will be one brave consultant!

I feed my kitties Nutro hairball formula.

I have 2 persians, 1 himmi, 3 dsh.

I keep the dry in an auto-feeder and give them 1 small can mixed with 1 cup of dry twice a day.

Originally Posted by MeowsersMom

I agree, there are many quality foods discussed on the forums. The main thing to consider is what your cats are willing to eat on an ongoing basis. My cats initially liked nutro and felidae, but then stopped wanting to eat it anymore. The only thing they've showed ongoing interest in is innova evo. They love it and haven't become finicky about it at all. The only downside is that it costs me $40 for 15 lbs. I'd ideally like to pay less, but I guess I'll be sticking with it, I'm very happy with the ingredients and the cats are crazy about it.

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This is my story too, they do like Chicken Soup, but I find you get a lot more quality ingedients in the evo so for me it is worth it.

Up until now, my cats were hooked on purina, they wouldn't want to eat anything else. I really got worried about this, because its like a drug... I really was uncomfortable with the fact that my cats were so dependent on one type of food. I also read that dry food can be dangerous to the kidneys and does have some enzmyes that makes it addictive. Lately I began to feed my cats raw meat, which they love and which took theri mind off the purina. This also made it possible for me to boil the meat (just a little bit, or else they don`t like it) and feed this to them, now that they aren't addicts anymore. I feel this is the healthiest solution... you should try it

Originally Posted by dadada

Up until now, my cats were hooked on purina, they wouldn't want to eat anything else. I really got worried about this, because its like a drug... I really was uncomfortable with the fact that my cats were so dependent on one type of food. I also read that dry food can be dangerous to the kidneys and does have some enzmyes that makes it addictive. Lately I began to feed my cats raw meat, which they love and which took theri mind off the purina. This also made it possible for me to boil the meat (just a little bit, or else they don`t like it) and feed this to them, now that they aren't addicts anymore. I feel this is the healthiest solution... you should try it

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Feeding raw is not a problem as long as you know what you are doing. There are some folks here who do feed raw and in some instances, depending on what you are feeding, you need to add supplements. It's not as simple as buying meat, partially cooking it and then feeding it to your cat.

Please ensure you are well-versed in feeding raw and that you are not doing any harm to your cat by not supplementing correctly/or at all.