Cat food - what's the best?

Heroditas

Two of our cats have Iams in the morning and night and then share a Felix pouch at dinner time.
The third cat has become a right madam recently and only eats Hills Vet Essentials dry food now. She barely touches the wet food, even the expensive Hills stuff.

Well, she sort of ignores it ..... after she licks all the jelly off it and then marches off. :rolleyes:

Zapperzy

Heroditas wrote: »

Well, she sort of ignores it ..... after she licks all the jelly off it and then marches off. :rolleyes:

The way I got around this was by adding a little bit of water and mashing it all up together.

Solair

I found it a bit odd that our vet was absolutely insisting that our cat should be fed dry cat food (that the vet sells :rolleyes:). The cat has a terrible reaction to it and throws up or, even worse passes unchewed, undigested dry cat food and ends up in agony.

We put the cat into the vet's cattery while on holidays once and he came home with a really bad stomach problem (constantly vomiting) and a raw rear end from passing cat food. This was all down to them feeding him dry food, despite our providing them with the correct food that he normally eats.

Our cat's diet is a mixture of normal wet cat food, and we generally give him a bit of whatever meat we're having on any given day. We don't ever give him processed meat, or spices, but usually just raw or very lightly cooked meat of various types.

He's thriving on it. Healthy coat, intelligent, no health problems, good teeth, lively, not insanely hyper.

We always fed our cats that way and the previous one live to the ripe old age of 19.

I am just baffled at how the vet seemed to think what we were feeding the cat was terrible and think that we should only feed him this 'science plan' junk.

It's blatantly obvious, given the reaction, that the cat LOVES meat!
He walks around purring, and meowing if there's chicken on and if he suspects there's chicken in the fridge he guards the door!!

angry kitten

I agree with you on the Hills Science Plan. One of my cats had the same problem on it. They get dry and wet food. We thought that because Hills is so highly recommended that the problem must've been the wet food. But as soon as we cut out the Hills the problem stopped. They're both on Royal Canin Slimness mixed with Royal canin oral care and Felix pouches.

They get treats of raw mince, raw chicken wings and cooked chicken pieces throughout the week. Both are in great shape and thriving. They're full of energy have bright eyes and glossy coats. My cats do the fridge guarding thing to. One of em likes to stretch against it just to remind me that yummy chicken lives in it. They also like to herd me towards the cupboard where the cat food pouches live.

I think it all boils down to what works best for your cat. We tried really fancy expensive wet cat food and they just looked at us as if to say 'what's this crap? I'm not eating that'.:)

yammycat

The Sweeper wrote: »

Have you got any credible sources for anything you've posted?

The ingredients on the side of the can...

yammycat

The Sweeper wrote: »

On the 'protein is protein' argument, that doesn't really wash.

100g of raw chicken breast, skin and bone removed, contains 23g of protein.

Yes and the 23g of protein contains no water, its just protein, the point i was making was protein doesnt necessarily have to come with water as i thought you were implying and that the reason up to 90% of cat food is water is because it comes with protein which isnt the case, the water is added to fill the can.

angry kitten

The Sweeper wrote: »

On the 'protein is protein' argument, that doesn't really wash.

100g of raw chicken breast, skin and bone removed, contains 23g of protein.
100g of trimmed chuck steak, with a little fat, contains 17g of protein.
100g of raw belly pork (a fatty cut) contains 9g of protein.

This is basic nutritional informaton available across the internet (because the western world is full of frantic dieters who want the calorie count and breakdown of everything that passes their lips).

That's one of the reasons that processed pet food gets away with protein levels between 9% and 50% (and the ones that achieve 50% protein use a lot of dehydrated meat purely because of the fact that meat just isn't 100% protein by volume).

It's also one of the reasons I wonder about vets who fear that a raw diet for dogs or cats is 'too high' in protein. A whole raw chicken isn't 100% protein, and is actually far from it. It's hard to get the information of the precise breakdown of a raw chicken, but I reckon if you include the bone and skin it probably sits around the 20% protein mark if not less.[/QUove OTE]

I'm no expert on cat nutrition, I have to say my vet has always gone above and beyond for my cats and I value her opinion. I trust her and more importantly my cats trust her. She's also won the Stronghold Pet Care award so she's doing something right.

SingItOut

Bought hills science plan vet essentials "young neutered cat" for my two this evening, They both wolfed it down when I gave it to them. I will post how they improve/dis-improve weight/health wise in the coming weeks