We’ve been feeding our cats Iams, which they like, but we’d like to move them up to something a bit more high quality, with more meat and less grain. Anyone have experience with any of the premium brands, as far as your cats actually liking to eat it? I don’t want to switch them from something they like to something they won’t enjoy as much.
The brands we were looking at were Blue, Wellness, and Innova. Each of them have various subtypes, like indoor formula (our cats are indoor only), multi-cat healthy (not sure what that’s about), and senior (which would work for some of the herd but not others, and feeding them separately isn’t really a viable option).
So, any recommendations or un-recommendations? Thanks in advance!
Our cats get Taste of the Wild, which contains some fruit and vegetables but no grain. It comes in two varieties - trout & smoked salmon, and venison & smoked salmon - but not in indoor or senior formulas. It’s available both as kibble and in tins. (They also do dog and puppy food.)
We feed ours Wellness - usually the indoor cat formula (I think it comes in the blue packaging). They were out of that one last time, so I picked up the yellow bag instead this time; the ingredients seem to be the same. No grains, but it does have rice (which makes me look at it a little askance).
We also feed them Wellness canned food (usually the chicken or the turkey) and it’s kind of funny - one cat prefers the canned, the other prefers the dry. Either will eat both, though, and it looks like the dry-preferring cat is coming around on the canned - she used to just lick off the gelly and leave the rest, but now she’s eating about half her portion morning and night. (The other cat eats what she leaves, the glutton.)
They’ve been eating Wellness and only Wellness since they were kittens, so I don’t really know whether they actually *like *the taste or not - they’ve never had the opportunity to have anything else. (The glutton seems to like the canned; she reminds us every time that she’s starving and can’t we please feed her?) The glutton’ll taste and eat any people food you let her, so there is that. (The other generally leaves all people food alone.) The glutton’s also probably a bit overweight (just like her owner, I suppose), but not bad. You might try mixing some of their existing food with the new when you make the switch - supposedly that’s supposed to help.
I like Wellness - I feel better knowing that I’m feeding my cats something quality. It’s a bit more expensive, yeah, but I’m not paying for filler or sub-par food, either. And I can get it just a bit cheaper at Amazon than from PetCo, so I might sign up for their subscription service just for the cat food.
I did feed the previous cat AvoDerm for a while, and then switched from that to Nature’s something or other (completely grain free). She had digestive issues, and they seemed to help a bit. (Ultimately, she was hyperthyroid and had kidney failure.) I went with Wellness over these two with the new kittens for some reason or other that I don’t remember just now - perhaps it was better reviewed on some of the cat health websites I was reading at the time.
We feed Blue Buffalo Wilderness grain free dry and various brands of grain free canned. They seem to like the Wilderness quite a bit. We’ve tried some other dry brands with mixed success, but the Wilderness seems to be a keeper.
In my experience, this food by Royal Canin is universally beloved by cats. It’s expensive, but it’s high quality. And I’ve never met a cat who didn’t gobble it up.
Oh, I just had a thought! A lot of times at the PetCo near my house they have representatives from the various premium pet food brands in the store. If you speak with them, they’ll give you fee samples of the food to try. You could find out if something like that happens where you live, and maybe get some stuff to try without risking your cat hating it.
Good ideas, all. Thanks! I’m thinking we’ll give the Wellness and the Wilderness a try (it’s got to be something that we can get conveniently–I love my cats dearly but I’m not running all over town every week to find the “perfect food.” They have both of these at several of the pet stores near us. We’ll see which one they like. I’m hoping they don’t want to just stick with “junk food.”
Just a heads up on Natura the mfg of Innova, they were purchased about 2 years ago by P&G. Last I checked nothing had changed with the way it was manufactured but I don’t doubt it will eventually.
We were very happy with Orijen for a grain free kibble. It’s made in Canada and subject to slightly stricter food safety laws.
We also really liked a dehydrated raw diet made by Honest Kitchen called Prowl. It’s a powder that you mix with water. We used it for our older girl when we wanted to boost her water intake. When you mix it as directed it has a kind of pudding texture but you can make it as soupy as your cat will tolerate.
Watch out for grain free foods that have just substituted carbs from grains for potatoes or something else. Rather than grain free what you really want is a high protein lower carb diet.
I thought Prowl looked awesome so I bought a box for my very old cat with bad teeth. He refused to eat it, and so has every other cat I tried giving it to (I have a few cat owning friends and we passed it around. It was expensive!!). I’m not saying no cat ever would like it, but I haven’t found one that does. I ended up giving the almost-full box to a rescue.
The trick is to use warm water and put it in the microwave for about 5 seconds to give it a slightly stronger odor. You need to mix it up thick at first. Our girl wouldn’t touch it on the first try but after some time she came to love it and we didn’t need to warm it up anymore. The funny thing is after she started eating it all the other cats suddenly went crazy for it. If anyone tries it for sure start with the little 4 oz. trial size.
The best piece of cat food advice I’ve ever received was to feed a food mix. I get bags from 3-4 brands and mix them together in a food locker. I rotate different offerings in slowly, so they get variety-- and I if there’s ever a concern about a particular brand (or, say, a recall, which happened recently), I don’t have an issue because it’s only 1/3 or 1/4 of their mix, and they handle the swap with no digestive issues. When I fostered, I fed them the mix and passed along the advice.
Right now the mix contains Taste of the Wild, Felidae, and Blue Buffalo. It’s also had Evo, California Natural, Orijen, Wellness, and Wysong in it in the recent past. (In the 11 years of their lives, it’s had just about every non-grocery-store brand of food made in there at some point). I feed them a grain free diet now.
I also feed them wet Tiki Cat or Weruva for special occasions, or if they’re having a rough day (such as having to be confined to the bedroom because one of them is too dumb not to lick the crock pot)
As a veterinarian, I ALWAYS recommend an exclusively canned diet for ALL cats. As strict carnivores, cats have NO requirement for carbohydrates, and there is not any dry food that truly meets their needs for protein and moisture. The “best” dry food brands don’t come close to meeting optimum requirements for protein and moisture, and truthfully, something like canned Fancy Feast is better for them.
Take away the dry food and your cats will not suffer obesity, most urinary issues, and they will just do better all around.
