I researched this and found there are some ingredients in supermarket pet food that are very detrimental to their health. I had been feeding them Pet Promise, which was good for the price. No by products, low grain…although it did have some corn. The company went out of business recently, so I was forced to find something new. Back to the pet food reviews by ingredients. I decided on “Chiciken Soup for the Cat Lovers Soul” which was the best I could fiind for the price. No byproducts and no corn or wheat. $26 for an 18-lb. bag. I’m not working and am on a strict budget, but I won’t feed them bad food. I look at it this way, trips to the vet would be way more expensive. I would have gotten “Taste of the Wild” which was only slightly more expensive, but its grain free and 45% protein which would be too high for my 20 yr. old cat who may have mild kidney disease (diagnosed six years ago but no symptoms). I have three cats. I have read recently that cats should also have wet food so they get enough water in their diet. I have been giving them Trader Joes Tuna for Cats off and on. A while back someone posted in another thread that you shouldnt buy this, does anyone here know why?
When I had a cat she got one packet of Tender Vittles in the morning and if she ate that we’d give her another half a packet for dinner. And then she had a constant supply of dry Purina Cat chow she could eat whenever.
She woud supplement this by sucking the juice out of the Aloe plants. Yeah I know it’s not supposed to be good for cats but our cat did it for 10 years without any noticable effects
Depends who you talk to. Amongst the cat fanatics it would usually be labeled premium due to the price, but not ultra premium, which implies “grain-free”, high protein, high quality ingredients.
Many cat food snobs disdain Science Diet. Indeed the Hill’s company is often considered only a half-step below Satan, as they are sponsors of nutrition seminars for young vets, whom the cognoscenti ( which includes, admittedly, some vets ) regard as mostly woefully undereducated on proper cat nutrition. The argument often being that the only real training veterinarians get in nutrition comes from a corporate shill for an inferior product.
I’m a half-snob these days and avoid Hill’s products due to all the carbohydrate fillers and what not ( also one of their prescription brands was the only food, out of maybe a dozen brands, that my cats have ever actually refused to touch ). But I’m always willing to admit that my previous cat went 17 years on the worst quality fancy feast-type cat food around. I only really got serious about the quality stuff recently.
shrug It does seem to make a difference in terms of coat quality at the very least.
AFAIK the problem is when you exclusively feed them tuna. There’s some nutrient (Vitamin E?) missing from tuna, so cats that eat nothing else get sick.
Right, its missing taurine and without taurine they go blind. But this is formulated for cats so it has the taurine added in. I hate it when someone posts to not do something and they don’t give a reason why. I don’t know why I didn’t ask at the time, must of been in a hurry.
Even in Perth we get Science Diet and our cats love it. I hope it is better than the stuff you buy at supermarkets.
One possible answer is that seafood-based canned cat food seems to have greatly elevated levels of polybrominated diphenyl ethers, that have been at least weakly implicated in increased hyperthyroidism in cats.
Also while I would imagine that the vitamin E and B1 deficiencies typically seen with actual fish-based diets ( as noted its not just taurine that’s a problem ) are being taken care of in the Trader Joe’s product, it is worth double-checking. Tuna in particular, due to its high fat content and low natural vitamin E, can cause Pansteatitis.
My 19 year old lady is getting premium cat tuna, fresh chicken, canned salmon, cheese, cat milk, and whatever else I can get her to eat. She’s old, and dying. the green mile has it’s privileges. Prior to that it was premium dry food.
Thank You Tamerlane for the answer and informative links. I’m always looking to learn more about these things.
My almost 16-year-old kitty is diabetic, so it’s prescription Purina DM for him (or, as the vet put it, the Kitty Atkins Diet). Luckily, it’s dry food, which is much less of a pain in the neck than the canned Rx food he started with after his diagnosis. (He was a finicky eater, but loves to graze at all hours, so when it was canned food, he would whine if it was more than an hour or two old when he was hungry. Which wasn’t much fun at 3 a.m.)
The stuff is expensive, like $18 for a 4 lb. bag, but it beats the hell out of having to inject him with insulin. (Luckily, his blood sugar stabilized on the prescription food, and he isn’t insulin-dependent anymore.)
He also gets occasional human-food scraps as treats, and I let him lick my plate if he has the urge. He loves when I drain a can of tuna over his food, but his all-time favorite had to be when I roasted a duck and let him have the raw liver. He chowed down the whole thing and spend the evening sprawled on the floor in a VERY happy food coma. 