-
Too many ads? Join our community of cat lovers now to reduce ads by 90%! Click here to join for free!
Long Life On Fancy Feast
- Thread starter tuffsmom
- Start Date
Hmm. My first cats (we got when I was 10), 2 sisters, lived to be 21. They didn't eat Fancy Feast their entire lives though. They ate dry Cat Chow and dry Friskies for most of their lives, with various canned foods as an occasional treat. Back then, dry Friskies had ethoxyquin, which I think is worse than menadione :/. Anyway, they were diagnosed with kidney disease around age 16 and we switched them to canned food, mostly Fancy Feast but they did like some flavors of Friskies too. So they probably got all the controversial ingredients.
Is there a particular reason you are considering Fancy Feast as a diet staple? It's not necessarily a very economical option given the product to package ratio and the ingredient quality.
- Thread Starter Thread Starter
- #4
Our previous cat ate like Willowy's for years, too... and she lived to be at least 16 or 17. She was pretty active for her age until almost the end, though she also had kidney disease, plus all sorts of other health issues, including IBD/lymphoma, which was her downfall. I think it was sensitivity to grains and/or fish that caused the digestive problems, but she was too frail for much testing. Low-carbs, high protein, and no carrageenan are the most important things to me in our cats' diet.
Brooksie's health issues made me pretty aware of cat food ingredients and I do avoid menadione for our new cats, other than for occasional treat foods with fish. I'm uncomfortable with menadione, though it feels like opinions about it are polarized. Since we feed mostly raw and homemade foods anyway and not all canned foods have it, it's easy to avoid and I haven't even asked our cat specialist vet about it. It's so hard to decide which risks to accept and reject in cat foods! That said, if I had to choose, I think I'd opt for menadione over, say, carrageenan. And certainly over carby vegetables, which make one of our cats vomit...
- Joined
- May 27, 2017
- Messages
- 270
- Purraise
- 211
How many times have they changed recipes of FF in the last 20 years? And will the next 20 years? No cat can eat the same food for life I think. But, I'm curious to know what food do/did those long lived cats eat. We may learn something.
- Thread Starter Thread Starter
- #7
My first cat ate only Fancy Feast. She was a stray who adopted me when she was about a year old. We were together more than 18 years, and except for a final year, she had no health problems at all.
- Thread Starter Thread Starter
- #9
Thanks for your response, Happily Retired. I think I'm feeding good stuff. So many people bad-mouth FF, but the absence of fruits and veggies tells me it is better than a lot of other food. Also no carreganan.
- Joined
- Sep 2, 2017
- Messages
- 1,878
- Purraise
- 1,498
I think the turkey and giblets pate is the best variety of FF. I don’t think it has menodine and the only crummy ingredients are artificial flavours and guar gum. And yet... I’m still a bit weary of feeding it to my cat. I just wonder about the quality of the meat products. Sourcing in China worries me too.
- Joined
- Jan 1, 2016
- Messages
- 494
- Purraise
- 267
They've changed their formula over the years. I had a cat that lived to 19 and loved Fancy Feast. Her favorite was the chicken hearts and liver. She was a gravy fiend. I also fed her Friskies too. She was really healthy until her last couple of years She died in 2003. So for the younger portion of her life, it was still controversial to even feed your cat wet food as opposed to dry but I had a vet that was early onto the now standard notion that wet was better. And the choices were pretty limited. I remember even in 2003 when it was time to cut back on the ash content, there were pates of Fancy Feast that were great.
I have used it as a side dish to get the cats going so they eat the higher quality canned food.
I have used it as a side dish to get the cats going so they eat the higher quality canned food.
My girl is 18 and has been eating Fancy Feast Classic for probably years, and she's very healthy except for bad hearing. But TBH, I'm a little concerned with the fish addition and all the bad stuff I've been reading.
- Joined
- Feb 6, 2017
- Messages
- 8,674
- Purraise
- 34,615
babs' slave
- My late Father's cat, Victoria, who ended up in my care after his death, started on Fancy Feast when it hit the market, in 1982, at age six. Eating Fancy Feast killed her twenty-four years later, a few days short of her thirtieth birthday.
Fact: cats seem to love it.
Opinion: a happy cat will outlive any cat placed on rations which taste like wood putty.
Most of mine live into their early twenties; one has reached 26, one 24. Two of my current eleven have passed their twenty-first birthdays, and still seem quite animated. They also love Friskies Shreds and Wellness chicken, and everyone is healthy and active. Mine also eat dry food ad libitum, but always have access to canned food, and hence eat so little dry food that a bag lasts eleven cats over a month.
Caveat: their veterinarian sees them regularly (probably three times a month, on average), since he's a close Friend, and if anyone were to develop a problem, it would doubtless be caught early on.
Your girl's eighteen; you've clearly been doing something right. Keep doing it.
.
Thank you for the encouraging post! I laughed heartily at "Eating Fancy Feast killed her twenty-four years later, a few days short of her thirtieth birthday" and so did the two people I told about it. Very well written, I love your sense of humor!
The thing that bothers me about fancy feast is the source of the ingredients but most importantly the fact that the second ingredient is "meat by products". I'm more thAn fine with poultry by products and such but what meat is meat by products actually. It could really be anything. Kind of scary
The AAFCO website says this about meat by-products:
“Meat by-products is the non-rendered, clean parts, other than meat, derived from slaughtered mammals. It includes, but is not limited to, lungs, spleen, kidneys, brain, livers, blood, bone, partially de-fatted low temperature fatty tissue, and stomachs and intestines freed of their contents. It does not include hair, horns, teeth and hoofs. It shall be suitable for use in animal feed. If it bears a name descriptive of its kind, it must correspond thereto.”
The Association of American Feed Control Officials > Consumers > What is in Pet Food
So it' unspecified. I mentioned this in another post but it does allow the company to change the meat source without the consumer's knowledge. We all know a sudden change can cause stomach problems. That's why we mix foods when we switch them.
I knew that was recommended for dry food, but didn't know if it was for wet or not.
So it really could be parts of ANY mammal.... horse, etc. it's just scary not knowing what kind of meat it is.
That is a legit concern, but AAFCO also says this:
"However, to use the generic term "meat" on the label, it can only be from cattle, pigs, sheep or goats. If it comes from any other mammal, the species must be identified (for example, "buffalo" or "venison"), so you can rest easy that if any other species was used, it would have to be declared. Also, if the muscle is from non-mammalian species, such as poultry or fish, it cannot be declared as "meat" but must use the appropriate identifying terms."
