New Kittens Coming Tomorrow...

...and my head is spinning trying to figure out what food to feed. I haven’t had kittens in 16 years, and I’ll admit that at that time I was in my early 20’s and poor and ignorant and I just fed dry food. In my cats later years I learned how important wet food is, but by that point they were definitely dry food addicts and getting change proved pretty impossible.

This time I want to do it the proper way, but due to some circumstances that are less than ideal, these kittens are coming sooner than expected and I have to pick them up from the shelter tomorrow.

I have tried to do a lot of reading and investigating and looking at various pet stores and there is just so much out there, and it feels like some of the info contradicts some other info....argh!

Can someone give me some brands that are considered at least reasonably healthy/proper specifically for kittens?

I have some wellness and instinct canned kitten food, also saw halo and nulo. Are any of these brands reasonable? I’d like to start off well from jump; I don’t mind spending more if there is indeed a difference in quality ingredients, lack of stuff that isn’t ideal,etc.

As kittens, should I also offer dry food? If so, I’d love a rec on a specific type or two for that.

How wonderful! Congrats!

I've never taken care of kittens as my first cat was 6 years old when I adopted him. But I have heard that kittens require tons of calories due to their growing bodies. For the cost, I'd suggest feeding dry as it is higher in calories (though possibly high in carbs which leads to sugar which leads to obese/sick cats if given too much). But if cost is no issue, I'd definitely suggest raw food as I believe it's an amazing diet and greatly mimics wild cats' diet.

Canned foods I'd suggest are: ziwi peak and feline natural. They are a little more costly but less carb-y ingredients. My cat has never tried halo or nulo, but he did like Wellness Core & Instinct. For a dry, my cat is on Ziwi Peak air-dried and Dr. Elsey's Clean Protein. They are the two most, at least in my opinion, less carb-y products on the market right now.

Make sure you have at least two litter boxes, a cat tree and a few toys (catnip and wands) to keep those energetic kittens company!

Please post a pic of the two once you have them safe in your home ~

The foods you mention should be fine. All cats are funny with what they like, mine do not like the brands you mention, other than nulo, they do like this one.

When i had kittens i kept dry out all the time, they need lots of food for growing. I normally used merrick kitten food. I do like kitten dry food, as the kibble is smaller, which i think is easier for them. I used a variety of wet, kitten and all life stages. Try different brands, different proteins, and different textures, this will keep them open to more options, and you can also find out what they prefer.

I will link the places below that i like to look up cat food.

https://catinfo.org/docs/CatFoodProteinFatCarbPhosphorusChart.pdf

CatFoodDB - Cat Food Reviews to help you find the best cat food for your cat

Fancy Feat canned kitten is just fine for now while you look into other brands Really any kitten food brand is good. The high end expensive brands sold at independent / specialty pet stores aren't necessary but a nice splurge once in awhile. What brand(s) the kittens like to eat and you can afford and can easily find in the local stores is fine

Nature's Variety Instinct is a good brand. I've never fed the kitten food, which is pretty new, but currently feed the raw food to my cats and I occasionally feed some of the canned.

How many kittens are you getting? Kittens eat a lot of food so you should think about buying a brand of food that comes in 5.5 oz cans or larger since a 3 oz can is one meal for most kittens (and a mere snack for piggies). I think Wellness has kitten food in 5.5 oz can sizes. I know Friskies has a 13 oz can size but I think that is adult food.

Dry food can be left out for snacking on. Measure maybe 1 cup or so of food daily. Dollar stores have inexpensive measuring cups or maybe you already have one that isn't used.

I just looked on my can of Friskies pate and it says Adult cats. I think Demi ate this when he was a baby, but I can't remember. I know he ate Fancy Feast Classics.

Friskies and Fancy Feast may not be the top notch food you want but their Classics Pate are VERY low carbs/grains which are great for kitties.

Beyond the Fancy Feast Classic and Wellness Core canned kitten foods, there's also Nutro Natural Choice kitten food, which is a chicken pate. I still occasionally feed the Wellness food to our cats, who are now adults -- they love it.

Personally, I'd try to feed as much wet food as possible -- to avoid the carbs and grains that jen mentioned -- though I know that's not always practical, particularly with kittens, who need to eat constantly!

And a huge yes to H himawari 's suggestion of buying a cat tree! The condo that we bought for our cats seemed expensive at the time but it was a great investment: the cats still love it almost five years later, it's lasted very well, and it gives them the vertical space that cats need so much. Thank goodness because it helps keep them from climbing the bookcases!

Fancy Feast makes two kitten specific flavors, whitefish and turkey, which my girls ate because that was what they were being fed at the shelter. They're fine. I began giving them all life stages foods at about 6 months because they seemed bored with only two options. For dry we feed Tiki Born Carnivore, it's listed as all life stages.

Thank you everyone for your replies. I ended up getting a variety of wet food, as well as some of the purina pro plan wet food they ate at the shelter, in case transitioning them onto different wet foods was tricky. I want them to be open to eating a variety as I made the mistake of letting my first two cats stick with one food --- which caused a LOT of issues later in life.

I also got some of the purina pro plan kitten dry, as well as some halo kitten dry. I ended up mixing them together as they weren't all that interested in the halo kitten dry alone. I didn't see Merrick dry at Petsmart but looks like i can order online.

The story behind these guys is pretty cool -- at least I think so! My husband was driving around 11:30 pm on Memorial Day weekend to pick up some groceries as we had a bunch of guests. He called me in a bit of a panic after he'd only been gone 5 minutes. He said that as he was driving, two kittens walked in the road and he did have time to stop, but it unnerved him. He said they were very little, and looked like they had not been with mama for quite a few days -- they were dirty, small, etc. As he sat there with them, another two walked out of the field next to the road. We live right outside of Pittsburgh, so it's a mix of farms right next to very suburban neighborhoods. He waited around for quite some time to make sure there wasn't a mama cat stalking around, but his gut told him that these kitties were quite fragile and hadn't been taken care of.

He called a friend who he knew was involved in animal advocacy/rescue. The friend said he could pick the kittens up and get them to a shelter/vet the next am if we could keep them in our house til morning. Now, at this point I have two almost-16-year old cats upstairs. One has cancer and is in hospice care. The other had CKD (and unfortunately lymphoma but we didn't discover that until a few weeks ago). So, we had to keep the kittens segregated. Luckily I had a big kennel and I set it up in our mudroom with lots of blankets. I had no idea how old these kittens were -- all I knew is they were small and hungry and filthy. Their eyes will full of goop, there was straw and dirt stuck in the goop...there was one who was so small and so quiet and still that I wasn't sure he would make it through the night.

I didn't have the right feeding utensils for kittens this little, but we stayed up late that night trying to use little syringes to get some kitten milk into them. I mixed some wet food with a lot of water, and one of the kittens did actually lap that up pretty effectively. I would try to gently clean them up as much as i could. The amazing thing to me was how much these kittens wanted to be held. I have seen other feral cats that sure as heck would not have let me hold them, much less crawled into my lap! Maybe it was because of how very little these guys were? We found out later that they were maybe 3 weeks old at this point. Yikes!!

They survived the night, and our friend picked them up. We kept tabs on them periodically through the weeks -- we knew that they had seen a vet who said they were severely dehydrated and malnourished and likely would not have survived another 24-48 hours on their own. They all had eye infections but everyone cleaned up well with food and medicine. They went to a foster family until they were old and well enough, and then they went to the shelter for adoption. I assumed that they'd be adopted quickly --- after all, they were kittens, etc. and my naive view was that kittens go easily.

We never intended on adopting them -- again, we had two older, sick cats -- one that we knew would likely not last until the fall. We knew we would adopt when both of those cats had passed, but it never occurred to us that it would end up being THESE kittens.

So, time passes, and we hear periodically that they are still in the shelter. My husband's company ends up doing some fundraising for the shelter, and my family went out to see the facility as we would like to volunteer. Then my cat with CKD gets diagnosed with lymphoma, had a belly filling with fluid, and after 3 weeks on hospice care it was time to let him go. This was shocking as in my mind his sister, who we found out had cancer in April, was the one who would be dying first! The hospice vet said the sister would likely only have a few weeks left too.

My son keeps talking about the kittens...my husband keeps talking about the kittens...we see the kittens again and see how MANY kittens there are at this shelter, and hear about how so many of them end up staying for years because there are just so many cats in this area. The kittens are around 12 weeks old now, and while the shelter is a great shelter with wonderful employees who do a great job...it's still a shelter and these kittens are spending a lot of time in a cage.

We decide to go ahead and get these kittens, even though we do still have our little girl kitty with cancer. Our house is big enough that the kittens can have their own floor -- in an area that our girl kitty never goes to anywhere. I read up a lot on introducing cats, and we will very slowly go through the process, but if at any point it isn't going well, we can scrap the whole thing. Again, the floor the kittens are currently occupying is plenty big for them even if they need to stay restricted there for a month or two, and the hospice vet thinks it's likely that our little (well, really should say old!) girl will be saying goodbye within weeks.

Yes, we do feel a little nuts for taking all 4. I always would have gotten 2 kittens, but never imagined 4! But after all these little guys have gone through together, there was no way we could separate them.

They are having a blast in their new home. Running around and playing and reminding me what it's like to have littles ones in the house! I'm getting a crash course in kitten-proofing again.

The only concern is that they are all sneezing and seem full of snot. The shelter sent us home with medication for one kitten that they said has had a respiratory infection for a few days now, but they didn't think the others had one. But yesterday they were sneezing all over and even some snuffling/wheezing. It doesn't seem to be bugging them much -- they are playing and eating and drinking and using the litter boxes (I have 3 up there) with gusto. At first I wondered if they were reacting to something in the environment? Our house is clean, but they are up on our 4th floor which is largely my son's video game/movie area, plus some random toys and household items that I haven't yet sorted out from when we moved here in February. So, it is probably more dusty than the areas of the house that I'm in and clean daily.

Then this morning I found a flea on one of them. They have had frontline at the shelter.
I called the shelter today and reported my concerns and they were lovely. The Exec Director is going to come to our house and bring antibiotics for the other 3 (same antibiotic they sent home for one -- although if it's 4 days in and he's still sneezing and wheezing that makes me wonder if it's not working??) plus an oral flea med that should work immediately. Plus some meds for eye infections in case, as some of them have a bit of watery eyes.

I'm hopeful all of this will work, but wondering about allergies? Is that possible/likely? I'm going to put them in a kennel and move them temporarily to another part of the house so I can go into their area and really do a major vacuum/dusting job. I also put a HEPA air purifier up there.

Here is a pic--we do assume there may have been at least 2 if not 3 'fathers' with this litter:

Cute pic! I love how there are 3 in one cat bed and the other cat gets his own to himself.

How adorable! Congratulations on your new furry arrivals. When Toffee and Fudge were kittens, they mostly had Whiskas - when they were in the shelter, they wouldn't eat much at all; and when we asked about any dietary requirements they had the volunteers said they may need a boost of support with eating since they never finished all of their food and only had a few bites. Now, they pretty much demolish their food within a few minutes and are always meowing for more! I don't know where you're from so I don't know if Whiskas is available in your country, but it could be a consideration.
I've heard that some supermarket own label pet foods aren't good for cats since they don't consist of much "genuine" meat that provides nutritions (two of my family friends who are vets pointed this out to us).

You can't over feed kittens! They are growing fast, plus hyper active! Lots of kitten food, both meat and kibble. Thanks for rescuing these kittens. You tell quite a story!