Cooked meal for kittens

[sharon87]

Hi, I'm new here and am a new fur mom. I have NEVER had a kitten before only dogs when I was young. I adopted Zack about 3 months ago. Then he weighed 450 grams!! at the age of 2 months old . With a lot of work, sweat and vet visits finally he is 2 Kg and he is healthy. He has had 2 vaccinations and the last one due next month. I'm also planning to get him neutered the month after that. My main concern is about his food.

I feed Zack Science Plan (as recommended by my vet) and I give him daily small amounts of wet food. I give him the Applaws wet canned food. The problem started when he started to refuse to eat any dry kibble. He only wants the wet food. I heard Applaws wet food is very good but its just a complimentary food and not to be given alone plus it is VERY EXPENSIVE. He refuses to eat.. I feed him twice a day (morning before work and evening when I'm back). I do not leave food out all day as I read its not how cats eat. He doesn't eat breakfast AT ALL and he waits till 9 10 pm (when he is STARVING without a choice) then only he eats his kibbles. Right after he finishes his kibbles, I will give him some Applaws and he GOBBLES it down within seconds!

So anyway, since he has started to refuse to eat the kibbles I thought I would buy some other dry food for him. I am from Malaysia so choices were kinda limited. I sat down and did my research. I WAS SHOCKED!!!!! Every so called top brand I can get here has had a recall with some extreme cases of DEATHS!! I am worried. I really don't know what to do. I am considering switching him to home made food. And yes I realized right after he eats the kibbles he is very thirsty!

I know there would have been other threads with similar questions and I have read them and even visited a few websites but I really don't understand and I have some concerns regarding feeding home made food.

I would really appreciate if someone will take the time to explain things to me.

1. Should I give raw or cooked food? All the websites I have visited encouraged raw food but I am worried about Salmonella and other diseases.. I mean, I wanna give my kitten the best and not make him sick! 

2. The additional vitamins I am supposed to put into his food... It it specific supplements for cats or can I buy human vitamins and give him?

3. And some places claim that their cats get gum diseases when they feed raw/ wet food alone without kibbles and the pictures are horrific! How do I avoid this?

4. Cost wise is a factor to me. I mean I do not earn that much and I give the very best I can for the little guy. Science plan and Applaws are quite expensive here and I still buy it for him. I was wondering is switching to home made food will cost a bomb? I really cant stretch the budget that much. Free range chicken and organic food is EXTREMELY expensive!

Please help. I need some serious advice!!

 Thanks in advance!! =)

P.S- I'm sorry for the long post!

 

[red top rescue]

What country are you in?  That would help us look at your standard local food choices.  I don't recognize any of the brands you are writing about.

 

[sharon87]

I'm from Malaysia. Basically we get food from UK and USA (to name a few). Local food are totally useless and to be honest and I wouldn't even bother getting those.

 

[denice]

If a raw or cooked diet is something you are interested in doing we have a forum for that http://www.thecatsite.com/f/65/raw-home-cooked-cat-food     There are stickies at the top of the forum with general information.

If you are unsure of meat sources you could go with a cooked diet.  For people here in the U.S. a homemade diet is cheaper than good quality commercial food.

 

[Willowy]

Can you get Fancy Feast or Friskies? With an international brand like Purina I would expect some uniformity of quality, so those would be my choices.

But a homemade diet would be an excellent choice if you're so inclined . The resource threads in the homemade food section are very useful.

 

[sharon87]

Can you get Fancy Feast or Friskies? With an international brand like Purina I would expect some uniformity of quality, so those would be my choices.

But a homemade diet would be an excellent choice if you're so inclined

. The resource threads in the homemade food section are very useful.

Hi Im not so keen on Fancy feast, Friskies or Purina as nearly every website that i have visited said they are very bad for pets. Yeah I'm planning to have a go at homemade diet but it seems so confusing. So I came here for further clarification.

 
If a raw or cooked diet is something you are interested in doing we have a forum for that http://www.thecatsite.com/f/65/raw-home-cooked-cat-food     There are stickies at the top of the forum with general information.

If you are unsure of meat sources you could go with a cooked diet.  For people here in the U.S. a homemade diet is cheaper than good quality commercial food.

Thank you Denice.I will look at the link provided. Unfortunately we here do not have the quality of stuff you might get there in the U.S.  So that's why I'm so confused as most of the pages online refers to U.S or U.K. I want to give the best I can afford to the little one and getting started seems to make me light headed with all the information.. Thank you once again.

 

[sharon87]

Hello, can someone direct me to a good and reliable website with home cook recipe for kittens? (not raw but cooked recipe's). thank you.

 

[happybird]

Only you can make the decision on what to feed your cat. The best thing to do is what you have been doing- research as much as you can. This link is to a fantastic site all about cat nutrition and has a section on making your own food. That section includes a recipe, including the proper supplements needed. It is a favorite reference tool for many Cat Site members and contains the answers for many of your questions.
http://www.catinfo.org/

The idea about feeding dry kibble cleans a cat's teeth is a myth. It is similar to saying eating cookies or crackers cleans a human's teeth- it just doesn't happen. The best way to care for teeth is to brush them. You can start out with a Q-tip and special, cat safe toothpaste from the pet store or vet, and work up to using a little toothbrush.

Many folks do not realize that Salmonella can be present in dry kibble. A cat with a healthy immune system should be unaffected by it. Safe food handling practices when feeding raw can virtually eliminate any potential issue.

This site is geared towards dogs, but much of the info is relevant to cats, too, and addresses salmonella concerns.
http://rawfed.com/myths/

 

[Willowy]

Friskies and Fancy Feast are not very high-quality foods. But they aren't terrible either. Purina has had very few recalls and is usually pretty good about safety. So in a different country where I'm not sure of the food safety, I'd go with an international brand name because their quality control is likely to be higher than a local brand, that's all I meant.

I think you could probably find all the supplements you'd need. You can use human supplements, as long as you're careful to get the dosage right. Can you order online? If there's something you can't get locally that might be an option.

 

[Willowy]

Here is our homecooked resource thread http://www.thecatsite.com/t/264153/home-cooked-cat-food-resources

 

[sharon87]

Thank you!

 

[sharon87]

Friskies and Fancy Feast are not very high-quality foods. But they aren't terrible either. Purina has had very few recalls and is usually pretty good about safety. So in a different country where I'm not sure of the food safety, I'd go with an international brand name because their quality control is likely to be higher than a local brand, that's all I meant.

I think you could probably find all the supplements you'd need. You can use human supplements, as long as you're careful to get the dosage right. Can you order online? If there's something you can't get locally that might be an option.

Yeah, I'm looking into that. Still on the research stage. Thank you for your help 

 But I'm genuinely surprised that you guys haven't heard of Science Plan, Royal Canin, Applaws, Blackwood etc. Kinda thought they were famous. They are the high end commercial food here..

 

[autumnrose74]

Science Plan? Do you mean Science Diet? Because if so, yes we've heard of it and it is actually bottom-of-the-barrel both from a quality standpoint and from a marketing standpoint. Their foods tend to contain a lot of unnecessary grains, they claim "chicken is the #1 ingredient" but for kibble you must consider ingredients on a dry-matter basis - therefore the grains actually are higher on the list than the chicken. Cats do not need corn and wheat gluten, soy, and powdered cellulose, but those ingredients are all used- and they outweigh the supposedly #1 ingredient, chicken. Their wet foods are all high-carb as well.

And then there is the fact that they have infiltrated a lot of the vet schools in the US, so the students are not getting nutrition information that is appropriate for a dog or cat and based upon biology - instead they are getting a marketing line from a pet food company representative.

Another thing they do is give someone the task of going on Amazon (& probably other online stores), reading the bad reviews of their foods, & posting comments on the one-star (negative) reviews that are supposed to counter what is being said. But instead of actually doing a point by point debate, they use one of a number of pre-written statements. If you read through long enough, you will see the same comments being used over and over, sometimes for multiple reviews on the same food flavors! One guy wrote a review of their "Oral Care" dry food, where the kibbles are bigger than normal, to encourage chewing. His cat swallowed the kibble (which is normal because cats don't chew their food!) & nearly choked to death. The Hill's rep didn't even offer an apology, just posted the usual pre-written response comment on the guy's review.

There is nothing "scientific" about Science Diet, & I would suggest you steer clear of it.

 

[Willowy]

Royal Canin is common in the US. The others are probably UK brands so I don't know much about them, but I have heard the names, probably on this forum from the UK members . Royal Canin is sort of mid-quality here, but, yes, if that's one of the best you can get, it would be a solid choice. They have a good reputation.

 

[red top rescue]

Science PLAN is what Hills calls their food in the UK, basically the same as Science DIET in the U.S., and I do think vets are totally brainwashed to use it even internationally.  Hills is a big corporation with a lot of influence.  It used to be considered one of the better foods maybe 20-30 years ago because nobody else was offering much of anything in the way of quality in pet foods so it was good in comparison.  Now we're in the midst of a new holistic pet food revolution so there are many choices.  One problem is that some manufacturers produce for several companies, and even if the company's food is good, if one of the producing factories gets a bacterial problem, all the brands they produce get recalled and then all have a black mark against them.  Purina probably has the least recalls because they own their production factories and produce their own foods.  Smaller companies don't do this so are sharing facilities that use different ingredients form different sources to make all the different foods they produce.  If I didn't have so many cats coming and going here, I would definitely make my own food.  At the larger rescue I foster for, they DO use Purina Dry food (and various kinds of wet food) and have not yet had a contamination problem.  We do have to watch out for the occasional cat with food allergies, however!  They just took in two 6-year-old Manx brothers who had itchy inflamed ears chronically.  When I took them to Petco and put them on Spot's Stew, their ears cleared up within a week.  Who knew?