Dry Cat Food Question...

[InfernoOrangeSS]

I have 2 beautiful cats that I adopted from the Humane Society because my daughters wanted to have a pet when I had to send my dogs away, (I live in an apt. and the people downstairs claimed they barked all day. They are currently with my ex-wife who I know will care for them.). I love cats, so it was an easy decision for me. I wanted "rescue" cats since I think the cats at the HS need a loving home more than a breeders cats.
Anyways, my question is this: I have always fed my cats a combination of Orijen cat food with a small amount of Science Diet cat food added to it. They have always eaten it with enthusiasm. Recently, I saw where Dr. Elsey's cat food might be better than Orijen's. I bought a bag of the chicken recipe and my cats seem to love it as well. Am I doing any disservice to my beautiful cats by giving them a food that is not up to par? I have been thinking of cutting out the Science Diet portion all together.
(As a side note, I give them a can of Blue Buffalo wet food at least twice a week just because I think cats need a wet food as well.)

Any thoughts or help on the subject would be welcomed. I want to do right by my cats.
Thank you!

 

[maggie101]

CatFoodDB - Cat Food Reviews to help you find the best cat food for your cat
science diet is not a good brand. If they are adult cats feed them more wet

Orijen and Dr elseys are good brands for dry
And welcome to the site!
Check out all the articles
Do a search you will find lots of threads on wet and dry food

 

[Cat McCannon]

The worst wet food is healthier for cats than the best dry food.

Dry food has carbs which cats get no nutritional value from and their bodies convert carbs into body fat. Even “grain free” dry food has carbs. I think carbs are needed to hold the kibble together. Without carbs, dry food would just be powder.

Can you post photos of your kitties? We’d love to see them!

 

[InfernoOrangeSS]

The worst wet food is healthier for cats than the best dry food.

Dry food has carbs which cats get no nutritional value from and their bodies convert carbs into body fat. Even “grain free” dry food has carbs. I think carbs are needed to hold the kibble together. Without carbs, dry food would just be powder.

Can you post photos of your kitties? We’d love to see them!

As soon as I can remember how to get their pics on here, I will share them with you. One is a Russian Grey name Natasha, and the other is an American black cat named Raven. Promise I will get pics as soon as I can.


Thank you for the info and support. I will definitely up the wet food for my precious cats. Any suggestions on a top of the line wet food? (I am sure if I peruse the board I will come to a good concensus, but I was hoping for a quick cheat to my search.)

 

[InfernoOrangeSS]

Hopefully this works:

 

[chelsmarie]

Honestly, I’m sure people will disagree, but I think the Fancy Feast pates are a good option Affordable, low-carb and cats actually like them! I’ve tried the expensive foods…my cats could not care less. She also likes Merrick and American Journey. She hated Wellness and Weruva.

 

[lisahe]

Dr. Elsey's chicken dry food is very good, a rare exception for dry food because it has no fillers and extremely low carbs (under 3% dry matter). We use it as a treat and topper for one of our cats. ( Cat McCannon , I agree with you about pretty much any dry food, including Dr. E's other dry foods, which have chickpeas! But the chicken food really is different.) Dr. E's food is great stuff but I wouldn't want to feed too much of it because it's very calorie dense (this is why our other cat, who tends to gain weight can't have it) and, well, it's dry. And feeding only dry food can contribute to kidney disease. I make sure to add a little extra water to Ireland's food even though she doesn't get lot of the dry food.

As for picking wet foods, low carbs and high protein are most important. No grains, no legumes (peas, lentils, chickpeas, etc. aren't meat protein!), no potato, and so on. I do, grudgingly, feed some foods with very small amounts of tapioca but they're all well under 5% dry matter carbs. Our options are somewhat limited because of food sensitivities to stuff like agar-agar, fish, and green lipped mussels but homemade cooked food rounds out the menu.

For canned food we feed a selection that includes relatively inexpensive Tiny Tiger (only turkey and giblet pate to avoid fish) and Sheba pates to Rawz turkey and chicken pates, which are much more expensive. I totally agree with what chelsmarie says about Fancy Feast and the whole question of cheap and expensive foods. And, ultimately, Natasha and Raven will help you figure out their diet! There may be foods they consistently reject and there may be foods they love that have ingredients that you don't like -- you can feed those only as occasional treats. (I used to do that with fish/chicken foods, until Ireland was diagnosed with asthma, cutting fish from her diet.) We use Dr. E's food and freeze-dried chicken treats as toppers that encourage the cats to eat foods they feel "meh" about.

Good luck figuring out a menu for your beautiful cats, it may take some time (trial and error are a big part of this) but I'm sure you'll find some good food to make them happy.

 

[Cat McCannon]

Hopefully this works:

You have a coupla beauties!

In addition to wet food, we also feed Belle raw. She gets fed three times a day and each meal is something different. Raw is usually commercial offerings with complete nutrition and sometimes what we call "Lizards & Gizzards". L&G is simply chicken innards- Liver, gizzard & heart. L&G (especially gizzards) helps to keep Belle's teeth & gums clean.

We feel it's important to feed cats different things each day. If fed the same thing over and over, they can get to the point they'll eat nothing else. If that food becomes unavailable, they'll refuse to eat. This problem is compounded by the fact cats do get bored eating the same thing every day and will stop eating their favorite food but won't eat anything else.

This is just general advice. Every cat is a law unto itself and anyone that thinks they've got cats figured only has to get one more cat to discover all the rules have changed.

 

[JamesCalifornia]

The worst wet food is healthier for cats than the best dry food.

Honestly, I’m sure people will disagree, but I think the Fancy Feast pates are a good option Affordable, low-carb and cats actually like them! I’ve tried the expensive foods…my cats could not care less.

~ I agree % .

 

[InfernoOrangeSS]

Thank you all for so much good information to consider. I was worried about posting and having a hundred self-righteous cat owners scolding me for being a horrible cat parent. I tend to go a bit overboard in taking care of my pets, so I want the best I can for them so that they live long and happy lives. I look forward to reading this forum's information and learning all I can in researching what is best for my precious cat babies. You guys are awesome!

 

[Furballsmom]

You guys are awesome!

 

[treeclimber]

One good thing about Science Diet is that almost everything they make is low in phosphorus. Not “renal diet” low (which can be low enough in protein that it’s not good for a healthy cat), but Science Diet is usually under 1% phosphorus on a dry matter basis.

Some premium/high protein cat food brands can be high in phosphorus, which may not have any noticeable effect when your cat is young, but a lifetime of high-phosphorus foods might increase the risk of chronic renal failure later in life. (This is still an area of ongoing research - there are now several studies showing that high phosphorus can cause signs of kidney damage in healthy cats, but there are not yet studies showing whether limiting phosphorus throughout a cat’s life reduces risk of chronic renal failure later in life.)

If you do feed Science Diet, go with the wet food instead of the dry. And if you decide to feed a different brand that focuses on being natural or high protein, check the phosphorus content, and also steer clear of anything that contains lentils (lentils are a suspected explanation for why some grain-free foods have been associated with heart failure in dogs and cats).

B.F.F. (Best Feline Friend) and Weruva are two popular premium brands that offer some fairly low-phosphorus options, but do check the phosphorus content of the specific flavor/food to be sure. Here is a good site for checking phosphorus content of canned cat foods available in the US. If you get phosphorus percent somewhere else, make sure it’s on a dry matter basis, otherwise it’s distorted by how much water is in the food. If you see a number under 0.5% from a food that’s not a special renal food, it’s very likely you’re seeing an “as fed” number that needs to be converted to dry matter before it can be meaningfully compared.

Some people object to Science Diet because some of their formulas contain wheat gluten. But they do offer a grain-free line, and their “sensitive skin and stomach” foods also have no gluten.

Avoiding gluten is probably a good idea in a cat with digestive issues. In a cat without digestive issues it’s a little more debatable. Gluten is a protein, not a carb, but it is a plant protein and not something cats evolved to eat. I don’t think gluten is evil and I happily eat quite a lot of it myself in the form of seitan and other vegetarian meat substitutes, but humans are omnivores and cats are carnivores so I’d prefer to err on the side of caution and feed my cat protein from animal sources.

The other common objection to Science Diet is that it contains meat by-products (body parts of an animal that aren’t usually sold for human consumption in western countries). Personally I don’t have any objection to this - if a cat catches a mouse it eats the whole mouse, including the lungs/intestines/etc. And Science Diet specifically lists what animal the byproducts come from (eg. “pork byproducts”) so you still know what you’re feeding your cat, it’s not mystery meat from an unknown species.

That was a long reply, so here’s a summary:

• Canned is better than dry.
• Science Diet isn’t necessarily bad, and does offer some options with no grains/gluten if you want to avoid that.
• You may want to watch the phosphorus content of what you feed. Science Diet, B.F.F., and Weruva are three brands that offer some normal adult cat foods that are relatively low in phosphorus.
• It’s probably a good idea to avoid any foods that contain lentils

 

[InfernoOrangeSS]

Do any of you have experience with Blue Buffalo's wet food? I try to stay away from fish in my cat's diet just because I am fearful of mercury in fish. I just wondered how it stacks up against other wet foods.

 

[Furballsmom]

Not quite what you were looking for, but I like Blue's kibble. I think they are a decent brand.

 

[JamesCalifornia]

I was worried about posting and having a hundred self-righteous cat owners scolding me for being a horrible cat parent.

~ Here in the USA there is a social site called ' NextDoor ' where they are famous for doing exactly what you mentioned. It is one big reason I stopped visiting the site ...

 

[Cat McCannon]

I was worried about posting and having a hundred self-righteous cat owners scolding me for being a horrible cat parent.

We took Friday off

 

[Morpheus1967]

As someone above mentioned, your cats will tell you what brand of wet food they like. I have a 13 year old cat who was just diagnosed with diabetes in June. He had been eating dry food all of his life, and free fed at that. So I knew for his health, I had to get him switched over to wet food, and at set times. All I can recommend is to not buy too much of a particular brand, or a particular consistency, until you find out what suits them. I made the mistake of overbuying at first, to save the money by buying in quantity. All I did was end up spending a lot of money and making several donations to the local pet food pantry.

And even now, when I have found out what Miller likes, it goes in rotations. Some days, it's beef pate. Some days, it's chicken shreds. Some days, it's turkey chunks. And some days, it's fish. ( I know, blasphemy here, but my vet approves lol).

Fortunately, I am in the position financially to absorb the losses of the wet food he won't eat. I also realize many are not. So just go slow.

I will also add that I do still free feed him some dry. He will get 1/4 cup daily of a mixture of Orijen (one of the lower carb dry foods) and Royal Canin Glycobalance, which is a prescription food. Because he eats such a small portion of this daily, having it go stale is a real hazard. I alleviate this by using my food vacuum sealer to portion out the dry in 1 pound packages. Stays as fresh as the day I bought it.