How much do you spend on wet cat food?

[Softmeows]

Hi everyone, so after many tests and trials it looks like my cat is doing much better on canned food only (dry immediately gives her diarrhea). I also add enzymes for her mixed with this food. I have tried to prepare my own food for her but honestly as a vegetarian who doesn't cook meat at home (I am ok to have it for others at home if it comes cooked prepackaged) I find it to be the grossest thing ever and cannot imagine doing it on an ongoing basis. Anyways, I wanted to see how much do people spend monthly on their cat wet food if they feed it exclusively? It looks like I have to spend around $70 per month which is a lot even when compared to the prescription premium dry food (hypoallergenic) she was on before.

 

[Azazel]

I don't do commercial food anymore but when I was giving one of my cats mostly commercial canned/raw food I was spending over 100$ a month on her. I feel like $70 is not that bad if you're buying better quality food. Think of it this way - you're feeding your cat with only $2.33 a day! That's pretty decent.

 

[FeebysOwner]

Hi. I agree with A Azazel - $2.33/day is a bargain! Admittedly, I spend more because Feeby is on urinary care food, which is just a tad over $2/can (5.5 oz). In addition to that I also buy her some cans of Fancy Feast. So, not even adding the cost of some dry urinary care food I keep on hand, I easily spend over $100 a month.

 

[LTS3]

Commercially available raw cat food is easy to feed but can be pricey. I vaguely recall an expensive subscripton service for cooked cat food. I believe it is shipped frozen so you just thaw and feed.

There are affordable brands of canned foods out there. Some TCS discussions:

Healthy but affordable canned food
Affordable canned food?
Cheapest/Most affordable Grain free or healthiest canned food
http://www.thecatsite.com/t/330459/...conomical-way-to-buy-friskies-canned-cat-food
New Affordable PetSmart Brand! =D
4health now has affordable grain-free wet food

I only feed canned food as a snack (cats eat raw) so I only spend maybe $30 every other month or so.

 

[Texaskitty]

I'm spending about $120 a month for wet cat food, for 2 cats. They like Sheba and Friskies morsels in gravy. The wet food is what they like love and what they eat for breakfast and dinner. The rest of the time they have dry cat food available in their bowls all day and they snack on that while we're at work and in the middle of the night.

 

[Softmeows]

So sounds like $70 is reasonable? Why is wet food so expensive though? I feed 2 humans with $300 per month, so that's almost third of that for a small cat

 

[Azazel]

So sounds like $70 is reasonable? Why is wet food so expensive though? I feed 2 humans with $300 per month, so that's almost third of that for a small cat

Well, you probably cook for yourself. Imagine if you were eating out or buying pre-made meals for yourself every day. That would cost a lot more. My costs are cut in half for my cats by making my own cat food.

Also, 2 humans for $300 a month is really good.

 

[EmersonandEvie]

We feed $100ish/month for 3 cats. We buy the big cans of Friskies, very economical, and the cats love them. How hard did I try to make them like the pricier boutique brands

They eat Friskies, Fancy Feast, and Tiny Tiger. I ma looking into have them on Nomnomnow or something similar once or twice a week for variety.

 

[GaryT]

I spend $120 twice a year for Theodore's Blue Ridge Beef shipped to my house and about $45-50 a month on can and dry food. I buy him mostly pate in cans and get the dry from Amazon (Dr Elsies Clean Protein).

 

[She's a witch]

Well, you probably cook for yourself. Imagine if you were eating out or buying pre-made meals for yourself every day. That would cost a lot more. My costs are cut in half for my cats by making my own cat food.

Also, 2 humans for $300 a month is really good.

That’s exactly the realization my husband offered me the other day, when we spent $150 in the pet shop to buy lots of frozen raw. I was like: whaaaaaaat. But then, my husband pointed out that we’ve just spent half of it on a dinner we’ve just been to. On one meal. So yeah, in perspective, given that this food lasts for longer and doesn’t have to be prepared from scratch, it could be worse.

I buy canned also, some of my favorite canned is expensive, and since I’m still not satisfied 100% with the ingredients, I started buying cheaper options as well to even costs out (Tiny tiger, American Journey). I might as well be dissatisfied with cheaper, but still decent food.

But yeah, wet cat food is really expensive in the US. I used to live in one of the most expensive countries in Europe (Luxembourg) and I don’t think I’d spend over there half of what we spend now for canned (both high quality high protein low carbs food).

Btw I’m vegetarian as well, feeding raw, and it took me about a year to treat raw meat as cat food, without emotions. But it wasn’t easy and I’m still torn if I should be happy that I treat the raw meat as cat food. It’s very difficult, so I understand.

 

[SpecterOhPossum]

70 dollars seems low and MORE than fair to me honestly!

Tiki cat after dark is the only commercial food I am alright with; ingredient-wise.
Spec eats tiki cat, miko, and homeade with U-stew nowadays, though miko is being kicked out of this rotation.

Though... With just canned it would be:
1 can of tiki , one can of miko, and a baggie of just chicken meat or a homeade portion on the side daily.
(Spec requires about 150-160 calories)

My math is terrible so bear with me..If off.. but
one week of that (miko and tiki) ..
is about 38$ for about a week
76$ for two weeks..
So..152$ a month

..Not including the stuff I have to add to make it adequate, either! Both of those daily is only about 130-120 calories so I have to add more (chicken leg or wing meat) to make it 150 calories. Which probably would put the cost up to 170$ a month.

Now with homeade (U-STEW powder and chicken thighs)
I do a 120 calorie can of Tiki cat with homeade or chicken on the side to boost to 150 calories on some days
And I do 150 calories of homeade with u-stew on the next days

So..
All in all, monthly, we've gone from around 170$ monthly to 86$ monthly,
just by doing half homecooked. If we did ALL homecooked, it would be even lower I bet.

..That's a huge difference.

 

[Purr-fect]

I wait for a sale and I buy two of these lots per year. Each lot (180 cans), lasts about 6 months. The cans are 10 oz each.

The cats also get dry food as we are gone for 12 or more hours per day.

Buying the food on sale, we are paying about $200.00 monthly, plus perhaps $10.00 monthly for treats.

I dont know how the cats get so big on so little food. The wet is low cal paw licken chicken and the dry is natures instinct chicken, and the treats are greenies....given sparingly.

 

[WillowMarie]

I tend to buy in bulk when on sale, so not sure how much per month. But 1 cat, 2 kittens, a 3 0z. serving for each morning and night, and I've been buying sales close to 40 cents/3 oz., so it seems the wet food would be close to $72 plus tax in a 30 day month for 3 cats. That's about $24/cat/month for wet food. Although I did buy the friskies chunky because my cats haven't been a huge fan of the pates I bought, and add 1 friskies 5 oz. over the course of 3 or more meals (just a small spoonful to add flavor and a few chunks), so that raises a few cents each meal per cat when that is used. Went kind crazy with recent sales on chewy and finally calculated how much cat food I have.... should have enough wet until the beginning of May, haha.

They also get dry food to supplement. The kittens were going through about a 3.15 lb. bag of dry a month, I think, but I had 2 free bag coupons and 2 $2 off coupons for purina kitten chow, so four bags cost me close to probably $6 total for about 4 months. I splurged on Merrick dry kitten food when it was on sale at chewy, and bought 3 7lb bags at $16.19 cause I wanted something higher quality, so that would add about $8 per month.

Isabelle only gets a small amount of dry food. The bags won't be opened for a while, but I bought 2 6 lb. bags of merrick for her, too, when on sale for $14.76. That should last her quite a while, so maybe $2 or less added onto the month.

So probably about $82/month for a cat and 2 kittens currently, or about $27.33 plus tax per cat per month.

 

[MissClouseau]

I live in Istanbul and pay 330 lira on wet food (and another 140 on dry food) per month as they are all imported + currency exchange. For scale in the economy, minimum wage is currently 2,020.

It was even more expensive until Hima got tired of the more expensive food.

 

[MoonstoneWolf]

I get Friskies. The cats won't eat anything else and like I read the worse cat food is better then the ones they won't touch. I spend $120 a month on food as I'm feeding 3 cats, sometimes 4 with Friday treats of Freshpet.

Oh and the Friskies I buy is the large 13 oz can for 80 cents by my house as well as the small cans. I am leery of buy generic brand cat food. I'm off to find some giblets for me and the cats today.

 

[mizzely]

I spend roughly $40 a month on cat food for my 9 lb 10 year old. I just buy on sale a lot!

 

[jefferd18]

I feed seventeen cats a day with wet and dry food. I would say I spend 10-15 dollars a day

 

[tuffsmom]

I spend about $42 a month on Fancy Feast . I order from Chewy.

 

[lucicat]

I haven't figured this out yet. .. with two kittens who keep changing their mind about what food they like. . .but I did do an order with CHewy and when you do an autoship it's cheaper plus your first autoship order gets 20% off. So I got a great deal on that one order.

Right now I order TikiCat AfterDark, because I am very picky about ingredients and one kitten loves this one ( It's $$$ though) and Newman's Own organics chicken and liver pate. I did buy raw (frozen pellets) once when they were on sale at a local pet store and I mix a bit of those in. Super easy. . .just pretty pricey. . .I don't know what it would cost to feed all raw, but a lot. I would except at this point don't know if my kittens would even eat it. I've thought about making my own raw, but even not being a vegetarian I"m not sure I want to buy a meat grinder and go through all that. I also leave out some dry food, Origen's, another very $$ brand, but I don't want to be just feeding empty carbs!
Once they have reached adult weight, I"ll get more serious about figuring out what different options cost and maybe even making my own food.

 

[Paris Pluto]

I have three cats and spend $122 on wet food, $50 on treats and $20 on dry food per month. After typing this, I just gave myself a panic attack adding all that up in my head.