What do you feed your cat?

[asscherisme]

What do you who have cats feed them?

And why did you make that choice?

Do recalls spook you and have you stopped using brands after recalls? Or do you continue to trust them?

 

[zoebartlett]

We only feed our two cats dry food, and we recently switched from Iams to Innova EVO. The vet told us that we should feed them food with at least 50% protein, which was something we honestly hadn't really considered before. A 6.5 pound bag is about $20-$25, but it's worth it.

If I found out that the EVO was recalled, we'd most likely find something else, but I'd be really unhappy about it. Once the recall was lifted, I'd probably go back.

 

[kelpie]

I feed my 13yo "taste of the wild" dry food. I selected it because it has no animal by-products and little or no grain which I think are the most important criteria for cat/dog food. I get it at tractor supply. I would sometimes buy orijen dog food but just the recall of the cat food inspired me not to buy the dog food any longer so the pups are on "taste of the wild" too. I do believe a high quality food can maintain a healthier urinary tract in cats later in life. I attributed my 18yo cat living such a long and active life because my mom fed him good quality food back before it was in style.

 

[shihtzulover]

When my parents and I had a cat, we fed him Hills Science Diet - it was the urinary formula, because he suffered from urine blockages. I'm not sure that the new food prevented them (we switched him to distilled water, too, and it seemed like that really made the difference), but we continued to use it, just to be safe. I'm not aware of any recalls that took place when he was alive, but I'm not sure what we would have done if there had been, since we liked to keep him on the urinary formula.

My fiance has a cat, but I'm having a brain blip right now, and I can't remember what he feeds her. I do remember him saying that he has pretty much always fed her this brand, and that he just switches up the flavor (apparently, it comes in two different ones). I haven't ever heard him say something about a recall.


Don't these recalls affect dog food as well? I definitely should pay more attention, because I certainly don't want to give my dog something that is unsafe for him. I was under the impression that there were only a couple of major recalls, but I guess I'm wrong. Anyway, I feed him Hills Science Diet for sensitive stomach, as suggested by our vet - he was having issues with frequent vomiting before we started him on this food. His problems seemed to really start when I moved to an apartment awhile back and began to go to work every day, so I think that a lot of it has to do with separation anxiety, but this food seems to help a lot regardless.

 

[Novel]

We feed our cats Petguard. We did a mix of wet and dry for a while, but our vet expressed some concerns about urinary blockages, and then one of them got crystals, so its wet only now.

If my brand had a recall, I would never use them again, but I'm not going to cook or go raw-food for my cats. I mean, we all eat spinach again, and eggs, and all those other human foods that had recalls and outbreaks a couple years back.

 

[MichelleCarmen]

My cat is fed Avoderm. The reason we feed him that is b/c one of my previous cats use to get tiny skin sores and we took her to at least four vets and NONE of them could find a solution and NONE of the foods they recommended helped. Then we found Avoderm and her skin cleared up, so since we've fed it to all our cats. It has Omega Fatty Acids in it.

 

[TooPatient]

Go Natural -- dry food & wet food. link
Our cats love the food and it is good for them. It was a recommendation from one of the ladies where we buy our pet food. The ladies there really know there stuff and have pointed us at a lot of really good (and natural!) products that have helped our animals.
10 pound bag of dry food costs about $40 (lasts our 2 cats awhile... 2 or 3 months?)
cans are about $1.40 each and come in a nice variety

Orijens is also really good but our cats don't seem to like it as well.

What would we do about a recall?
It depends on what the recall was for, how serious it was, how long before they noticed a problem, etc.
We'd ask for the recommendation of the ladies at the store and see what they would switch to until the problem was corrected. Would we go back? Again, it depends. One thing I am sure of is that IF the food made it back into the store, then the ladies are 110% confident that it is safe so I would consider going back.


The dry food we use:
GO! NATURAL CAT Grain Free Chicken/Turkey/Duck

For all breeds and life stages
(Kitten, adult, senior, & overweight cats)

Features:
• 80% Hormone Free Meats – 0% Grains
• Slow cooked at low temperatures
• Fresh fruit, select berries, and healthy vegetables
• Natural antioxidants
• Balanced Omega 6 and 3 essential fatty acids
• Promotes a healthy urinary tract
• Promotes a healthy digestive tract and odor control
• Unbelievable taste….GUARANTEED!

GUARANTEED ANALYSIS

Crude Protein (min) 50%
Crude Fat (min) 21%
Crude Fiber (max) 2%
Moisture (max) 10%
Ash (max) 7.8%
*Omega 6 Fatty Acids (min) 3%
*Omega 3 Fatty Acids (min) 0.5%
Taurine (min) 1.9%
Magnesium (max) 0.1%

 

[Matata]

I feed a whole prey diet of quail, mice, rats, guinea pigs, and chicks and they also get a variety of other meats as treats such as chicken legs/thighs, rabbit, beef, salmon.

Benefits of whole prey diet: It's what nature intended; excellent for their teeth; no artificial fillers or colors; high protein (again as nature intended).

 

[cnspotts]

Matata would you please explain how you go about doing the whole prey diet for your cats. I'm really interested in this and since my kitchen remodel I now have space to prepare better meals for my pets, something that I really desire to do. After all my snake gets whole rats. A friend of mine had a Husky that recently died at 19 years. They believe she lived so long mostly because they had always prepared her meals to aid in her special digestion problems.

 

[Haven]

Our pets have raw diets. The kitties eat Nature's Variety medallions. We chose to feed our pets raw because we feel that a raw diet is the best possible diet for them. (DH did a huge amount of research for several months before we chose to switch to raw diets.)

We love the Nature's Variety raw medallions.

Prior to switching to the raw diet we fed them Innova Evo and thought it was good. For kibble.

 

[hawaiianorangetree]

We were feeding our boys kangaroo meat that was for human consumption but stopped because it was too bloody and quite messy.

Now they are eating a raw mince made for cats consisting of kangaroo, beef, lamb and liver. They are both pretty fussy and this is all they will eat as far as wet food goes.

They also have biscuits but I recently learnt that most brands were equal to feeding them Mc Donalds every day so we are trying not to give them so much.

I have heard that high protien diets are supposed to be good for cats but at our last visit to the vets he told us that high protien diets shorten a cats life as they are more likely to suffer from kidney failure and that if you could include vegetables in their diet they would live for many more years.

 

[Matata]

Matata would you please explain how you go about doing the whole prey diet for your cats.

I looked into preparing home-made ground food and also raw meat diets before I started whole prey and to be honest, chose whole prey because it's the easiest. With either home made or raw meat diets, you have to be careful with bone to meat to organ ratios and usually have to supplement with a variety of different vitamins. Why bother with that when the whole prey has it all in one neat package.

I bought a chest freezer 2 years ago and buy the rodents & chicks in bulk from rodentpro.com and get the quail locally. I used to get it all from rodentpro until I found a local source for the quail. The bodies come frozen in plastic bags. I thaw enough food in tupperware containers in the fridge for the week. Each cat gets a quail for breakfast and rodents or chicks or a combo thereof for dinner. Two of my cats will eat any other kind of meat so I give them a few pieces of beef or chicken with their dinner along with the rodents/chicks.
Rodentpro has great prices on their food but the shipping is very expensive and for me is usually double the cost of the food. They're in Indiana and I'm in Oregon. They ship next day air.

A couple times a week, I supplement a meal with a squirt of odorless salmon oil and sprinkle on Wild Trax vitamins because there will be some degradation of essential vitamins/minerals that occurs when food is frozen.

Here are some excellent resources for you.
http://catinfo.org/ (awesome info by Lisa Pierson, DVM)
http://www.rawfedcats.org/ (step-by-step practical guide on transitioning cats to raw diet)
http://www.catnutrition.org/
holisticat.com (I think you still get a 14 day free trial for the forums which contain a wealth of info about whole prey, raw ground diets as well as dietary supplements and evaluations of commercially prepared food)

Here's what you can generally expect as your cats transition to raw food or whole prey:
They will likely eat 2x more than usual for a few weeks to a month and then will taper back to normal amounts;
Even if they were on kibble, you may have to cut the food into small pieces until their jaw muscles get strong enough to crunch through bone--I recommend starting on baby rats or mice and working you're way up to bigger ones;
poop may really stink for a short time as toxins leave their bodies after which their poop will probably have no odor;
you'll begin to notice brighter eyes, shinier coats and leaner bodies (more muscle will replace fat caused by carbs & fillers in commercial food;
no stinky breath and their gums & teeth will improve.

Good luck and if you have any more questions, please ask. Maybe start a new thread in case I forget to revisit this one.


edited to correct web link

 

[Brown.Eyed.Girl]

I do half dry, half canned, all grain-free.

Dry: Mix of Wellness CORE, Blue Wilderness, Before Grain Chicken and Before Grain Salmon. I have also fed my cats Natural Instincts (Rabbit or Chicken) and Innova EVO (but I believe Innova was recently sold to Proctor & Gamble and I prefer not to feed them EVO anymore). I like to do a mix in case any one brand is hit with a recall - then at least that one food isn't comprising 100% of their dry.

Canned: Currently the cats are on Before Grain canned (Salmon, Tuna, Beef, Chicken, Quail/chicken, turkey). I have also fed them Wellness CORE Salmon and CORE Chicken(?), Natural Instinct, and Weruva. By far the one I personally liked the most was Weruva - unlike the other foods, it's not a pate. It's shreds/chunks of real meat. One of the chicken ones looks good enough for a person to eat, honestly. But I can't find it locally right now and I can find Before Grain so that's what we go with.

 

[pinkstars]

Right now I feed him dry and wet. For the dry food he gets Wellness CORE, and for the wet he gets a variety of NutroMax kitten food.

He's coming up on a year(next month!) and I'm not sure how I should change his diet. I tried introducing him to Innova EVO, but even though he seemed to like it his little tummy didn't seem too pleased.

 

[cnspotts]

Matata, thank you!

Matata, thank you so much for the info. Currently I feed large rats to my snakes and recently noticed that my cats (the newest was stray only months ago) have more than a little interest in the thawing rats. I also have a chest freezer for the rats and have been researching whole prey, raw, & better diets for the cats so this thread has been very timely for me. I'll let you know what I end up doing and how it's working out.

 

[Scorpioanne]

I have a 13 year old cat who has only ever eaten dry food and when we wre told to give her wet food the cat behaved like we were trying to kill her! She used to eat Purina ProPlan senior food but now she is on Royal Canin Urinary SO as she had issues with strong urine (and peeing but that was behavioural). I am pretty thrifty and now she is eating a half and half mix of the two.

 

[nicolita]

As a busy student with two and a half jobs I wanted to feed my cat as healthy as I could without dealing with the whole raw diet situation/going more broke. I would never buy her food from a place like Walmart. I currently feed her a local food called Pure Vita. It's holistic, high protein, and grain free. I've fed her Solid Gold (Katz-N-Flocken, Indigo Moon) before, too. It's a decent food and she did very well on it. She's extremely active, the perfect weight, healthy and full of personality. I love my girl!

I've heard that Taste of the Wild is pretty good too, even though the bags are cheesy!


I also feed her shredded fish, chicken, and beef that's in a broth with nothing yucky. I check labels for her more than I do for me. That's slightly sad!

I like that she looks and feels great. Plus, she eats much less of a high protein food than she would of a junk food full of grains and other junk. In the end it's actually cheaper!

 

[asscherisme]

Thanks for the answers. My kittens are going to be a year next month and its SO confusing with so many choices out there.

I have narrowed out grocery store brands and foods with corn in them.

 

[davi_el_mejor]

Matata would you please explain how you go about doing the whole prey diet for your cats.

I looked into preparing home-made ground food and also raw meat diets before I started whole prey and to be honest, chose whole prey because it's the easiest. With either home made or raw meat diets, you have to be careful with bone to meat to organ ratios and usually have to supplement with a variety of different vitamins. Why bother with that when the whole prey has it all in one neat package.

I bought a chest freezer 2 years ago and buy the rodents & chicks in bulk from rodentpro.com and get the quail locally. I used to get it all from rodentpro until I found a local source for the quail. The bodies come frozen in plastic bags. I thaw enough food in tupperware containers in the fridge for the week. Each cat gets a quail for breakfast and rodents or chicks or a combo thereof for dinner. Two of my cats will eat any other kind of meat so I give them a few pieces of beef or chicken with their dinner along with the rodents/chicks.
Rodentpro has great prices on their food but the shipping is very expensive and for me is usually double the cost of the food. They're in Indiana and I'm in Oregon. They ship next day air.

A couple times a week, I supplement a meal with a squirt of odorless salmon oil and sprinkle on Wild Trax vitamins because there will be some degradation of essential vitamins/minerals that occurs when food is frozen.

Here are some excellent resources for you.
http://catinfo.org/ (awesome info by Lisa Pierson, DVM)
http://www.rawfedcats.org/ (step-by-step practical guide on transitioning cats to raw diet)
http://www.catnutrition.org/
holisticat.com (I think you still get a 14 day free trial for the forums which contain a wealth of info about whole prey, raw ground diets as well as dietary supplements and evaluations of commercially prepared food)

Here's what you can generally expect as your cats transition to raw food or whole prey:
They will likely eat 2x more than usual for a few weeks to a month and then will taper back to normal amounts;
Even if they were on kibble, you may have to cut the food into small pieces until their jaw muscles get strong enough to crunch through bone--I recommend starting on baby rats or mice and working you're way up to bigger ones;
poop may really stink for a short time as toxins leave their bodies after which their poop will probably have no odor;
you'll begin to notice brighter eyes, shinier coats and leaner bodies (more muscle will replace fat caused by carbs & fillers in commercial food;
no stinky breath and their gums & teeth will improve.

Good luck and if you have any more questions, please ask. Maybe start a new thread in case I forget to revisit this one.


edited to correct web link

Does the whole prey model give enough taurine? I know in other raw models you MUST supplement with taurine powder because even though you control what you feed you can't control nutrient degradation. Do you find they'll eat cold meat or do you/they let it warm up before they eat?

 

[Matata]

[quote="davi_el_mejor
Does the whole prey model give enough taurine? I know in other raw models you MUST supplement with taurine powder because even though you control what you feed you can't control nutrient degradation. Do you find they'll eat cold meat or do you/they let it warm up before they eat?[/quote]

In meat diets, degradation occurs more rapidly due to processing the food -- as in grinding or partial/fully cooking it. Some folks make large batches of food and freeze it. The meat they purchase may have already been frozen & thawed so an additional freezing and thawing further degrades nutrients. The biggest mistake people make with meat diets, either raw or partially/fully cooked is not including enough dark muscle meat and organ meat which have the highest taurine values.

There is less taurine degradation in whole prey diets. If I remember correctly, it's due to the quick kill and fast freeze of the food. Just to be safe, I sprinkle taurine powder over one meal 2x per month. They will eat cold meat but prefer it room temperature or warmer. I put their meals in a bowl of hot water for a couple of minutes before I feed them so the temp is pretty close to that of freshly killed prey.

 

[davi_el_mejor]

[quote="davi_el_mejor
Does the whole prey model give enough taurine? I know in other raw models you MUST supplement with taurine powder because even though you control what you feed you can't control nutrient degradation. Do you find they'll eat cold meat or do you/they let it warm up before they eat?

In meat diets, degradation occurs more rapidly due to processing the food -- as in grinding or partial/fully cooking it. Some folks make large batches of food and freeze it. The meat they purchase may have already been frozen & thawed so an additional freezing and thawing further degrades nutrients. The biggest mistake people make with meat diets, either raw or partially/fully cooked is not including enough dark muscle meat and organ meat which have the highest taurine values.

There is less taurine degradation in whole prey diets. If I remember correctly, it's due to the quick kill and fast freeze of the food. Just to be safe, I sprinkle taurine powder over one meal 2x per month. They will eat cold meat but prefer it room temperature or warmer. I put their meals in a bowl of hot water for a couple of minutes before I feed them so the temp is pretty close to that of freshly killed prey.[/quote]

You're such a good cat mom! Great info

I want to feed the dogs this way soo badly, but without support from the better half it wouldn't work. It has so much potential to help with the dental issues Neena is facing. I trust my current foods but the potential benefits of this diet are really enticing.