cat food help, so confused !

MakeAChange_2

Hi all,

Im sure this has probably been asked before but if anyone can help. I have kittens and am a first time cat owner! never liked cats as a child because i always got my feet grabbed when siting on one of those old fashioned sofas lol :rotfl: but as i have grown up and had a very busy lifestyle, i decided that cats are easier than dogs, becuase they curl up next to you when your tired rather than jump on you and lick your face

so i have 2 kittens age almost 6months and i love them to bits! as a former dog owner, im still learning lots about cats, i went by the advice of my vets and have been feeding them science plan (even though it costs a fortune). many years ago one of my rescue dogs years ago had very weak bones that kept breaking easy due to something caused by poor nutrition so the vet said, so i followed the vets advice and thought id start the kittens off on a good healthy food, but now reading up elsewhere, i think i may have been had ............

on a few other pet sites iv been reading that science plan is not the best for diet and that there are much better healthier foods available for a fraction of the cost, i know nothing about cat foods and am now majorly confused, does anyone have any advice on this.

i will be going back to the vets soon as i want them both neutered and i will be asking lots more questions but i would prefer genuine opinions that from the vets if they are being paid some kind of bonus for selling science plan to dummy first time cat owners like me !

Kim_kim

Buy in bulk not from the vet, but on the web.
I feed royal canin, if I was going to change, it would be too Applaws. It has a low grain/carb content as most of it is meat protein. Mine was already on Royal canin so I continued it.
Applaws isn't any cheaper, but it's great quality.
My daughter feeds her cat Iams, it's cheaper than the two I mentioned & your one, if I needed to feed a cheaper food, it's the cheapest I would go too.

Rev

Vets get one day nutrition training in 4 years. Usually given by a brand flogging their wares.

They also get a cut for sticking said brands in their surgery.


Have a look at zooplus. The dry I use is portia 21 grain free. 60% meat. £25 ish for a 10kg bag. Lasts months with two cats.


http://m.zooplus.co.uk/shop/cats/dry_cat_food/porta_21/489921
I also feed wet food. Since their kittens try and get them straight onto a good quality crap free wet too. I was in your position but by time I learned my cats were quite old.


One will only eat applaws wet which is complimentary not complete and the other will only eat crap wet food. Which is preferable to zero wet food.


Zooplus stock great food, bozita is great. As is almo nature. Animonda. Ferringa. Lilys kitchen and loads of others I forget the name of.


Avoid supermarket brands like whiskas, iams, sheeba, felix etc

LittleOne83

Sadly vets are not nutrition experts, they really only recommend what they get paid to sell in their practices.

Cats are obligate carvivores meaning all the need is meat essentially. They don't need carbs, veg or any other random ingrediants food companies use to bulk out their product.

Wet food is much better and healthier than dry. Cats need moisture in their diet as they don't have the same thirst reflex as other animals/humans. Once they get thirsty and requesting water, they're not just thirsty but dehydrated. Dry food can lead to an increase in kidney problems, utis, crystals etc because they don't drink enough.

Also it's a total myth that dry helps keep their teeth healthy. It's like saying we won't need to brush if we eat crisps. We bite, it breaks but doesn't really come into contact with the teeth! Cats tend to inhale dry like it's going out of fashion!

The best wet foods out there have a high meat content, no/low carb and now hidden extras. Zooplus stock loads of fab high quality wet including Smilla, Animoda Carny, Nature's Menu...

However all that said, the absolute best diet, and one I feed my two, is a raw diet.
There are pre made raw producers out there, but you need to make sure it's a 'complete' food meaning that it has all the nutrients cats need added such as taurine (very important) and calcium etc.

I personally prefer to make my own using an 80% muscle meat 10% bone and 10% organ of which 5% needs to be liver. You also need heart to be part of your muscle meat content as that's the best source of taurine.
Cats can have raw bones and this is what's going to make those pearly whites sparkling! Some grind their mix so it's all minced up and others give chunks. I make mine up as chunks. So mine get chicken necks chopped up into bite size bits, chicken hearts left whole, chicken liver and chicken stomach or kidney depending on what's in stock. I also mix this with pilchards and eggs and any blood left from the meat.

Mine love it! Their coats are amazing, their teeth are fantastic and their poops don't smell at all as there's very little waste!!

It costs me £30 a month to feed my 2 rather large breed cats. Raw feeding needs loads of research before starting and there's loads of info out there. But best to switch first to a high quality wet food and then if you wanted to feed raw gradually introduce it. Xx

Fen1

Look at zooplus and bitiba for quality food. Actually look at the ingredients list, not the blurb. Look for actual defined meat content e.g. chicken, Turkey, Salmon, NOT meat derivative. Would you eat anything that stated ' meat' rather than the actual ingredient????
Compare quality brands like Applaws, Canagan, Cosma, with the crapp. commercial brands. You will soon see the difference.
Also, when using flea drops and worming tablets AVOID Bob M*rtin. If is horrible stuff. There are loads of threads here on how to safely de-flead and worm your cats, always avoiding Bob M.

PasturesNew

Back in the 70s when we had a cat, we just used to feed him one can of cat food/day..... nothing special or posh. He lived.

Don't think you'll kill them if you accidentally don't read ingredients, or fail to shop at Waitrose, or don't buy into the latest fad

Sagz_2

I've fed Butchers Classic (tinned food) for years and my cats have all been healthy with lovely coats. The one that doesn't like tinned is fed on Pets At Home Advanced Nutrition dry food, and has been since about 3 months old, again, he is the picture of health.

Rev

PasturesNew wrote: »

Back in the 70s when we had a cat, we just used to feed him one can of cat food/day..... nothing special or posh. He lived.

Don't think you'll kill them if you accidentally don't read ingredients, or fail to shop at Waitrose, or don't buy into the latest fad

Back in the 70's we didn't wear seat belts and smoking was thought to cause no harm. We used asbestos and lead in paint too.


So I don't think it would cause any harm if you smoked in your car whilst you drove down the motorway with no seatbelt on on the way to pick up your new lead lined paint to do up your living room.


Or you could move into the current time period, not do any of the above and actually give a crap what your pet eats.


Nobody is suggesting you need to be a food nazi but it's hardly a task putting a bit of effort into your pets diet is it.

GwylimT

Science plan is poor quality as is royal canin, another one vets push.

All of the wet food on the happykittycompany is good quality, on zooplus the best are bozita tinned, animonda carny, feringa, grau, catz finefood, granatapet and lilys kitchen.

But the best diet is a raw diet, you can buy ready made but it is always too high in bone. It is very easy and very cheap to make your own home made raw.

WeAreGhosts

i have given my cat many chances to eat the best food. she refuses most of it. so now she's on a mix of Hills and Feringa dry and the occasional wet HiLife tuna or Thrive (Thrive is good as it looks like 'proper' food, but has the added ingredients cats need to stay healthy). Cats are fussy. People say if you don't offer them anything else then they will learn to eat what you give them. Mine doesn't ... literally she starves. She lasted three days once.

Watch out for the 'complimentary' foods - which don't give cats the nutrients they need. They are fine in moderation.

pinkteapot

Just to add... For anyone who does want to feed Science Plan, it's expensive from the vet but not online. We buy 5kg bags from Zooplus for £29, and they last three months.

Our kitty has the Science Plan for Sensitive Stomachs due to recurrent tummy troubles - all the wet foods we tried gave him intermittent diarrhoea. Vet gave him Hill's Prescription Diet for upset stomachs after a particularly bad bout, and he loved it so much and was so healthy on it that we moved on to the Science Plan for Sensitive Stomachs. He's been on it for about four months now with absolutely no tummy issues and very healthy poops. And he's much more eager to eat it than any food he's had before.