Cheap/healthier alternatives to cat food...

cheltenhamgirl

As some of you will no doubt be aware, we've just recently increased our family with two purrrfect kittens (well 9 months old). At the moment they have dry whiskas kitten food throughout the day, and half a pouch each morning and night of whiskas wet food.

I was wondering if there were any alternatives to feeding them 'normal' catfood? Some of you will probably disagree with this, but it's probably for two reasons.
1) I'm not keen on the idea that we are feeding our cats what is ssentially quite a lot of rubbish. I kind of think of it as the equivalent of only ever feeding your children on trukey twizzlers!! I'd like to feed them something that was good for them.

2) Although I'm definitely not a veggie, I always buy free range meat etc as I hate the thought of any animal suffering for me. Seems a bit hypocritical to then feed my cats the cheapest of the cheap meat that I'm sure hasn't had the best life.

So, basically I'm just after some advice. I would obviously change them gradually if it was something we were going to do, but does anybody have any opinions on whether it's better or worse for your cat? Anybody got any cheap/good alternatives? I guess we'd want to batch cook so we didn't have to worry about cooking the cat's tea everynight! I've seen somewhere on here people talking about rice and fish for their cat....is this something we could look at?

xx

Sharra

I used to be a Vet Nurse years ago and at our vets we used to give the cats Whiskas and the dogs chappie, we were taught that cats need the better quality meat in decent cat food. I think unless you have very strong moral reasons for cooking the food yourself then preprepared cat food is the way to go as they contain all the nutrients they need.
I haven't bought cat food for years but I'm sure the pouches are far more expensive than tins. These days I would probably buy the supermarkets own brand but not value tins and see how it went. You can usually tell if a food is agreeing with your pets, if their coats are nice and glossy then you're ok.

Pandora123_2

I totally agree with you about not feeding your cat "junk". It is definitely better to feed your cats homemade food made from fresh organic (or free range) ingredients. Although you can buy organic cat food, it's still processed and I can't believe it's as healthy for them as fresh food. (Just compare the difference between pasta from a tin to fresh homemade pasta!) Also, most cat food has fillers in the form of grains, which are not the best food for cats.

One of my Christmas pressies this year was:

Whole health for happy cats

It's got a large section on making your own cat food using fresh meat. You can use either raw or cooked meat (you add extra taurine if you cook the meat), plus a few veggies and vitamins etc.

(You can make homemade food with fish as well, but apparently they are only supposed to have it once a week.)

As for switching them over, it was not a problem for my cats. For pickier cats, you may have to switch them over gradually, especially if you feed them raw meat as opposed to cooked.

:A

squeaky

Hi;

We have a board dedicated to Pets and moneysaving and I'm sure the regulars there will be able to help you, so I'll move your post across.

Good luck