Cheaper cat food vs expensive brands?

Question

my cats are so wierd. i have bought cheaper cat food for a long time. i usually buy them meow mix which isnt all that bad i guess. well i wanted to try a more expensive brand. it had all sorts of vitamins and such. my female was pregnant, so i wanted something better for her and her kittens. well i bought iams which is suppose to be one of the best cat foods for your cat. all 3 of my cats wont touch it and walk around the house meowing like they havent ate in days lol lol.....

so i went back to there meow mix lol lol... have you had any experiences like this??

Answer 1

Yes, cats can be very picky

Answer 2

yes cats dont care if its more expensive or  cheaper they just like the meow mix if you want the vitamins in it get like vitamin gel pills that have the oil in them and just mash it in the meow mix

Answer 3

I am laughing out loud at your post...

I know COMPLETELY how this goes.

Cats are SOOOOOOO opinionated!

What I would do is take some of the cheap (this is what I feed my cats but suplement with chicken livers from time to time)

and add a little of the expensive... say 1 spoon full ... then add more the next day until it is all expensive kind.

I really don't feed mine the expenisve kind and felt really good about that when we had the pet food scare back about a year ago.  Non of the food I feed them was on the list.

What I do is add stuff to thier food.  Like human B vite, calcium Knox gelitin (for connective tissue) and then feed them some chicken livers every once in a while.

They LOVE Iams kitten food (dry) though!

Your cat has spacific tastes... as usual... so you will have to treat them as the royal animals they are.... (or trick them!;0)

Answer 4

yup, my old cat Shady just REFUSED to eat this one brand, I forget which one.. we mixed it in with her other food and she would just eat around the kibbles she didnt want.. lol

I think its the flavor... you could try a different brand with your preggo kitty...

Answer 5

There's a good reason for this, especially if you're talking about dry food.

Many dry foods are sprayed with a yummy coating that cats love.  But this yummy coating is actually quite disgusting.  "The food is allowed to dry, and then is usually sprayed with fat, digests, or other compounds to make it more palatable. When it is cooled, it can be bagged."

The better foods don't do this so cats may not initially find it as tasty.

On top of that, cats are drawn to their pet food due to smell.  They don't actually have as many taste buds as other animals so smell is a more important factor.  And besides that, they are designed by nature to be suspicious of new smells.  

So getting cats to try other foods can be tricky, but we have opposable thumbs and CAN outthink them.

Sometimes if you mix dry foods together the new food will take on some of the smell of the old and it's then accepted.  I've done this.  

Patience is usually the key, along with thinking outside the box.  The benefits of switching from a crappy food to a better one are well worth it!

Answer 6

cats are picky. BUT they won't starve them selves. They will eat the new cat food eventually. also did you start using half of the old food mixed with half of the new food and ween them off slowly? If not try that. It worked every time for me.

Answer 7

You need to give your cat good quality meat. Cats are by nature meat eaters,not cereal eaters. Do some research into cat nutrition, you will be surprised, and, your cat will be better for it.

Answer 8

Cats naturally want meat and greens, like grass and whatnot. As far as dry food, what you can do--if you really want to use the expensive stuff--is mix it with the meow mix and gradually they will be used to the new stuff.

  Me, I use Meow Mix and havent had any problems. I hope you dont only feed them dry food. They need meat-period!! Meat or fish, they need something unprocessed. I give my cats either mackerel, tuna (once a week maybe because its bad for their kidneys) salmon. If you feed them right they could easily live to be twenty!!

     Id use the expensive stuff if i could afford it, but Meow Mix, Purina, you can feel safe with. They are the high end of the inexpensive brands and wouldnt switch to anything else. Avoid food from another country especially, you dont know what they put in it (remember the Menu Foods fiasco?)

Answer 9

Yep, I have a cat now that doesn't like table food.  She won't eat any kinds of lunch meat like bologna or turkey. Occasionally she will eat some raw chicken or hamburger, and maybe finish the milk left in my ceral bowl, but other than that, she's strictly a cat food eater.  On the other hand, the male I had previously would eat anything, pickles, tomatoes, watermelon, potato chips.  They are certainly characters.

Answer 10

Iams used to be good but now they're pretty crappy.  My kittens were being fed Iams from the start but I was given a sample of Purina kitten chow and didn't want to throw it away...my kittens refused the Iams within minutes of having the sample.  I've had very good luck with the Purina.  The Meow Mix packets are the only brand of wet food they'll touch-I don't know about the dry food but their packets are the best: you can actually see the scales on pieces of fish and they include the fish bones too (which are actually really good for them to be eating).

Pregnant and nursing females need to be eating kitten food for the extra calories and nutrition.  If you have other cats, it is better to risk them getting into the kitten food for a couple weeks than it is to feed regular food to a pregnant/nursing cat.

As far as foods go cost doesn't matter as much as what's in there.  Check the ingredients-the first four to five are the most important and should be forms of meat/fish but NOT "animal digest" (ie: manure).  Cat's should NOT be eating corn, soybean products, flour, yeast, brewer's anything, veggies, ect even though cat food brands put a lot of hype into those ingredients.  The most ideal diet for cats would be whole raw birds and small rodent with an occasional nibble of grass.  Unfortunately, that is not practical for cat owners so ensure that the first three ingredients are meats of some sort and keep in mind that grains including corn should be pretty far down on the list.  Many of the grains actually cause cats and dogs to develop allergies.

I've heard Felidae is one of the best other than a raw food diet (which I would much prefer).  Some petstores also carry frozen cat and dog food that is mostly meat with very few other ingredient and no fillers such as grains.

Answer 11

Pregnant Cats usually take kitten food...  meow mix is full of extra junk that the cats don't need.  I would call a local vet and ask what they suggest.  I would suggest Natural Balance.  It is more expensive, but it's almost human grade food, and very good for the cat...  Natural Balance is good for Queen cats, adult cats and kittens...

Be careful about the cheaper brands, and some of the more expensive brands... the closer it is to human grade is a good idea, be careful with extra vitimins and stuff, you could hurt the cat and harm the kittens if you give them too much.

I would really suggest to talk to a vet about that.

Answer 12

My cat likes some variation, for me the price doesn't count, as long as he's happy. I don't think you should always buy the expensive stuff, it might be better for your cats health, but you can't make him eat something he doesn't like, as i said my cat like some variation (which is normal i think) so i give it to him.

Answer 13

yeah there picky, I feed my FancyFeast wet food and Whiskas dry food.