For those who buy Meow Mix

Question

OK. I'm having trouble with my cat. She's a Himalayan. I don't know if this is just her breed, but she seems to not digest her food very well. She gets really loose bm and has gas allll the time. I've tried feeding her Meow Mix and Kit n Kaboodle. I was just wanting opinions on different cat food. I can't imagine how her stomach must feel :(

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

i agree with the first person to answer....

usually the vet will reccomend science diet (i worked at a vet office)

also iams is a good food or purina  

Answer 2

Stay away from multicolored cat foods. If your cat is gassy and has loose stools, she's not able to digest those brands well.  Try Purina One or something better.

Answer 3

we fed our cats purina cat chow for many years and it was causing crystals in our males urinary tract and was advised by our vet to switch over to friskeys (strongly suggested science diet) and we have not had a problem with sickness due to cat food since and its been 5 years now. good luck.

Answer 4

hi

for me i have changed my cat's food till i finally went to the vet and he recommended royal canin for cats and my cat loved it

Answer 5

The two main ingredients in the foods you're feeding are ones that many cats cannot digest.  Take a look at the bag, and read what's in it.  The first ingredient is corn - cat were meant by Nature to eat meat, not grain, and corn is the source of many digestive issues in cats.  It's in cat food because it's a cheap filler, not because it has any nutritional value for our cats.  The next ingredient is some sort of by-product - another cheap filler.   This is the scrap left over from the slaughterhouse industry.  It's all the "parts" that are deemed unfit for human consumption - spleens, hides, beaks, tendons, spinal chords, intestines.  Not real meat, and not highly digestable.  

Go to the pet store, and read the labels on the food you find there.  There are many brands to choose from, for all budgets.  Petsmart has their own Authority brand that isn't bad - and significantly better than what you are feeding now.  At the higher end, they carry Blue Buffalo.  Even Petco now carries Wellness, one of the best foods you'll find.

Be sure to switch her food over the course of a week or so, gradually mixing the new in with the old.  This will give her a chance to get used to it.  The junky food are all sprayed with fats and flavor enhancers to get cats to eat them, and she'll have to get used to food that doesn't have that (kind of like the differnce between a burger at McDonald's and a nice broiled chicken breast - which tastes better?).  And in a couple of months you'll also see quite a change in her coat - it will be wonderful!  

Answer 6

The problem is probably the foods you are feeding. Meow Mix is a very low quality cat food as is Kit n Kaboodle.

Not all pet food is made equally. A lot of it is full of corn, by-products, dyes, unhealthy preservatives, filler grains and all sorts of nasty stuff. A lot of pet food companies are perfectly happy to dump cheap leftovers in. Will it kill your cat? No, it has to be nutritionally complete and safe to even be marketed. Is it healthy? Not by a long shot.

Corn is a low quality ingredient you never want to see in your pet food. Corn and low quality grains are two of the biggest culprits when it comes to food allergies in our pets.

Thankfully, there are some excellent cat foods being made these days that include organic, human grade ingredients rather than trash not fit for human consumption.

Examples of low quality foods to avoid: Anything you can find in a grocery store will be low end, Purina, Iams, Eukanuba, Science Diet, Royal Canin, Whiskas, Fancy Feast, Friskies, Meow Mix.

Examples of high quality foods to look for: Innova, Wellness, Solid Gold, Felidae, Fromm, Merrick, GO Natural, Nature's Variety, Nature's Logic.

Although the high quality foods are more expensive, you're getting what you're paying for. Less filler material means more concentrated nutrients... this means you typically need to feed far less of the high quality food than you would of the low quality one. Which also means less p**p!

A great option is to go with an entirely grainless diet. Diets high in grain have been attributed to problems with diabetes in cats. Cats are obligate carnivores, so why should there be grain in their diet? Many of the high quality foods now put out grainless formulas. Some good grainless diet's include: Innova EVO, Wellness CORE, Blue Wilderness, Nature's Variety Instinct, Orijen, Fromm Surf & Turf, Now!, and Sold Gold Indigo Moon.

Some of the high end foods can be found in common pet stores. Petsmart carries Blue Buffalo products (such as the excellent grain free diet Blue Wilderness). Petco carries Wellness and Solid Gold. If you can't find a food, most of the high quality food brands have websites with store locators on them.

Remember that foods should be switched gradually, especially when switching to a higher quality one, so as not to upset tummies.

Another option for feeding cats is to feed raw. This is something that should be thoroughly researched before being attempted:

http://www.barfworld.com/

http://www.rawfedcats.org/

http://www.rawfed.com/

http://www.wysong.net/controversies/rawm...

Now the question is, do you feed wet or dry? Wet is the correct answer. The reason is, in the wild, cats normally get most of their water content directly from their prey items and drink very little. Domestic cats are no different, and because of the fact that they are designed to take in water with their meal, they have a very low thirst drive. Cats often just don't drink enough. This leads to urinary tract infections and crystals. The bit about dry food being better for teeth is a myth and has not been proven in the least. Canned/wet food is better because it more closely mimics the cat's natural diet. More on why canned food is best:

http://www.catinfo.org/  (Excellent cat nutrition information by a vet)

http://cats.about.com/cs/catfood/a/canne...

http://www.littlebigcat.com/index.php?ac...

Another option to get cats to drink more would be a cat fountain. Cats tend to like to drink from running water and cat fountains see to that need, encouraging cats to take in more water.

More:

http://www.dogfoodanalysis.com/dog_food_... (Dog food reviews. It's for dogs, but most of the high quality brands also put out excellent cat foods. Anything with five or six stars is a great food.)

Answer 7

she could have a parasite. my cat did. the vet would take a stool sample and check it to see.  

Answer 8

SamB is not a vet just a dumb kid

The food you are feeding is horrible.





Nutrition since there are so many bad things out there is very important to your cat’s health

Contrary to what you may have heard; dry foods are not a great thing to feed a cat.

Please read the label on what you are feeding? What are the ingredients? Do you know what they mean? Is the first ingrdiant a muscle meat like chicken or meal or other things?

http://www.catinfo.org/#Learn_How_To_Rea...

http://iml.jou.ufl.edu/projects/Spring04...

Dry foods are the number 1 cause of diabetes in cats as well as being a huge contributing factor to kidney disease, obesity, crystals, u.t.i’s and a host of other problems. Food allergies are very common when feeding dry foods. Rashes, scabs behind the tail and on the chin are all symptoms

The problems associated with Dry food is that they are loaded with grains and carbohydrates which many cats (carnivores) cannot process.  Also, Most of the moisture a cat needs is suppose to be in the food but in

Dry, 95% of it is zapped out of dry foods in the processing. Another thing, most use horrible ingredients and don't use a muscle meat as the primary ingredient and use vegetable based protein versus animal. Not good for an animal that has to eat meat to survive.

http://www.catinfo.org/#My_Cat_is_Doing_...

You want to pick a canned food w/o gravy (gravy=carbs) that uses a muscle meat as the first ingredient and doesn't have corn at least in the first 3 ingredients if at all.    The best food for cats does not contain any grains at all.

Fancy feast is a middle grade food with 9lives, friskies  whiskas lower grade canned and wellness and merrick upper grade human quality foods. I would rather feed a middle grade canned food then the top of the line dry food.

Also, dry food is not proven to be better for teeth. Does a hard pretzel clean your teeth or do pieces of it get stuck? http://www.felinefuture.com/nutrition/bp...

Please read about cat nutrition.

                               http://www.newdestiny.us/nutritionbasics...

                               http://www.catinfo.org/feline_obesity.ht...

      http://maxshouse.com/feline_nutrition.ht...

Vetinarian diets  The reason your vet thinks so highly of the pet food they sell probably has more to do with money than nutrition. In vet school, the only classes offered on nutrition usually last a few weeks, and are taught by representatives from the pet food companies. Vet students may also receive free food for their own dogs and cats at home. They could get an Iams notebook, a Purina purse and some free pizza.  http://iml.jou.ufl.edu/projects/Spring04...