What are some of the BEST brands of cat food?

Question

I recently bought some Whiskas Purrfectly Fish packs for my cats to try, as I have heard that it's unhealthy to feed dry food to cats. Is that a good brand? The ingredient list starts with meats, not by-products or carbs. What are some of your recommendations on the best brands of wet cat food?

And one of my cats (adopted from my ex-sister-in-law) has been raised on dry food. How can I train her to start eating wet food?

Answer 1

science diet

Answer 2

If they like dry food then stick to that.  There is no need for a cat to ever have wet food and it is very bad for their teeth.  It will cause the cat to have a teeth cleaning sooner than if you just give them dry food, and trust me...teeth cleaning is expensive!!!

My favorites to feed my kitties is Iams....Science Diet is also a great food, but if possible stick to dry!

Answer 3

science diet

and also meow mix!

this really is zee best

Answer 4

Whiskas is perfectly good and fancy feast is a good wet food but dry food is actually better for cats you should only feed your cat wet food 2 times a day at most.

Answer 5

You may have health issues changing from dry to wet - and there is nothing wrong with dry food, otherwise the vets would not carry it in their offices.  I have been feeding my four cats for 12 years with dry food, and they are happy and healthy.  Cats eat up to 10 small meals a day, and sleep 16 hours.  To be able to feed when THEY are hungry, and not when you deem they are hungry, they need food that will not go bad if left overnight - that would be dry food.  You can still feed cats wet food, there is absolutely nothing wrong with it (except unless you are not doing habitual dental care on a cat).  You can give your cat wet food once a day (best on a schedule - before work or at suppertime) and leave the dry as snack food for the rest of the time.  Obviously, keep a bowl of fresh water available all the time.

Answer 6

Nothing sparks more passion from cat enthusiasts than the question of what to feed your cat. Some swear by a certain brand, and some will only feed dry or wet. In short, there are two camps when it comes to feeding. The dry food camp and the wet food camp. You will see a lot of arguments and debate between both camps here, as witnessed by the answers you are getting.

Also, another new camp is emerging and fast growing and they are the RAW food movement and sometimes you will also hear what is called a BARF feeding, Bone and Raw Food diet or Biologically Appropriate Raw Food diet.

What you need to do is to do your research and weigh each camp's argument as to which one you are more comfortable with and what makes the most sense. You need to understand what motivates the pet food industry, (profit!), and what motivates pet parents to buy their product (price/cost, advertisement, vet advice, self research, cat's health while being on the product, etc)

When you are well informed, you will ultimately make the right decision on what is best. So, do a lot of reading and in depth research. It's really not easy feeding our pets now. If you are unaware of the March 2007 Huge Pet Recall, I would suggest you look into it. You will never see pet food the same way again.

You need to learn how to read ingredient labels. By learning how to read a label, you can learn a great deal of information about the food you are feeding your pets. You can even learn how to compare one food to another and choose the one best suited for your cat.

When you are choosing food, it is important for you to learn how to read ingredient labels. They tell you a lot about what kind of meat is being used and whether the food has any cheap fillers which does not benefit your cat/kitten.

You want to feed a food which is high protein - meaning the meat source must come from wholesome muscle meat. Make sure to select only food that list chicken, lamb, rabbit, beef, turkey, venison, salmon, whitefish, herring or a combination or those and not one that says by-products (chicken by product, meat by product, fish by product)

Stay away from too much fillers like corn, corn gluten meal, wheat, wheat gluten, soy, oatbrans, etc. These are all cheap filler which help reduce the cost of manufacturing but brings little to no benefit to your kitten.

You would also want to stay away from preservatives like BHA/BHT and Ethoxyquin which are proven to be harmful to your kitten. Also you do not want other artifical preservatives such as propylene glycol and propolyneglycol .You need natural preservatives such as Vitamin C, Vitamin A or Rosemary.

Your cat need an essential amino acid called Taurine. Cats can only receive this from eating wholesome meat. Choose a food that contains ample amount of Omega 3 sources - Salmon Oil, Flaxseed Oil or Canola Oil.

When you are well educated in learning how to read pet food ingredients, shopping for the best food for your kitten would be easier.

I only feed 100% wet. I came to this conclusion after doing my own research and getting to know pets that suffer dire consequences as a result of being fed exclusively dry. These websites has great information if you are interested in learning more about feline nutrition and the proper diet for a cat.

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

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

http://cats.about.com/od/catfoo1/tp/tpca...

http://www.catinfo.org/

http://www.naturalmatters.net/article.as...

http://www.traciehotchner.com/cb/QandA.h...

Some highly recommended wet food:-

By Nature Organics

California Natural

Eagle Pack Holisitc

Evanger's

EVO

Felidae

Natural Balance

Nature's Logic

Nature's Variety

Wellness

Weruva

Wysong

========================

For a smaller budget, this mid range food is just as good!

Chicken Soup for the Cat's Lover Soul

Authority® Premium Adult Formula In Cans

(Petsmart inhouse brand)

If after careful consideration, you still think that you have to feed your cat dry food, then go for the best and highest quality product in the market:-

EVO

WELLNESS CORE

ORIJEN

Timberwolf Serengeti Feline Diet

Felidae Cat and Kitten

    

I love to say this whenever someone ask this question.

Look at your cats. They are majestic animals, with their wild ancestors blood still running through their veins. They are predators, equip with sharp canine teeth to shred through meat. Now, imagine a lion or a tiger, feasting on a bowl of dry kibble. Does that sound right to you? Well, now you know why it is so ridiculous to feed your cat dry kibbles!

Domestication only changes the way the cats live but not the way the cats eat. If we cannot guarantee their wellbeing, we have no right to invite them into our home.

Transitioning dry to wet

Figuring how to feed a cat depends on the age, activity level and health status of your cat. I will address your concern by giving you advise base on the assumption that your cat is generally healthy and have no special dietary or medical needs.

If you have been feeding your cat dry food around the clock with a food dispenser, the first thing to do is to stop slowly. Kibble addict resist changes and it's not a good way to cut them off dry immediately. They are used to the smell of dry kibble - where food manufacturer trick their senses with addictive coating to entice them to eat. Also, your cat is used to the crunchy texture of dry kibbles and will resist eating wet.

What you need to do is a gradual transition - introduce her to wet food slowly. Start off with a mixture of what she is eating now and mix it with the wet food.

If your cats eat both wet and dry, you can eliminate the dry almost immediately. On the other hand, if they are kibble addicts, you need to go slow. Feed more times, less quantity because kibble addicts are used to having food around 24/7 (if you free fed).

A normal healthy and active adult weighing at about 6-8lbs would need about 6oz of wet food a day. For kibble addicts, you need to upped the number of feedings at the beginning but each time, serve only a smaller portion. Since they are used to eating all the time, you can try feeding them up to 6 times a day. This is just a very extreme recommendation because once your cat has established a wet food appetite, you can greatly reduced the number of feeding and increase the quantity.

Once you got your cat to eating wet food, you can now feed either 2-3 times a day. Always monitor your cat's reaction to the food. If after four weeks or so, you find that your cat seems to have grown a little more chubbier, reduce and the opposite is correct if she seems to be hungry at all times.

Sometimes, when switching to all wet using scheduled and portion control feeding method cat owners feel bad when they see their cats begging for more food. Resist the temptation to give in. Cats can very well go a few long hours without eating. Stick to your routine. But never starve a cat into eating.

The decision to switch to wet food is the correct one and I am glad that you have taken a step forward in ensuring your cat gets all the proper nutrition and species appropriate food.

Answer 7

I will give you the info how to pick the best and you can choose,

here are tips for transitioning a cat from ry to wet. Good going

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





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 ingrediant 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...

Answer 8

Science Diet is one of the best foods out there.  To make the transition from dry to wet food you should mix a small amount of the wet food in with the dry and slowly put more wet food in than dry and eventually in about a 2 week time period, move completely to wet food.

Answer 9

No, Whiskas is not a high quality food.

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 Four Star, Merrick, GO Natural, Nature's Variety Prairie, Nature's Logic, Artemis Fresh Mix, Timber Wolf Organics.

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, Taste of the Wild.

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.)

Edit: Converting cats to wet - http://www.catinfo.org/#Transitioning_Dr...