What can I feed my cat besides the same dry cat food every day?

Question

I buy a good brand that she seems to like, and then eats four or five times a day whenever i give it to her. Sweet thing, she doesn't ask for too much, but I wonder sometimes if her diet isn't somewhat unbalanced by this

Answer 1

Listen to ken and give him best answer.  It is the truth.  Go to catinfo website and read about feline nutrition.  Hopefully, you will see the light and switch to a good quality canned food.  Dry food is total and complete GARBAGE for cats. Besides that, it doesnt do jack for their teeth which is what all these dry food people fall back on.

Answer 2

there's the packaged or canned cat food...also tuna works good

Answer 3

try wet cat food

Answer 4

there's a lot of stuff in dry food that they don't need (the grains and fillers). I feed my cats dry plus supplement it with raw chicken. I'm working on switching them entirely to a raw diet, but for now I cut up small chunks of chicken and maybe two or three one inch cubes in with each meal. I feed them about  1/8-1/4 cup of dry three times a day (the amount of dry varies with how much chicken I add: more chicken=less dry food)

I tried wet food for awhile but my male cat throws up everything but his chicken and his dry food!

*edit* when I was researching raw food diets I read on a few websites that domestic cats are generally severely dehydrated. they do not naturally drink much water, because in the wild they will get most of the liquid that they need from their prey. does your cat seam to have itchy dry skin? shed a lot? scabs? she could be dehydrated. My male always had scabs on his chin that have cleared up since adding the chicken to his diet.

Answer 5

you can get the small cans of food for cats that you mix in with the normal food to give it more taste. The can is about the size of a tuna can and there is a dog one and a cat one so be sure to grab the cat one(the tastes have a variety from fish to steak and gravy

Answer 6

try feeding her less. 3 times a day at most. and give her one meal of just canned food. or mix it in with the dry food. no more than 1 cup of dry food and 1 can of wet food a day. unless it's an outdoor/indoor cat, they can eat a little more.

Answer 7

I recommend varying the diet with a constant rotation of accepted canned foods that your cat enjoys. If you do this, and allow your cat the same assortment they would have in nature when eating mice, bugs, birds and rabbits, your cats’ digestive system won't be so sensitive and you won't have to run around looking for a specific brand when your store is out. You will have a nice variety to choose from instead.

Canned foods I recommend for your rotation:

California Natural - http://www.californianaturalpet.com/

Merrick Canned - http://www.merrickpetcare.com/store/cann...

Merrick Before Grain - http://www.beforegrain.com

Natural Balance - http://www.naturalbalanceinc.com/catform...

Eagle Pack - http://www.eaglepack.com/Pages/HS_CanCat...

Answer 8

There are two schools of thought when it comes to offering variety in a cat's diet.  There are good points on each side, so I think one's circumstances and of course the cat's seeming preference should dictate what you do.

On the advice of my holistic vet (who is a goddess) I decided to offer some variety.  Her suggestion is to rotate between 2-3 different protein sources/brands.  There are two good reasons to do this:

1.  If the cat should ever turn up its nose at a particular food, you have a backup plan.

2.  Any deficiencies in one food can be made up for in another (allegedly).

In your case since you're feeding only dry food, I think it would be an excellent idea to begin offering some wet food as well.

In case you're one of those who have gotten bad info about canned food, let me set you straight.  It is not the equivalent of feline dessert.  It is not mostly water.  It is not fattening.  It is not bad for the teeth.  In fact, it's the opposite of all those things, and not only that, dry food could be described in those terms.

So choose a good quality canned food to offer your kitty.  I would suggest that you make canned food at least one half of her daily intake, if not more.

Regarding unbalanced diets:  Although commercial cat foods claim to be "complete and balanced" even the good ones can be lacking.  So I do think you're wise to be wondering about this.

One last word of advice:  Introduce new foods slowly to avoid digestive upsets.

Answer 9

You're so right, her diet is unbalanced with dry food. Cats are obligate carnnivores, which means they must eat meat.

It helps to remember what the big cats eat out in the wild (or any cats, actually): mice, rabbits, etc. So they got muscle meat, fat, moisture, and of course some other skin and small bones.

They got most of their moisture from their food. Dry food has very little moisture, which means a cat must take moisture from other cells to process the dry food. That can lead to serious kidney disease (very unpleasant and expensive), and the excessive grains/carbs, which cats were not designed to eat, leads to diabetes.

If you're out all day, you can buy an automatic pet feeder (just Google to find many brands) that will dispense foods at preset times.

You can leave canned cat food out for up to 8 hours - if you want, you can put the food inside an outer dish containing ice to keep even fresher.

Some food brands are better than others. You can generally tell by the price you're paying, but not always. Look at the ingredients. The first ingredient (after water) should be a muscle meat. I give my cats Nature's Variety Instinct canned foods. There are a lot of other good brands. Another writer provided some excellent references/websites.

Here's a terrific book on what cats should eat, by Dr. Elizabeth Hodkins: Your Cat: Simple Secrets to a Longer, Stronger Life (although frankly I wouldn't do the raw diet - who has time? - and you have to be very careful in preparation.

Someone mentioned tuna. Tuna is NOT good for cats - it contains high levels of mercury and can cause mercury poisoning.

If you ever do your own food prep, please steer clear of onions and garlic; they are both very dangerous in even small amounts.

Also good: books on cat food and health by Dr. Michael Fox.

Have said all that about the problems with dry food, I do allow my kitty some dry treats from time to time - I have to give her shots, and it's a nice reward. But I just give her a  small amount.

EDIT: I just noticed that someone said to mix canned food with dry. Please not do that unless you're going to remove whatever food is left as soon as she's done eating. Here's why: dry food is coated with a protein-fat mixture to make the dry food appealing to cats. (Can you imagine a lion chomping on kibble?) But that coating contains a ton of bacteria, and once it's wet, those bacteria can multiply very quickly. Not healthy.

There is a fantastic listgroup you can join with very knowledgeable people - they will have all kinds of recommendations about foods:

http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/Whole...

And yes, as someone else said, introduce new foods slowly so as to prevent stomach upset. You may need to mix the two initially so the cat accepts the new food as "food" (believe it or not).

Answer 10

Even though there may be some dry foods that may have good ingrediants, you shouldn't be feeding dry.





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...