I want to get my cat healthier food than the Purina she’s eating right now, so what are some good brands to buy?
What are some of the healthy brands of cat food that are available at pet stores?
Previous post: Can you recommend healthy cat dry food?
Keeping your Pets Healthy and Happy
I want to get my cat healthier food than the Purina she’s eating right now, so what are some good brands to buy?
Previous post: Can you recommend healthy cat dry food?
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
We use Science Diet Light for our fat cat and Purina One Senior for our old cat. The fat cat stays fat, but the old cat stays healthy.
My cat eats IAMS (with weight and hairball control). He is a super healthy cat. He is a ragdoll. When we first got him (9 mos. ago) at the pet shop he was skinny, and didn’t have as much hair as he has right now. This brand has been his ‘diet’ for the last 9 months. He has so much, gorgeous hair. He is so healthy and the only time he’s been sick was from the petshop. Plus, he has never had hairballs!
Canned foods Welness and merrick are top of the line
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?
http://www.catinfo.org/#Learn_How_To_Read_a_Pet_Food_Ingredient_Label
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 carbohydrates which many cats (carnivores) cannot process them. 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.
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. Fancy feast is a middle grade food with 9lives, friskies whiskas lower grade canned and wellness and merrick upper grade human quality foods. 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/bpo_ch4a.php
Please read about cat nutrition.
http://www.newdestiny.us/nutritionbasics.html
http://www.catinfo.org/feline_obesity.htm
http://maxshouse.com/feline_nutrition.htm#Dry_Food_vs_Canned_Food.__Which_is_reall
Trust me, the foods the above people have posted are junk. Here are the first three ingredients for the Science Diet:
Brewers Rice, Chicken By-Product Meal, Corn Gluten Meal
And the Purina One Senior:
Chicken, brewers rice, poultry by-product meal
And the Iams:
Chicken By-Product Meal, Corn Grits, Corn Meal
Cats are obligate carnivores! They need high-quality meat in their diet! Have you ever seen a cat in the wild eat corn meal or grits? And, do you know what by-product is? It’s all the stuff they can’t use, so they grind it up, add it to the food, and pass it off as protein. Feather, feet, eyes, etc.
This is what I use. Evo for cats and kittens. The first three ingredients are Turkey, Chicken Meal, and Chicken. Wellness CORE and Nature’s Variety are two other high quality dry foods I would recommend.
Cats do not need grains in their diet. They need lots of protein, not a lot of carbs, and a fair amount of fat.
You shouldn’t be feeding just dry food. Cats don’t have a thirst drive, and get most of their food from what they eat. I included a link at the bottom that says why you should be feeding canned food.
If you want your cat to be really healthy, you would go to a raw diet. I put another link at the bottom for you. Good luck, I hope I didn’t overwhelm you with information!
Good for you! You can safely choose any food from this list. I personally use Nature’s Variety Instincts, but it is pricy. Perhaps one of the more expensive ones from that list.
Some commonly found ones that are quite good as well are Evo and Wellness. Evo in particular is going to be coming out with a new line, 95% meat. That would perhaps be an excellent choice!
felix or sciece plan
I am currently trying my girls on several brands such as Innova, Evo, Chicken Soup, Merrick. I have also been looking for healthier foods. Most of the healthier foods you will not find at chained pet stores. I would call around in your area to smaller pet stores and feed stores. These foods are more expensive than Purina, but the cats eat less so you end up saving money. Cats will eat as much as they need to get the nutrients they need. Cheap food is full of fillers so they eat more. The more expensive brands have better meat and less fillers. (Plus their feces doesn’t smell as bad)
Good Luck!
I took my cat the other day to get her vaccinations. The vet asked me what I was feeding her (she is healthy, he was just enquiring). I feed a mixture of wet and dry. He told me to avoid both Whiskas and Iams dry food. In the UK, apparently, there have been higher incidents of cats having bladder/kidney problems. (No he wasn’t trying to get me to buy any food from the surgery).
Hill’s Science Diet by far!!!