Is Hills as good or as bad as I've heard?

I feed a mix of wet and dry as i firmly believe it's healthier.. my parents only ever fed our cats at home dry as snack food and non of them were ever ill, not once. So i do the same with my cats, wet twice a day and a snack of dry every now and again and my cats have always been the picture of health, 6 years of having cats, most of that more than one and i've never yet had an illness.

The dry foods i/they like are;
Husse (http://www.husse.ie/view-product-type.php?type=Super Premium Cat Food&Sect=Products) the exclusive one
Perfect Fit
Red Mills

The dry foods they weren't keen on were;
Orijen
the Husse krakotten

They'll eat any wet food at all (even supervalu own brand when i'm stuck without any other shop to get to! tasteless creatures) but the ones i find best are;
Smilla... looks meaty and is packed so tight in the can that when you take the lid it rises up! good ingredients and high meat content
Porta 21... would feed this 24/7 as it's great but it's bloody expensive so is a weekly treat instead... pure flaked meat... the chicken and aloe one is just chicken in a chicken broth with some aloe vere gel in it and goes down really well... lots of purring while eating this!
I bought them the bozita stuff last time i ordered from zooplus but it's not better than supermarket stuff but more expensive, was very disappointed.

i also regularly give raw meat and tinned fish as meals

I'm confused about this as well! I feed my cat predominantly dry food but he gets fresh meat or half a pouch of wet food a day. Since I got my cat (he's now 10 months) I fed him Hills Science Plan Kitten, he loved it and seemed to be thriving on it. I then realised that it has an awful amount of grain in it, which is neither natural nor beneficial to cats in such an amount. Also, vet practices are often connected with Hills via sponsorship etc. etc., that's why many of them only carry that brand, and that is why I don't trust their 'expert' view on the food! I'm now trying out Orijen which ingredients wise seems superb. My cat loved Hills, likes Orijen, and would rather starve than eat Red Mills! I don't think it's that good nutritioanlly but loads of cats (except mine!) seem to love it.

Minesajackdaniels wrote: »

What's your opinion on cats who are fed dry food all of their lives going into renal failure and suffering from FUS and crystals in their urine?

+1
As a cat owner that used to feed only dry with a CRF cat who has only just gone 6, I'd be interested to read your opinion on this too.

Our cats are currently on a combination of Orijen dry and Husse wet.

Our male suffers with UTI's. All the cats loved Husse dry and had shiny coats on it, but my girl cat has a very sensitive tum and would sometimes get a runny tummy while on it (the cereals maybe? The two old ladies who had kept her from when she was a kitten to 4.5 months gave her a ton of cows milk - I had never seen a kitten so round in my life! She had the runs for ages when we got her getting her system back to normal, so I think from that maybe she's overly sensitive?) The orijen has no grains in it - 75% meat, 25% fruits and veg. It also has loads of extracts like cranberry and stinging nettle which are brilliant for promoting a healthy urinary tract. When we put him on Orjien, he didn't have any UTI's in about a year. The youngest did great on Husse dry, but she wants what the others have, so it's easier just to feed them all the same thing. The wet food also ensures that my male gets a bit more water in his diet.

If your cat has no sensitivities, I would definetely recommend Husse. It's a high quality product, human grade ingredients, and a low feed rate. You can get a free sample at www.husse.ie - just remember it can take around 2 weeks for your cat's system to adjust to a new food. However, if your cat has sensitivities, then I would recommend Orijen (human grade ingredients as well and low feed rate, but no grains). They don't do free samples, but you can order a small trial bag at www.zooplus.co.uk (cheaper than the .ie site)

reality wrote: »

as long as you ensure they are drinking sufficient water

The others have pretty much pointed posters in the direction of what searches to do to begin the long and winding road of trying to inform themselves about cat nutrition, but I just wanted to take up this one point.

And, reality, this isn't a dig at you.

It's almost impossible to ensure any animal is drinking sufficient water. There's even a saying about it, using a horse as an example. Short of syringing water into your cat every day, it's impossible to guarantee they are taking in a set amount of water.

I use all the pro-water tactics I can think of - aerated drinking fountains, filtered water, numerous bowls, dotted about the house where the cats pass by - and my lot do drink a good bit of water, but I can't guarantee they're all drinking as much as they need to be, when fed a dry diet, every day.

Cat nutrition, the short version:

Cats are obligate carnivores, meaning they have to eat meat to survive. Their dietary requirements are different to a dog, because as a pack animal and a scavenger the dog evolved to utilise more of a range of food. Domestic cats were bred from desert and tundra-dwelling small sized cats, whose moisture requirements were mostly met by their food, and whose food included insects, small reptiles, rodents, small mammals and birds.

Domestic cats have bodies that require amino acids and other nutrients that they can ONLY get from their food - they haven't the ability to make these substances inside their own bodies. A popular example is taurine (present in richest quantities in muscle meat, like thigh meat and hearts). Without taurine, cats will go blind.

Cats have a short digestive tract that is not designed to be squeezing nutrients out of species-inappropriate food - so they find it difficult to get the nutrients they need from plant-based protein, as used in commerical cat food preparations (both wet and dry). Cats cannot synthesise vitamin A properly from beta carotene (in carrots), for instance, so they need to take vitamin A in its natural form - through eating liver.

Commerically prepared cat food has to meet a minimum standard for nutrient requirements and is therefore a balanced diet for your cat. However, as kibble has become more popular over the years, problems relating to kibble-only diets are becoming more evident. So are problems relating to some of the additives in commercial cat food, and some of the 'cooking' methodologies used to prepare the foods.

On the flip side, raw meat is also not a balanced diet for your cat. Think wild diet - skin, bone, organs, meat. Just feeding raw meat strips doesn't tick the boxes against things like calcium, phosphorous, taurine, arginine, vitamin A and so on and so forth.

Saying that, there is currently no single source of information that I would point to and say "that, that's what I'm going to feed my cat, that's clinically proven to be the best for it".

I feed mine a combination of commercial non-fish-based catfood, commercial low or no-cereal kibble, (or at least kibble with no corn), and raw meat, bone and organs. I do not allow my cats 24 hour access to kibble to self-feed. They don't need it. If they're hungry, they let me know in no uncertain terms.

Google yellow fat disease, or pansteatitis.

It's a condition that can occur in cats fed a diet too rich in unsaturated fats (or too low in vitamin E). Fish based cat foods are rich in unsaturated fats, and if that's all you feed your cat, it's not good for them. (We're talking twice a day, every day here.)

It's very treatable with a change in diet.

Just to add - mention it to your vet and they'll tell you whether or not they've ruled it out. If your gut feeling is still that the food might be a problem, consult your vet before changing your cat's diet in the middle of tests - it's important that they have a yardstick where they can measure change, and so determine whether or not a change in diet is providing a solution.