What do you feed your cat?

Peewee_lane

Our cat was being fed the tins of food from Lidl the last few weeks, before that it was the tesco brand of cat food.

I switched to whiskas yesterday and the change in her was unbelievable. She went mad for the food and then looked for more, purred all night long and sat beside me as if I'd bought her a bentley.

What do you feed your cat?

NewFrockTuesday

Pats the same. Whiskas all the way. He wont look at anything else. Its annoying and expensive :mad: Ive tried fooling him but to no avail. He doesnt seem to get that there a recession on :pac:

He has cat nuts to graze on - I get them in the local vets...dont know the name - white bag with a pic of a tabby on the sront....Super something I think.

He gets anchovies and their oil every day and gets the scraps from the table as well. Hes goes mental for spag bol - even the pasta. I bring home tuna scraps and any fish scraps from work and the odd time when I roast a chicken and have used the carcass for stock, Ill give him the bones but theyre literally just tat at that stage. Ill have given him the skin and scraps from it previously.


Hes better fed than me*.







*not true

Munster Gal

Royal Canin Sterilised 37. I get it from my vet and they love it. They just get dry food and the odd bit of leftover chicken or fish. It's expensive enough but I get a 10% discount and pay for it by direct debit which helps. The cats are very healthy and happy on it so I don't think I'll change. They only see the vet for their vaccinations and our holidays!!
There are alot of very good foods on the market nowadays like Hill, Orijen, James Wellbeloved, Iams etc.

comongethappy

Orijen dry and Husse wet. My male suffers from UTI's and this seems to be the best combination for him!

Husse do a high quality dry food as well, but Orijen is better for cats with sensitivities. If you feed a better quality of food, you really do see it in their coats, health, and stools!

The Sweeper

Deepsense wrote: »

Pats the same. Whiskas all the way. He wont look at anything else. Its annoying and expensive :mad: Ive tried fooling him but to no avail. He doesnt seem to get that there a recession on :pac:

He has cat nuts to graze on - I get them in the local vets...dont know the name - white bag with a pic of a tabby on the sront....Super something I think.

He gets anchovies and their oil every day and gets the scraps from the table as well. Hes goes mental for spag bol - even the pasta. I bring home tuna scraps and any fish scraps from work and the odd time when I roast a chicken and have used the carcass for stock, Ill give him the bones but theyre literally just tat at that stage. Ill have given him the skin and scraps from it previously.

Deepsense, Pat sounds like a right character, but that's really not a good diet!

There's far, far too much salt in preserved anchovies in oil for him to be getting those every day. He can't properly digest a spag bol , and too much oily fish can cause pansteatitis (yellow fat disease) in cats. Cooked chicken is like moggy junk food because all the goodness is gone out of it, and cooked chicken bones can still splinter even if you think they're mush.

He might look good on the diet now (cats can consume a lot more fat than other animals because they metabolise it differently, and it makes their coats shine) but you run the risk of long-term health complications. A cat's liver isn't as effective as a dog's or a human's - it's not as good at eliminating toxins. Additionally, renal failure is a big problem in cats because they don't drink enough water, and I'd really worry about the pressure the salt in those anchovies is putting on his kidneys.

It's one of those things - he'll look good now, then in a few years he'll take a turn and you'll take him to the vet and there'll be a list of problems as long as your arm...

Pat sounds like he'd revert to his carnivorous heritage in two seconds flat, so if you can, cut the human junk food, the spag bol, and the anchovies completely, keep with the kibble and a wet food like whiskas (saying that, aim for the non-fish varieties mostly and keep fish as a treat), cut the chicken down to a treat only and see if you can introduce a pocket-friendly raw item - raw chicken necks or raw chicken wings are great for his teeth, and a piece of raw lamb's heart or ox heart is full of taurine and very good for cats. Plus it's much cheaper than commercial pet food. (If you ever want to know where the hearts, tongues, livers and other bits go, it's into petfood anyway!)

jen_23

Our cat loves the whiskas 'oh so fishy' range.
I wouldn't even have it out of the pouches and she's purring for it

microgirl

Our pair get Royal Canin Sensible, and occasional Lidl meaty pouches as a treat.

I always give them the fishy meat though as that's what they like (despite the fact that neither of them like fish in real life, except Bobby who goes loopy for prawns) - is there some reason why you shouldn't give the fishy ones?

The Sweeper

Depends what's in the fishy ones.

http://www.cat-world.com.au/FeedingFish.htm

http://www.merckvetmanual.com/mvm/index.jsp?cfile=htm/bc/91402.htm

In fairness, most of the pet food companies probably compensate in some way with additional vitamin E in their foods, but the industry is so loosely regulated and there have been so many petfood recalls recently that I'm not sure I trust any one product enough to make it a mainstay of my cats' diet.

Peewee_lane

You wouldnt believe the difference in missus since the introduction of Whiskas, Im convinced theres something in it!

Shewhomustbe...

My vet thinks feeding Whiskas to cats is akin to us visiting McDonalds.

I have seven cats so need to buy in bulk and get all my food from the website zooplus.ie, it offers a huge variety of food to suit all budgets. (And no I don't work for them!!) A couple of my boys used to suffer from cysitits and urinary stones so I put them all on a mixed diet of wet (high quality such as this http://www.zooplus.ie/shop/cats/canned_cat_food_pouches/bozita) and dry food and since doing that haven't had to make a visit to the vet.

I think most cat owners would be shocked if they read the ingredients of the cat food offered in Irish shops/supermarkets.

galah

ever since they stopped GoCat (*shakes fist at Purina*), it's Sheba for our two monsters. Nothing else will do, apparently. Apart from hand-fed tiger prawns, obviously. Feckers.
And either Iams or Hills Science Plan for dry food, depending on what's on offer at zooplus.

Some days, the cats' food is more expensive than ours. 'Tis depressing.:eek:

Heroditas

galah wrote: »

ever since they stopped GoCat (*shakes fist at Purina*),

We give our cats Purina Go Cat. It's still available

Our monsters are still on the kitten food version of it. We tried to get them onto the indoor variant but they didn't seem too keen on it. Typical. :rolleyes:

Apart from that, they like rice, mashed potato, baked bean sauce .. actually .. pretty much anything they can get their paws on.

They go absolutely wild for ham though. They'll even try and jump into the fridge if they see a packet of cooked ham.

doctor evil

MAJD is it a better idea to make your own cat food? Any method/recipe to go about this.

GAAman

Go kat kitten food for mine she munches away on it i tried her on the whiskas stuff and she wasnt interested just kept lookin at me like "here come on now stop the messin where is the real food??!"

I give her tesco pate as well (like 20p a tub) for a treat

MsQuinn

Feed my 2 Royal Canin (fit 32) as they are mostly indoor cats. (They get out for about 2 hours each evening.) They get feed then twice a day and I mix half a pouch of felix in with the nuts each feed as they turn their noses up when it’s dry.

We get a huge bag of nuts from zooplus for around €65 which lasts about 2 months. For a treat they get half a tin each of sheeba tuna or chicken which we also get from zooplus as tesco discontinued it. So basically food, it costs about €10 week to feed the two cats (fiver each – come on:p) with decent food. Diet is very important to their health and appearance. Everyone who sees ours (even neighbours who hate cats and will admit it to me) always comment on how good looking they are so it is worth feeding them something vets recommend.

Shewhomustbe...

Heroditas & GAAman, if your cats are over a year old you really shouldn't be feeding them kitten food, it's formulated to accomodate for all the growing they do but is a big no no for adult cats.

(MsQuinn, I'm quietly proud of the fact that I also get the same compliments about my army )

The Sweeper

doctor evil wrote: »

MAJD is it a better idea to make your own cat food? Any method/recipe to go about this.

There is a *lot* of information on the internet regarding feeding raw food to cats - and most of the make-your-own-catfood recipes come back to feeding raw.

The problem with feeding raw is that cats thrive on a diet of small rodents, lizards, birds and insects, and in that diet they get all the moisture, amino acids, vitamins, minerals and fat they require. Through eating an entire critter, they get meat, fat, liver, calcium from the bones, so on, so forth. Subsequently just feeding them strips of steak for the rest of their lives would be an imbalanced diet.

The raw food mob recommend feeding a mix of 80/10/10 meat/bone/organs that you make up using human-grade meat available to you through a good butcher. If you have a lot of cats (like I do), it's actually far cheaper to feed this way than to feed commercial wet food, but it's relatively time-heavy.

Do a bunch of reading up on the internet and see what you think yourself. My tips for making your own raw cat food would be supplement as little as possible (e.g. keep it as natural as you can - meat, bone, organs. I only supplement with taurine these days, which you can buy in a powder from health food stores). Keep it as fresh as you can - better to go to the store and buy the vaccum-packs that keep for a bit longer in the fridge than to freeze and defrost. Take advantage of 'still fresh' specials - trays of cheap steak that are on their sell-by date for instance. Never feed anything that's gone off. Never feed just one thing over a long time period. Don't leave 'grazing' kibble out 24x7 - your cats will tell you if they're hungry, they don't need 24 hour access to food.

GAAman

Shewhomustbe... wrote: »

Heroditas & GAAman, if your cats are over a year old you really shouldn't be feeding them kitten food, it's formulated to accomodate for all the growing they do but is a big no no for adult cats.

(MsQuinn, I'm quietly proud of the fact that I also get the same compliments about my army )

She is just shy of eleven months so i figure next month or maybe the month after i will start her on the adult stuff just hope she takes to it she is a picky eater

Heroditas

Shewhomustbe... wrote: »

Heroditas & GAAman, if your cats are over a year old you really shouldn't be feeding them kitten food, it's formulated to accomodate for all the growing they do but is a big no no for adult cats.

The monsters are 10 months old so I'm trying to "wean" them onto the Purina adult food

Ruu_Old

Blue Buffalo brand (I'm in the US), dry food. It is a tad expensive but good quality and I'd only get the best for them. I think it is an indoor cat weight control type. The two cats get about half cup in the morning and evening a piece. We have tried several different brands over the years, so they are not picky.

Shewhomustbe...

I'm finding it rather funny reading about all the "picky eaters" people have I must be an awful owner because I adopted the attitude that's all there is, take it or leave it :eek:
(Though I don't stick to just one brand/flavour so that's maybe why mine aren't quite as picky as other people's)

But remember when changing foods do so slowly as it can upset tummies.

Heroditas

They're only picky when it's put in their bowl. :rolleyes:

Previously I've had mashed potato robbed from my plate as I was eating my dinner. A lightning quick paw nicked a mouthful of mash!

They'll eat anything when you don;t want to give it to them but once it goes into the bowl they turn their noses up at it.

Shewhomustbe...

I've had bits of cheese taken on me too!
Maybe you should pretend to eat their food & they might decide they like it too

irish_goat

Mines get's GoCat dry food (whatever flavour I decide seems tastiest when buying) but will always come to the dinner table scranning food as well. Never seen it eat anything other than meat though, would be well handy if it ate veg. Deliberately never gave it the jelly/gravy food top as it's way handier and cleaner using dry stuff. Always make sure it has milk/water as well. I know milk isn't the best for them but she loves it's so meh...

Kimia

Dry Food all the way. Iams, that stuff you get at the vets which is super expensive, and then if I'm having a lean month I'll get her the super complete go cat purina stuff. She likes it well enough and she looks gorgeous, glossy coat, happy and energetic, but I'd say she's a bit bored of it.

But if I even open the fridge door she's over trying to jump in or jump on me with frenzied meows until I give her some ham. And don't even start me on the tuna - all I have to do is take out the tin opener!!!!

Bonkers_xOx

Lidl's finest.


He dosen't really care tbh!

Adventure Pout

I feed my cat raw meat (mainly chicken because he loves it!!) mixed with Instinct, so he gets all the nutrients he needs.
If you really know what in the commercial food, I think you will be very disgusted! At least, home made food, you know what's in it, and kitty is very happy.. You can notice on the difference with good and bad food, with kitty's fur, poos etc... I know it sounds mad!! but it's true. Commercial cat food makes very smelly strong poos compared to raw food.
Also, everything with tomato is not good for kitty (check for poisonous plants, and tomato is a No No for kitty!)
However, my cat absolutely loves Gourmet Perle Pouch...so he gets them as a treat..

nearly

i'm worried now about my cats' diets. interesting reading about the raw food diet. i heard about it before, but now more concerned about long term health.

how much should they be eating? i'm worried about having overweight cats, i see alot in our neighborhood. ours are getting spayed/neutered soon so i'm aware we will have to change their diet.

we have two cats, 16.5 weeks old now. between them, they eat about 3/4 a big can of whiskas a day. i leave the kibbly stuff out for them too. they never seemed to like whiskas dry food much, but i was given a sample of hills science at the vets, they like that. (getting suspicious now!)

we feed them meat when we eat it, which isn't every night. i have given them cooked fish & chicken and raw steak & lamb. i was worried about giving raw chicken but i'm now interested in the raw diet. the 'mix in' stuff looks good, as it seems it would be easier to prepare than the recipes for ground bones, organs, etc.

i think we'll stop putting out the dry kibble after reading this thread! don't want to start bad habits and also be doing them any harm.

how much food should i expect a 16 week old cat to eat after being spayed/neutered? does it depend on the food?

The Sweeper

Kittens are voracious gobblers of food, and at 16 weeks they're still really kittens. Feeding little and often is good - and removing the 24/7 kibble buffet is also very good. Small kittens will eat up to four times a day and at over 16 weeks and heading for desexing, I'd cut that to three times a day and then twice a day after six months of age, making sure you keep to a routine. You'll find your cats will let you know if they're hungry so they don't need 24 hour access to food.

Amounts depends on the food and is calorie content (for instance, kitten food is higher in calories than cat food, which is why you shouldn't feed it to adult cats - their metabolism is slower and it can make them fat). I try to judge it with mine by making sure that whatever food I put down for them, they should be able to walk away from the plate with about 25% of it left. They'll then return within the next two hours and clean the plate. Works - they're not fat.

(Also, by 'let you know when hungry', I mean you will be sitting on the couch, reading a book, say, and suddenly your cat won't leave you alone, but won't settle in for cuddles either. Tramp on you, get off the couch, rub face against coffee table while miaowing, trample you again, so on - and when you get up they'll race to the feeding bowls. That's an "I'm hungry" communication. Circling your legs while you're chopping vegetables isn't the same thing. That's an "I'm opportunistic, not starving" communication.)

One thing I would recommend on raw feeding is definitely sticking to the simplest method you can find, and cutting out the heavy supplementation. If your cats won't gnaw whole bones, see if your butcher will put a chicken carcass through the mincer for you - it's a good place to start them getting the taste for bone.

Once your cats get used to eating raw, you can give them large pieces and they'll work their way through them - and by large, I mean I can cut a lamb heart in half or throw down a whole piece of meat and they'll manage easily, gnawing off chunks that are easy for them to swallow. The biggest issue is they pull it all over the bloody floor!

Kitty_mom

My cats are big and weighs about 6 kgs each. I feed them 3 times a day. 40 gms of dry food in the morning and night. In the afternoon I feed them half whikas wet food pouches with little bits of dry food in them.

I buy both whiskas & science hill light . They don't eat if I feed them anything else . If the whiskas is considered as junk at least science hill is the healthy one.. lol

In between I give them half a cat stick as snack. I know the feeling when they come and mew around you for more food and you feel so guilty that you end up feeding them inbetween. This was the reason they were little bit fat on the last chekup. So I am weighing the food and feeding them. If they mew inbetween i give them a snack like half a stick or whiskas temptation about 3-4 pieces each and they are happy. They are maintaining their weights now. Last week they were 5.8 kgs which is defientely good.

The Sweeper

My cats are all different weights and ages, which is why I stick with the 'eat 75% of it in one sitting' on the food. My biggest guy is just on 6kgs, well filled out but not fat. Next one down is about 5kgs. The bengal cross male is probably 4kgs, but is very long and may fill out over the next year until he reaches maturity at two years of age. His sister is a busy little titch at about 3kgs, full of attitude. My smallest is the blue burmese cross who's still a kitten at six months, but he's not going to be a big cat. Saying that, he's already muscle bound, so think he's going to be a stocky, butty creature. I've heard burmese cats described as 'velvet covered bricks' and he's definitely heading that way.

If I didn't feed raw every day, my commercial petfood bill would be through the rafters with this many cats, especially the number of pouches / trays / sachets some of the manufacturers recommend per cat per day.

Diet in a day for my lot: the day's kibble ration for an average-sized cat, shared between the five of them, for breakfast, along with something raw - a lamb heart or slice of ox heart, a piece of kangaroo meat, or whatever was on special at the supermarket - veal or lamb usually (mine aren't really fans of raw chicken). Supper is usually commercial wet food - enough to feed one cat in a day, again, between the five of them, (that's usually two of the small tins or pouches or trays) and more raw - some ground up chicken carcass, a small piece of raw liver, whatever meat is there.

I tried other offal bar heart and liver, but kidney makes one of them throw up and as I can't figure out which one, it's off the menu. They weren't too sure about tripe, but gave it a go. The more variety you give them from a young age, the more opportunistic they'll remain for life. You also don't need to trim fat off what you feed them - cats process fat differently to us and feeding them fat is fine.

They also drink a good amount of water - I have electric water fountains for them and they certainly drink more from them than they would from a bowl, but the bengal X especially will raid everything from my bedside drinking glass to the toilet bowl for water. (Lid always stays down in this house as a result.) There are three designated cat water bowls in different parts of the house.

ladystrange

Our 3 will only eat Felix, either 'as good as it looks' or 'marinades'. They were eating wiskas/lidl/supervalu brand till I made the mistake of buying the Felix for a wee change, they wont look at anything else since!! :rolleyes:

maryxyz

Does anyone else find these really messy to use and impossible to empty completely, consequently the old food in them stinks in the bin ? ! ! !

Why don't manufacturers make them a better shape, or supply a pouch-emptying device in the pack - something to fit over the pouch & squeeze it empty ! ! !

Little tins like Sheba brand are better as they're easier to wash & can go in the paper & metal bin, but one is never enough for our cat & they're more expensive !

Maryxyz

Blueprint

maryxyz wrote: »

Does anyone else find these really messy to use and impossible to empty completely, consequently the old food in them stinks in the bin ? ! ! !

Why don't manufacturers make them a better shape, or supply a pouch-emptying device in the pack - something to fit over the pouch & squeeze it empty ! ! !

Little tins like Sheba brand are better as they're easier to wash & can go in the paper & metal bin, but one is never enough for our cat & they're more expensive !

Maryxyz

Buy the Bozita tetra packs from Zooplus. I've got a built in cleaning machine for them in the shape of my dog...

maryxyz

thanks Blueprint - where would I get Bozita catfood - I've never seen it

Maryxyz

Blueprint

maryxyz wrote: »

thanks Blueprint - where would I get Bozita catfood - I've never seen it

Maryxyz

I think that www.zooplus.ie are the only ones who have them, you have to order in bulk, but the ingredients are much better than any of the pouches you can buy in the shop. Problem is that the packs are 375g each, so if you only have the one cat and it's fussy, it might not like to eat it the second day. The carton folds up again after you open it though, so it's quite good that way.

maryxyz

thanks, Blueprint, that's an interesting website !

Maryxyz

GigaByte

My 2 cats Izzy and Cleo are the fussiest eaters in the cat world!!

The only thing they will eat is the Whiskas Fisherman's choice in Jelly, but... they will only eat the Prawns, Whitefish and the Salmon (just) pouches. No matter how hungry they are they won't eat the Tuna ones???

I also by the 5 euro’s bags of prawns from lidls to mix in with their food. This helps them eat the Salmon pouches. At least Izzy love's the Whiskas biscuits but Cloe hardley touches them.


I've a cupboard full of Tuna pouches!!

rediguana

Purina. Cat looks great and is never ill. Cat is reluctant to eat anything else.

waraf

This stuff. The ingredients are "meat and animal by-products, 85% beef 10% chicken and 5% rabbit, minerals" so I reckon it's quite a bit better for them than whiskas (which only has 4% meat).

Plus, it's a lot cheaper than whiskas at 38 cents per 100g as opposed to nearly a euro per 100g whiskas pouch. I buy 50 euro worth of food at a time and delivery is then free.

The kittens love it and their coats are shiny. I used to feed them whiskas but someone told me that whiskas is like junk food for cats so I'm happier now that I've moved them on to this stuff (they are too).

waraf

maryxyz wrote: »

Little tins like Sheba brand are better as they're easier to wash & can go in the paper & metal bin, but one is never enough for our cat & they're more expensive !

Maryxyz

If your cat food comes in normal size cans (i.e. the same diameter as a can of beans) then these are really handy for stopping the smell and keeping the food fresh for a day or two.

maryxyz

Thaks for all the great ideas, folks !

Maryxyz

FlutterinBantam

Most cats like variety, change the food every now and again and you will find the appreciate it more.

gaeilgegrinds

I only feed my cat fresh food...and the odd bit of dry if needs be. Is that bad?

Xiney

Our Theo is a tub of lard I'm afraid.

He was on Hills Prescription Diet r/d but it was costing an arm and a leg so I switched to Hills Science Diet r/d. Since then he's put on some weight, although I think we may have slipped into old habits and fed him too much... it's hard not to because food is his most favourite thing in the world.

After doing some research I've reduced him to 1/4 cup twice a day this weekend and hopefully that will help. I wish he'd just exercise more, but he'd stare at us trying to get him to play with toys for hours with his "you're acting awfully silly, you know that?" look on him and we even bought him a harness & leash a few years back... but he just turns into civil disobedience cat and lets us drag him around the floor.

*sigh*

The Sweeper

LOL @ civil disobedience cat. Thats a peaceful anti-harness protest all right.

I have a couple of harnesses. They take the cats a while to get used to them, but lots of praise and making a positive fuss is the key. One of my guys, when he realised that the harness is a direct trade for going outside, adjusted in precisely two minutes flat.

Xiney

Theo's never been outside - tried one time when we first got the harness to see if that would change his mind about wanting to walk with it. Talk about a total freak out...

We actually got a 5 month old lab puppy at the start of the month. Working on socializing them (mainly so that Jake leaves Theo alone rather than attempting to play which Theo does NOT appreciate) but boy, does the sight of a large grinning (read: toothy) animal bounding towards him get that cat moving! (Obviously we minimize that sort of behaviour so as not to stress the cat... but... a bit of exercise wouldn't harm the little fatty)


Perhaps I shall try training the cat to walk with the harness by feeding him his kibble one piece at a time for walking... Getting a dog has re-awakened my "animals CAN be trained" thinking. I mean, a cat can't be any more untrainable than a chihuahua right?

Blueprint

Xiney wrote: »

Perhaps I shall try training the cat to walk with the harness by feeding him his kibble one piece at a time for walking... Getting a dog has re-awakened my "animals CAN be trained" thinking. I mean, a cat can't be any more untrainable than a chihuahua right?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gKPpXkPzFA&feature=rec-HM-fresh+div