Dry cat food brands

ferretone

I'm wondering if I could get any advice on which brand of dry cat food to use for my two. At the moment I'm feeding Orijen for the dry, and Maxi Zoo Real Nature for their canned fix in the evening.

We recently lost our older lady - she had come from a huge colony around 5 years before, where the really sweet but misguided old dears had been feeding the cats mainly processed ham, until the rescue stepped in to help. The upshot was that she had struggled with urinary issues over the years, so was always fed veterinary food for the past 3+ years, then suddenly exhibited severe kidney disease, which we tried to treat, but she did not respond at all, just went downhill really fast, until there was nothing more we could do, and she had to be pts a few weeks ago.

After adopting her, we never intended to get another cat, as we knew she was happy alone in a quiet, peaceful home (or as peaceful as a dobie allows anyway, but dobie was there first, so she knew all about that.)

But a couple years later a tiny 3-week-old-kitten turned up one morning in the bonnet of my car. She was fine at first, but then developed awful flu, which I had to nurse her through, then she was finally healthy enough that I could get her spayed, after which she developed pneumonia, and once she recovered from that, I found it so hard to let her go after all that nursing that she stayed too.

She was never a great match for Siamsa, the cat we recently lost, as Siamsa was very timid, and Kitterton is a feisty little devil, so when we lost Siamsa, we immediately adopted a kitten who was staying in the vet's, as it was obvious she was so much a better match for Kitterton. And so it has proved.

But it turned out Kitterton was harbouring a throat infection, now well and truly cured, and the vet recommended we switch the dry food to a large kibble, which would make her crunch it more, and be better for her throat. He wanted me to buy one Hills has recently developed (natch!), but was quite receptive when I said I did not want to go the Hills route, as their food is so high in grains (as far as I am concerned, any grains is too much for a cat!)

So, my questions are as follows:

!. Is he right, should I be feeding a dry food with a larger kibble size, as the Origen size is pretty small?
2. If so, can anyone recommend a really high quality dry cat food (Orijen standard or better), which is available in a large kibble size?

I'm open to any recommendations for a decent diet for them, to be honest. I tried switching up their wet food for chopped up raw sardines from the dog's batch, and they ate that for a day or 2, which surely got them chewing, but they won't look at them since!

Pumpkinseeds

I switched from Orijen to Applaws kibble. All 4 of our cats love it and they have to chew it as it's harder. It's 80% protein with no grain in it. We get the chicken one as that's what our cats prefer. You can get trial size bags from Zooplus.ie and there's a very detailed description of what's in each food as well as customer reviews of products.

I usually buy from Zooplus.uk as it's often much cheaper than the Irish site.