cat food

sillysmiles

I've read through some of the threads on cat food but I'm looking specifically for a wet cat food for a very elderly cat (food quality).
Can anyone recommend something good for an old cat.
Thanks.

Nody

All the same applies really; the wet foods are either patee style or shredded in broth so easy to eat and digest. If he's got a weight issue then obviously look for higher protein based foods once and be careful with snacks on the side.

iora_rua

I have old (13 - 14 yrs) cats who were beginning to show their age and were also slightly overweight. After the vet diagnosed one of them with spondolosis (sp?), I started them on whatever 'Senior' cat foods I could find (not the easiest in rural Ireland - most local cats seem to disappear after about two years, so no call for it I suppose!).

Anyway, for the past eight months or so, they've been on a mixture of the following:
Felix or Whiskas Senior in those boxes of twelve pouches (larger supermarkets)
Vita Cat Senior ditto from Aldi
that's for breakfast

Evening meal is a selection of tinned food from Maxi Zoo (not exactly cheap at around 2 euro a tin, but if you buy six you get one free):
Real Nature Senior Cat
and Select Gold Senior
also, a slightly cheaper range called Multi Fit Senior

I occasionally throw in a tin of ordinary Kitekat to help keep costs down and they seem happy enough with this arrangement!

Something else I dose them with - for their teeth (after one cat had some teeth extracted at the local vets ... never again) is ProDen PlaqueOff for Dogs and Cats. A 180g plastic tub lasts for ages - and had the unexpected bonus of easing their arthritic joints, so they're now rushing about like kittens

They also, get either raw (with bones in) or cooked (minus bones) chicken as an alternative to all the processed stuff once or twice in the week.

Hope some of this will help!

Hoboo

iora_rua wrote: »

I have old (13 - 14 yrs) cats who were beginning to show their age and were also slightly overweight. After the vet diagnosed one of them with spondolosis (sp?), I started them on whatever 'Senior' cat foods I could find (not the easiest in rural Ireland - most local cats seem to disappear after about two years, so no call for it I suppose!).



Anyway, for the past eight months or so, they've been on a mixture of the following:
Felix or Whiskas Senior in those boxes of twelve pouches (larger supermarkets)
Vita Cat Senior ditto from Aldi
that's for breakfast

Evening meal is a selection of tinned food from Maxi Zoo (not exactly cheap at around 2 euro a tin, but if you buy six you get one free):
Real Nature Senior Cat
and Select Gold Senior
also, a slightly cheaper range called Multi Fit Senior

I occasionally throw in a tin of ordinary Kitekat to help keep costs down and they seem happy enough with this arrangement!

Something else I dose them with - for their teeth (after one cat had some teeth extracted at the local vets ... never again) is ProDen PlaqueOff for Dogs and Cats. A 180g plastic tub lasts for ages - and had the unexpected bonus of easing their arthritic joints, so they're now rushing about like kittens

They also, get either raw (with bones in) or cooked (minus bones) chicken as an alternative to all the processed stuff once or twice in the week.

Hope some of this will help!

Whiskas? Felix? Aldi? Might as well feed them their own poop. All animal by products.

Get Bozita chicken from Zooplus.ie

boomerang

Steady on, I think the OP is doing a stand up job: plenty of variety (mix of high-end and low-end foods balanced out over time) and crucially for elderly cats, plenty of wet food. They're putting a lot of thought into it; raw chicken on the bone is great for dental health and cooked chicken is easily digestible, highly bio-available protein - great for an elderly puss to supplement the diet.

Pumpkinseeds

Why the criticism? People do the best they can within their means for their cats. Sometimes I can afford the best but mostly our cats get Felix as good as it looks because it costs between 10 and 12 pounds for 44 pouches on Amazon. If things are very tough financially they get Lidl wet food. We used to feed Applaws dry but now we feed Royal Canin Calm dry instead.

Our 4 cats were all strays who are far better off slumming it with supermarket cat food then they would have been living rough on the streets and scavenging with nobody giving a damn whether they lived or died. Sometimes there's a lot of pet food snobbery on this forum.

Feeding a supermarket pet food is not a lack of responsible ownership, as the tone of some posts sometimes implies.

Graces7

Hoboo wrote: »

Whiskas? Felix? Aldi? Might as well feed them their own poop. All animal by products.

Get Bozita chicken from Zooplus.ie

Posts like this!:rolleyes::(:mad:

Aldi and LIDL pet foods are high quality and affordable. Cats do very well indeed on them. German pet foods are very good indeed.

Far from "slumming " it! Tesco and Dunnes do good food too at reasonable cost.

I feed mixed depending on availability and cost; we pensioners are like that!

Some raw, usually chicken as I share a bird with my cats and dogs; I eat the white meat and they get the rest. Democratic household...

Been feeding cats on this basis for over forty years now. Healthy cats..

I have a friendly butcher who saves chicken backs and can get a lot of meat off them, or make stock and add bread, vegetables etc.

They love the variety also.As do we of course.

Occasionally my landlord brings fresh fish and we share that; this week Dunnes had half price liver so that was great.

Pumpkinseeds

We supplement our cats diet with salmon darnes, often on offer in Lidl in 2 or 4 darne packs for less than a fiver

Raw mince(they won't eat dunnes mince)

Raw chicken breast it's like throwing peanuts to elephants with them. I was dicing the raw chicken breast last night and Felix and Jazzy were swatting at each other to get to it first.

We usually give them the raw at room temperature, they seem to prefer it like that. Tesco usually have mince and chicken breast/turkey strips on the 3 for a tenner offer.

I find it slightly worrying that none of them will eat Dunnes mince, even though I buy the 80/85% fat free one. So now I don't buy it from there at all. I don't eat meat so I don't know how it tastes, my husband isn't too fussy though:)

The tins of Bozita chicken I ordered arrived yesterday and so far they are a hit, but we'll see how it goes, they loved the Animonda for a week then refused to eat it anymore.

Hoboo

Graces7 wrote: »

Posts like this!:rolleyes::(:mad:

Aldi and LIDL pet foods are high quality and affordable. [/quote

Posts like what? Keep your sarcasm for your mrs. Aldi and Lidl is far from high quality, it's extremely low grade animal DERIVITIVES. Plus corn and grain based fillers. No wonder the birds love it. It's cheaper to buy a high quality 30 percent human grade meat based product online than sh!t in a can. Fact. Keeping a cat alive is a different thing to keeping it feeling good and alive. I trust my vet, but hey, what would she know.

ferretone

Pumpkinseeds wrote: »

We supplement our cats diet with salmon darnes, often on offer in Lidl in 2 or 4 darne packs for less than a fiver

Raw mince(they won't eat dunnes mince)

Raw chicken breast it's like throwing peanuts to elephants with them. I was dicing the raw chicken breast last night and Felix and Jazzy were swatting at each other to get to it first.

We usually give them the raw at room temperature, they seem to prefer it like that. Tesco usually have mince and chicken breast/turkey strips on the 3 for a tenner offer.

I find it slightly worrying that none of them will eat Dunnes mince, even though I buy the 80/85% fat free one. So now I don't buy it from there at all. I don't eat meat so I don't know how it tastes, my husband isn't too fussy though:)

The tins of Bozita chicken I ordered arrived yesterday and so far they are a hit, but we'll see how it goes, they loved the Animonda for a week then refused to eat it anymore.

See, that's the thing, Pumpkinseeds, you say, oh yes, I have to feed mine on Felix and RC dry these days, but then the fact that you are feeding all this quality fresh stuff as well makes all the difference. Even if you can't do it every day, it's still giving them a lot more variety, and above all high quality protein, in their diet.

I'm lucky enough to have a raw-fed dog as well, and a neighbour who gets me to fetch her supply along with my own, so I have great access to cheap, good-quality raw stuff, making it easy to give the cats this every day. But you go to the effort to get them a certain amount of the best stuff, which makes it a far different prospect than feeding your cats only on the brands you mentioned.

ETA: Oh, and mine guzzle the raw stuff at fridge temperature: yours are well spoilt, fussy pussens, getting it taken out to bring it to room temperature :pac:

Pumpkinseeds

ferretone wrote: »

See, that's the thing, Pumpkinseeds, you say, oh yes, I have to feed mine on Felix and RC dry these days, but then the fact that you are feeding all this quality fresh stuff as well makes all the difference. Even if you can't do it every day, it's still giving them a lot more variety, and above all high quality protein, in their diet.

I'm lucky enough to have a raw-fed dog as well, and a neighbour who gets me to fetch her supply along with my own, so I have great access to cheap, good-quality raw stuff, making it easy to give the cats this every day. But you go to the effort to get them a certain amount of the best stuff, which makes it a far different prospect than feeding your cats only on the brands you mentioned.

ETA: Oh, and mine guzzle the raw stuff at fridge temperature: yours are well spoilt, fussy pussens, getting it taken out to bring it to room temperature :pac:

The reason I can do it though is that I'm a vegetarian, so most stuff like salmon darnes and mince and chicken breasts are pre-packed and I'm buying it for my husband so the cats have my share:) I preferred the Applaws dry food but the RC Calm is vital at the moment for defusing the stressful atmosphere that was here.

I would always try to feed the best dry food I can afford and I think if you have a high quality complete dry food you can feed a cheaper wet food. As I said, we can't always afford the more expensive stuff. Sure you can get great deals on Zooplus but now they want over 8 pounds delivery from the UK and the minimum order from the Irish site is 29 euro plus a fiver delivery. So on a tough week here it's more affordable for us to order 88 pouches of Felix from Amazon for 20 pounds and free delivery.

It all comes down to circumstances. Years ago when we had cats and there wasn't really much discussion on cat food quality we fed ours on tinned Whiskas and no dry and thought we were doing fine, the cats thrived. Like I said, it all comes down to circumstances. Really, so long as cats are being fed regularly and looked after, thats all that matters imo.

OldNotWIse

Hoboo wrote: »

Whiskas? Felix? Aldi? Might as well feed them their own poop. All animal by products.

Get Bozita chicken from Zooplus.ie

Thats a bit harsh Money is an issue for some people, and pet ownership is not cheap by any stretch.

OP ours is old (we think) and she loves the little tins of sardines from Lidl, I think they are around 55c, she gets one or two of those for a treat each week, and the oil is good for her coat and eyes.

sillysmiles

My problem is that it's not my cat. It's my partners parents cat!
So I was planning on buying them a crate/slab of wet tinned food (cat has lost some front teeth) and leaving it for them (or rather getting my bf to do it). I have no control over what the cat eats day to day but from what I've heard she has never eating human food even when she was younger. I might leave it until he is home for a few days and get him to try a few different tins and see if there is any that she prefers.

Pumpkinseeds

sillysmiles wrote: »

My problem is that it's not my cat. It's my partners parents cat!
So I was planning on buying them a crate/slab of wet tinned food (cat has lost some front teeth) and leaving it for them (or rather getting my bf to do it). I have no control over what the cat eats day to day but from what I've heard she has never eating human food even when she was younger. I might leave it until he is home for a few days and get him to try a few different tins and see if there is any that she prefers.

Have a look at Zooplus.ie. I just started my cats on tins of Bozita. It is a very soft and smooth food that is easy to eat. One of my cats had 2 molars removed a month or so ago and has been a bit funny about what he eats since then. He's also missing one of his front teeth. He wolfs down the Bozita stuff as do the other 3. It's got a very mushy consistency.

It's 97% meat and is probably ideal for an old cat, especially if they're missing a few teeth. It's available in packs of 6 or 20.

OldNotWIse

Pumpkinseeds wrote: »

Why the criticism? People do the best they can within their means for their cats. Sometimes I can afford the best but mostly our cats get Felix as good as it looks because it costs between 10 and 12 pounds for 44 pouches on Amazon. If things are very tough financially they get Lidl wet food. We used to feed Applaws dry but now we feed Royal Canin Calm dry instead.

Our 4 cats were all strays who are far better off slumming it with supermarket cat food then they would have been living rough on the streets and scavenging with nobody giving a damn whether they lived or died. Sometimes there's a lot of pet food snobbery on this forum.

Feeding a supermarket pet food is not a lack of responsible ownership, as the tone of some posts sometimes implies.

100%. We could all afford to feed the furries on luxury items if we only had one! Between my parents and myself and the OH we have shared custody/worry/joy/expense of 7 animals that were all discarded as rubbish. It would be lovely to feed them all on perfect diets but some weeks we can barely do that for ourselves!

My Dad boils down the carcass when we have chicken or turkey and pulls the meat off. The stock with the extra bits of meat (that us people are above!) poured over dried food is heaven for them

OldNotWIse

Hoboo wrote: »

Graces7 wrote: »

Posts like this!:rolleyes::(:mad:

Aldi and LIDL pet foods are high quality and affordable. [/quote

Posts like what? Keep your sarcasm for your mrs. Aldi and Lidl is far from high quality, it's extremely low grade animal DERIVITIVES. Plus corn and grain based fillers. No wonder the birds love it. It's cheaper to buy a high quality 30 percent human grade meat based product online than sh!t in a can. Fact. Keeping a cat alive is a different thing to keeping it feeling good and alive. I trust my vet, but hey, what would she know.

Your posts are so judgmental. I respect anyone who takes in an animal and looks after it.

anniehoo

Not liking the tone this thread is heading in folks. Stop with the backbiting please and keep the thread OT. If you have a problem with a post report it.

Pumpkinseeds

Hoboo wrote: »

Graces7 wrote: »

Posts like this!:rolleyes::(:mad:

Aldi and LIDL pet foods are high quality and affordable. [/quote

Posts like what? Keep your sarcasm for your mrs. Aldi and Lidl is far from high quality, it's extremely low grade animal DERIVITIVES. Plus corn and grain based fillers. No wonder the birds love it. It's cheaper to buy a high quality 30 percent human grade meat based product online than sh!t in a can. Fact. Keeping a cat alive is a different thing to keeping it feeling good and alive. I trust my vet, but hey, what would she know.

With 56% poultry in total, of which 36% is chicken. Hill's cat food is made using high-quality, easily-digestible ingredients which will give a bowl of Science Plan a much higher nutritional value than a bowl of normal pet food, so the cost of feeding your cat may be lower than you might expect. In addition, the high digestibility of Hill's cat food will reduce your cat's stool volume, so that cat litter will have to be changed less frequently.
Hill's Feline Adult Chicken cat food - crunchy and with a savoury taste, this is the perfect cat food to keep your cat fit for a long and healthy life.
Kibble:


Ingredients:
Poultry meat meal, wheat, animal fats, maize, maize gluten, rice, digest, minerals, beet pulp, fish oil.
Additives:
Nutritional dietary additives:
Vitamin A [E 672] (22,200 IU/kg), vitamin D3 [E 671] (1300 IU/kg), iron [E1] (264 mg/kg), iodine [E2] (2.6 mg/kg), copper [E4] (33.5 mg/kg), manganese [E5] (11.6 mg/kg), zinc [E6] (224 mg/kg), selenium [E8] (0.5 mg/kg).
Naturally preserved using natural antioxidants and other natural ingredients.

That's just a snippet of the information on Hills Science Plan food for cats, which is the brand most commonly on sale at vet practices. It's expensive overpriced sh*te, full of fillers. Vets don't spend a great deal of time studying feline nutrition. There is a great deal of debate about feline nutrition. Some argue for dry food only, some for wet only and some for a mixture of both, that's before we even get to raw or raw and processed combined.

Enough snobbery already. It's a thread to exchange advice on food, not to criticise the food people feed their cats. It's intended to be helpful not critical.

metaoblivia

I feed my cats Blue Buffalo Wilderness dry and wet food. It's an expensive brand, but supposed to be one of the best on market for no artificial flavors, no by-product, no grains. The wet food in this line is 95% the meat advertised (so 95% real duck for the duck canned food) and 100% grain free. My cats love it. When I open a can, they are right there. They'll even jump up on the counter where I'm scooping the food from the can into their bowls and start eating.

iora_rua

metaoblivia wrote: »

I feed my cats Blue Buffalo Wilderness dry and wet food. It's an expensive brand, but supposed to be one of the best on market for no artificial flavors, no by-product, no grains. The wet food in this line is 95% the meat advertised (so 95% real duck for the duck canned food) and 100% grain free. My cats love it. When I open a can, they are right there. They'll even jump up on the counter where I'm scooping the food from the can into their bowls and start eating.

Had a look at their webpage, but do you have to order it direct from the US, or have you found a supplier this side of the pond?

metaoblivia

I'm in the US, so I go to my local pet store for it, and it's also available on Amazon. But Orijen, which is a Canadian brand that's also very good nutritionally, is available in Ireland.

http://www.orijen.ie/acatalog/stockists.html

Pumpkinseeds

metaoblivia wrote: »

I'm in the US, so I go to my local pet store for it, and it's also available on Amazon. But Orijen, which is a Canadian brand that's also very good nutritionally, is available in Ireland.

http://www.orijen.ie/acatalog/stockists.html

The Orijen is very good, I used to buy it for my cats. I only stopped buying it because 1 of them was bolt eating it then bringing it up again. Shame I didn't know about slow eating bowls back then.

morgana

Yea ours are now about 70 % on Orijen (need to use up the old stuff) and they seem to accept it ok (some days more then as others :P) - it is very good when you read the blurp lol.
Wet food wise, they are on Animonda Carny, Smilla and Catessy pate - all no grain varieties. The Carny is 3.99 at Zooplus for 6x 200 g - so pricewise even cheaper than Felix or Whiskas (provided you do a big order with free shipping).

Topbike77

Sorry to but into this thread, but I adopted a cat today that has a broken jaw and it needs a mix of wet food and small (as tiny as possible) dry food, as it finds it difficult to chew. What is a good brand? I don't mind paying a bit extra for a better brand but I don't want to break the bank at the same time. Something that would help its coat would be a great benefit as it doesn't seem to be in the best shape. Thanks!

boomerang

You could feed small amounts of Royal Canin Baby Cat as the kibbles are teeny. Just be careful not to overfeed as they are meant for small kittens so extra-high in fat.

comongethappy

We use Porta 21 feline heaven dry food (like cat cheerios - very easy for them to eat) and Schesir Timberwolf wet food. Both are grain and gluten free, as one of my cats broke out in a rash from what we think was a grain intolerance and the other cats don't like it if one get gets something different! We used to order Orjen / Acana, but Porta 21 is nearly half the price for what we feel is a similar standard.

We order off of zooplus.de as it's far cheaper than zooplus.ie. Having said that, we only save on the shipping as we buy for 1 month at a time so spend over €100 as we buy both foods and litter (love the Tigerino Eco bio litter!). If buying from the german site, just use google chrome so it will automatically translate.

If grains are not an issue, I found my other cats did well on Husse (order direct from website) foods, and if your cats prefer gravy, Bozita does a good wet food in a carton (also on zooplus). Best of luck finding a food that suits your cats OP.

Nody

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119042427#Comment_119042427

Best cat food is anything that does not contain maize, corn, wheat, soy etc. as cats are carnivorous (i.e. they eat meat and not veggies for sustenance) so look for brands stating they are grain free; that rules out basically anything you find in any local human food store. Secondly despite what you may have read dry food is not good for them or their teeth; hence wet food is the route to go. Once you're down to wet food you need to make sure it's complete (it will be in the "amount to feed" section on the packaging usually stating if it's supplementary or not) as I'd say about 60% are not complete (that is they don't contain all nourishment required); you want to make sure the animal protein is high (listed as a primary ingredient) and declared (i.e. not poultry protein or similar). As an example to make it more clear; this is Cosma original in jelly chicken.

Chicken Breast in Jelly (Supplementary):

Chicken breast (47.8%), rice (1.0%), potassium chloride, water (50.2%)

Analytical constituents: Protein 14%, fat 0.8%, ash 1.0%, fibre 0.1%, moisture 83%

Feeding Recommendation:

Cosma Original in Jelly is a supplementary wet cat food.

Serve 2-3 cans per day at room temperature, spread over at least two meals alongside a complete food. Refrigerate open cans and use within 24 hours. Please provide your pet with adequate fresh water.

And this is Hills Science plan adult healthy cuisine (note the inclusion of vegetables in the description for an animal that don't process vegetable, pure marketing towards humans).

Ingredients

Meat and animal by-products, grains, vegetable by-products, vegetables, vegetable protein extract, minerals, oils and fats.

Feeding Recommendation

Hill's Science Plan Adult Healthy Cuisine - Chicken and Vegetable Stew is a complete food for cats

Cosma is not complete but clearly calls out the meat and very little rice (another popular filler) while Hills is complete but the main meat is not called out and contains a lot of veggies etc. which are fillers.

Some complete brands (check the individual choices to make sure though!) for you to consider that I'd recommend in no specific order (all available on Zooplus.ie):

• MACs
• Grau
• Feringa
• Catz
• Animonda Carny
• Bozita
• Concept for life

Keep in mind different cats have different preferences; we usually rotated 6+ brands while other cats are mono brand only. Note I've not included the best option which is RAW/Frankenstein diet options as those are not as easy available/doable for most people but plenty of information out there if you're up for it. If you want to learn more I'd strongly recommend Jackson Galaxy's series on what to feed here. They are not overly long but give you plenty of insight :)

Uliana

Hey, I prefer giving my cat real food. I bought him a separate blender to blend boiled checked and veggies (about 10%) together and give him. Sometimes I use fish or other meat like turkey or rabbit. Also, cottage cheese is perfect for cats. It's rich in calcium and other essential minerals.

FrankT.

Our cats are elderly, hardly any teeths, we give mousse and paste and soup, they still eat dry food which they just swallow.