What do you feed your cat?

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!)

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?

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:

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.

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

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!!!!

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!

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.

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*

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?