What do you feed your companion kitties? (inspired by allychristine)
Posted by fufuberry on Nov 16, 2009 · Member since Jul 2008 · 1786 posts
I have four kitties and am always looking for healthy, high quality, budget friendly foods to feed them. I feel like my kitties are in a food rut and need something new.
What brands do you use?
Do you feed mostly kibble or canned food?
Do you cook their food/treats?
Do you supplement their diet with any vegan foods? (not looking to debate the ethics of feeding cats vegan/meat, just want to know what other people do and what their experiences are)
(this thread was inspired by allychristine's thread on what to feed your puppy companions ~^_^~
My stepmother makes homemade cat food for our cat, which she eats with some dry food. I'll ask her where she got the recipe - our cat is certainly prosperous.
ATM....I'm feeding both canned food with baby food mixed in....one gets the Science Diet (YUCK!) pre$cription food, the other gets PetsMart's Authority brand light/weight management. The baby food I mix in are the meat pate's and meat dinners.
Come next year (I'm hoping to get a meat grinder for X-Mas!), I plan on making their food, so I don't have to feed my kitty crappy food with wheat, corn, soy and by-products simply because it is labeled 'prescription'.....Yeah, I don't like Science Diet.
i was actually yhinkin about starting to make thier food that way I know where my money goes and what goes into my kitties. I would much rather support local organic free range meat farmers than whoever is making the by-product factory farm shit that is in commercial cat food.
i just replied to the dog thread, but i also have cats so i thought it would be relevant here too :). i just started my animals on a vegan diet, i bought the vegecat vitamin supplement from the local vegan grocery store. there's a few recipes that come with the vitamins from home-made kibble and wet foods, which seem pretty basic. i've discovered my cats love seitan (they shake it in their mouths like they're trying to kill it first) and nutritional yeast, both of which are ingredients in the cat food recipes. once i add the vitamins they're a little more hesitant to eat it, even though i think the vitamins smell like fish so i thought they would actually like it more.
i also tried the kibble recipe, which turned out more bready than kibble-y, but they seemed to like it well enough (the dogs looooooved it, even though i think they only loved it because it was made for the cats....if i had made the same exact thing with the intention of feeding it to the dogs, they probably wouldn't like it). it's been a pain in the butt so far but i feel like it's worth it, and hopefully i'll find a good recipe that they like and i can make in bulk.
their is an article here on vegweb about feeding your cat a vegan diet if you're interested
http://vegweb.com/index.php?topic=12077.0
Thanks for the link amy! I'm not sure yet if I want to switch them to vegan, but I do wanna cut back on their meat and up their veggies because one cat, at least is having digestive trouble and he keeps escaping outside to get to vegetation. I think I'm gonna go with a middle-of the road approach. Maybe 50% supplemented vegan food and 50% meat for now and see how their health improves/doesn't.
my cats are 13, 10, and 2 years...Prissy, Tubby and Wiggles....I have always fed them dry cat food...Iams indoorcat with hairball formula....I was told by my vet, not to feed them tablefood especially dairy products...my cats have never been sick, they cough up hairballs now and then, but thats normal. I have a big problem with trying to put a cat on a vegan diet, cats were born to eat meat, why are we trying to change them because we are vegan....Thats just my humble opinion, please don't slam me...to each his own. and my cats are indoor only kitties
No it's fine. Right now I feed my kitties dry/can food...but one in particular needs more fiber so I'm just seeing what other people do so I can get ideas. =-)
Don't use Iams...
www.iamscruelty.com
We were getting Natura's Innova food for free for a while (but then the company had to quit the program :(). It had way better ingredients than many others, including science diet, IMHO. Now I'm stuck with Purina, but the kitties seem to like it fine.
I always feed dry kibble, because one of my cats is a bit underweight and always inappetant, so I try to get her energy-dense stuff. But she's picky, so it's pretty much whatever she will ingest... A few years ago the vet suggested trying the meat-type baby food, and she liked it for all of one hour :/ My other cat attempted to bury it, evidently believing that it was feces.
Don't use Iams...
www.iamscruelty.com
Thank You for this, I have switched my cats food to Purina one indoor hairball formula..my 3 cats seem to like it better too
Has anyone heard anything about Friskies? my cats love that stuff...
I feed my cats meat be it stuff specifically for cats or reduced meat from the store (reduced so the meat companies won't make any profit). I personally have no qualms with feeding a carnivore a carnivorous diet, and it is a lot better for those on a low income (vegan cat food is expensive).
I have no problem with others feeding their cats vegan as long as they research it thorougly and know what they're doing.
I feed my kitties Weruva brand canned food. Usually "paw lickin chicken" or another grain free flavor. I also give them Wellness Core dry kibble for some crunch or a snack.
I feed my cats Wellness dry and Wellness or Halo canned food. "Supermarket" brands contain a lot of jun, not fit for human consumption, such as Chicken "by product". I don't buy any food with by products or ingredients I don't recogonize. Such foods are more expensive, but I save on vet bills, my cats are never sick. And my 15 year old still runs around like a young cat, has never been sick once. Neither have my 9 year old and other kitties in the past.
My kitty has been eating Wellness Kitten formula (both the dry and wet), and sometimes the canned chicken flavor since she's been with me. This brand is one of the more expensive but it's completely grain-free and they don't use any strange by products. I'd love to hear more from people with vegan kitties? I'm still on the fence about the whole idea of it.
My cats get a mix of Whiskas Wet Canned Food and Purina Nature's Diet dry. I don't really agree with feeding a cat a vegan diet, I can understand it a bit more for dogs since they are omnivorous, but cats are carnivorous and everything about them is designed for killing. It's one of those trade offs, stick to your values or have a cat?
I have no objection to feeding my cats "animal by-products." Sure, while by human standards we may find this type of meat unsavory and not something we'd wish to eat even if we weren't vegs, but think of a cat eating prey in the wild. The cat's not going to kill a squirrel and think to itself "Hmm... Not a big fan of the other parts of this squirrel, so I think I'll only eat the white meat thighs." They eat the animal whole and that's how they get complete nutrition, by eating all parts of the animal. That's why holistic pet food is always supplemented, it can't accomodate for complete nutrition. While commercial animal by-product wet foods are supplemented to, that's probably more from a commercial production point.
Anyways, I'd much rather support the use of the parts of an animal that won't be eaten by people than to have extra animals slaughtered specifically for pet foods. I like to see all parts of the animal used if it must be eaten.
i feed my kitties blue buffalo
my boys eat Blue Buffalo chicken and rice dry food and get some wet food made by Tiki Cat. I trust the quality and prefer a food where I recognize all the ingredients.