asking opinion about cat food

SM is right about the recalls, seems that the company gets over one problem and then has another one very close down the line. I would love mine to eat some of the better quality foods but they will let it sit there for days, they also get 1 tsp of wet food each morning and evening. Trial and error is the key to some kitty’s taste buds.

The highest quality dry food is worse than the lowest quality wet food. So basically, dry food sucks.

Can you get a good supply of meat? The best thing you can feed is raw food but you need to be able to get a fairly diverse supply of meat. Beef, pork, chicken, turkey, lamb, rabbit, venison, etc whatever you can get (the more types the better but you want to have at least two types of meat). Besides meat you need to get liver (which seems to be easily available everywhere) and kidney (or some other secreting organ).

Raw would be:

-80-85% meat (heart, tongue, tripe, lung also are MEAT in raw feeding)

-5-10% bone: anything that is small enough for a cat to eat. Chicken necks, chicken ribs, chicken wings, and CGH (cornish game hen) bones.

-5% liver: any type of liver

-5% kidney: any type of kidney

Some cats that won’t eat wet food take really easily to eating raw. Annie (one of mine) did. She was fed junk food (meow mix by her previous owner) for at least one year, refused any canned I gave her BUT as soon as I put a piece of raw in front of her she inhaled it!

If you want to give raw a try if you post your cats wieght (or if a kitten what you think it will wiegh as and adult) and I can figure out roughly what it should be getting.

I have tried raw with Teaser and she vomitted horrible when she would eat. She will occassionally eat turkey, but not much. So many things bother her stomach. She has been successful on the Iams dry.

What brands are available in Indonesia? Of Iams, Nutro, and Proplan I’d say Iams (though I do NOT like what they do or all the grains in their food).

Are there any wet foods available? I’d personally choose the most junky wet over the highest quality dry for the cats health sake.

Cats shouldn’t get raw liver everyday (though it depends on how much it is). It can OD a cat on vitamin A.

“A fair amount of people, including myself, are a little hesitant to feed large amounts of liver. What is considered a large amount will vary from person to person. So we will look at what it will take to O/D your cat on vitamin A.

The AAFCO recommends the maximum consumption of vitamin A to be 750,000IU’s per kilogram of food on a dry matter basis. Liver has a dry matter basis of 23.54%

1 kilogram= 2.2lbs which is 23.54% of 9.35lbs. 9.35lbs equals 149.6oz of total food.

The average cat may eat 5oz of food a day. 149.6/5= about 30 days of food.

5oz of liver contains 15,731 IU’s of Vitamin A. 15,731×30= 471,930IU’s of vitamin A

If a cat ate nothing but liver for a month they would still be under the maximum amount. It would actually take 47 meals, at 5oz a meal, to reach 750,000. But the 47 meals would equal to about 14.68lbs of food. Which comes to about 1.5 kilograms converting it using liver DM.

So it seems, if my math is correct, that someone would really need to go out of their way to O/D a cat on vitamin A. Possibly feed nothing but liver and cod liver oil. Or maybe adding a vitamin A supplement along with liver. IMO feeding nothing but liver over a very long period time will O/D them.

In reality if you use the rough guidelines of the prey model diet you will be fine. Even if you go a little over. This was just show what it would take to reach those maximum levels.” – Chris10

Friskies wet they have a few pretty good flavors. Poultry Platter is probably their best.

I’ve never heard of some of them but I can look up the ingrediants if you want.

I would like to repeat that not all people can feed raw. I understand you are adamantly against dry food, but in some cases it is the best that can be provided. Dionnewb I am certain you will do the very best you can for your cats in the country that you live in. Your love and attention should help the cats that would otherwise be feral or dead thrive.

Eureka looks really good for being cheap, better than even proplan. It doesn’t have corn which makes it much better than the rest. Also it doesn’t have by-products.

So best to worst would be:

1) Eureka – far better to the other three brands. Ingrediant wise it is superior to things like Iams/Nutro…if you can get it go for this one 🙂

2) Ciclos

3) Supreme Cat Combo – pretty much even with Ciclos BUT Ciclos has a tiny bit more meat

4) My Dear Cat (avoid it if at all possible, it has very little meat. I had to laugh @ the squid by-products, never have seen that in an ingrediant list before 😀

*You don’t want by-products in dry food BUT plain meat meals (chicken meal, turkey meal, etc are better than just plain chicken or turkey). Most companies cheat and make the ingrediant list before everything is processed. So while plain chicken may be the top ingrediant it is also mostly water, and dry food is very low in water. Thus the “chicken” will move to the 5th or 6th ingrediant after processing. Chicken meal is chicken with most of the water removed so even after processing it actually stays the 1st ingrediant.