I will be getting 2 kittens next week. So, I am curious if expensive pet food (Iams, ScienceDiet, etc...) is the best to buy for your cat? My x and I had 2 dogs and 3 cats at one time, they ALWAYS ate expensive food. I am definitely willing to buy high-end food for my new kitties BUT I was wondering if there is really any significance in expensive comparded to the cheaper brands?
Also, what is the recommended brand which is good BUT not toooo bank-breaking? Pet food really does add up...
Any opinions?

Thanks much!

Stacey

Mice.
Mice.
Mice.

I would start with the cheapest and work your way up until you find one that the cats eat.

Rod

How nice for you, i would love to have 2 kittens, our friends just got 2 kittens a few weeks ago, they feed there kittens on normal basic kittie food, i would advice not to go to the expensive food, because my-in-laws did this, and 11 years down the line, there cats will only eat the best, and refuse to eat anything other than the best (they are spoilt rotten, but oh so cute).

Have lot`s of fun with your kittens when they arrive, and please post photos of them

kittens eat mice, not even cats eat mice lol

Now of course you know you *will* have to post some pictures of the kittens once you get them!!

I don't think buying the expensive stuff is making much of a difference. My two cats won't even touch expensive wet food, they only want dry food for some reason, maybe they like the crunchiness. They are addicted to Whiskas and Felix brands at the moment, they also go nuts for Cat Stick Mini's which I give them as treats.

Cheaper foods tend to have less nutritional value and are often full with additives making animals more smelly as well as prone to allergies... Yes allergies these days also occur in pets. I know, I'm an incredibly "trendy" pet owner who does not just have food intolerances herself but has a dog with a wheat intolerance

Seriously though, my dog does suffer gets all itchy and stuff so... but I know nothing about cats so perhaps its not the same...

Gooner should get on here, he's a kittykat owner...

You are absolutely right!

I give Science Diet or Royal Canin to my cats, since I have them. They never had any problem (no hair balls, no sickness...)

They have both wonderful fur and very good and clean teeth.

Better the quality of food, better their health. I believe in that. And you keep them away of the vet...

Good luck with your kitties,

Nil

Have a look at the meat content on the tin. You will find most supermarket cat food is only 4% meat which begs the question what is the other 96%.

Our first cat died of kidney failure at a fairly young age and a bit of research pointed towards cheap low-quality food being a factor. Now with our new cats we only feed them premium food from Fresnapf and Qualipet usually Almo Natura wet food and Hills dried food.

thanks for the replies!

I have also been told that cheaper food has more additives and fillers! But one of my cats died at age 11 of kidney failure also, and he always ate expensive food... I think I am a bit scared too of feeding them crap off the shelf from Migros. So, maybe I will go the pricer route...

I will most DEFINITELY post photos! You cannot believe how excited I am!!!! (My 13 yr old cat died in June).

The most important thing: do yourself and your cats a favor and don't buy food that contains animal by-products. Animal by-products can be anything - cow brains for example. There's also a huge difference between "meal" and "meat meal". Chicken meal, for example, means the whole chicken is ground to powder, including the brains, feet, beak etc. "Chicken meat meal" means only chicken meat (the stuff we'd eat as well) was used.

I can recommend: Nutro (which tends to contain the least amount of crap), Technical, Hill's (which is way too expensive, though, and is worse than those mentioned before IMHO) or Royal Canin. One of our cats gets diarrhea from Iam's so I won't recommend that.

How old will your kittens be? If they're really young, give them some lactose-free milk (contrary to popular belief, most cats aren't able to digest lactose).

What's also important food-wise: don't give them any kind of pork (also avoid cat-food that contains pork) - raw pork sometimes contains a virus that is harmless to people but can kill cats. I wouldn't feed them any kind of beef or mutton product, either - as lower-quality meat is used for all cat food, there's the risk of transferring mad-cow disease to your cats.

If you're only going to feed dry food (which is fine IMHO, that avoids tooth problems later in their lives), make sure you provide them with plenty of water or they might develop kidney problems later in their lives. Install at least one water dispenser for each cat and put the dispensers in places where the cats walk by often. Cats don't go look for water per se - they drink when the opportunity arises.

peter

I would also recommend using higher-end food. A number of years ago we lost our first male cat to urinary tract blockage which the vet put down to cheaper food. The more expensive food has the pH adjusted to make sure the risk of such problems is reduced/minimized.

Since then, we've fed our guy primarily Science Diet dry food, though now we've also transitioned him onto moist/wet food (variety of Science Diet pouches and Almo Nature) since he's 16 years old with kidney issues. Recently we've started giving him Royal Canin dry food as treats since we ran out of our stock of treats we get from the US. He loves it so I doubt we'll bother getting any more treats from the US. Overall, he's in pretty good shape for a 16-year old cat -- good teeth and fur, relatively active, etc.

Also a word of warning following up on Peter's comment re lactose...our guy is very lactose intolerant and we quickly find out if a new food we're trying has milk products in it...so beware!

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Something witty.

I too have just brought home a kitten and after three weeks, she has already made it clear what she likes and dislikes. It's all a case of trial and error, although i do agree with previous comments that you need to have a look at the content of the food to ensure that your kittens get a balanced meal.

Have you considered preparing your own food for the kittens? i have started mine on little bits of cooked chicken and she loves it. but I always ensure that she gets her daily dose of biscuits to keep her teeth clean and strong.

Whiskas is good to buy, they have cat food for "Junior" meaning kittens, you can find it in Coop amongst other shops. Then at the Migros you find Selina > Tuna fish in a small blue tin, very inexpensive and cats crave this should go for your kittens too.

We feed our cats with Almo and Anifit, which are both pretty high end food. They love the cheapo-croquettes, but they couldn't live on them, it's more like bonbons to them

We use Science Diet for our two cats and find it really good and give them a clean healthy coat.

As for dry/wet food, we never give them wet food as almost all of it is moisture/water and only a couple of % is meat.

Dry food is good, healthy and cleans their teeth a bit.

Have fun!

just go for the cheapest.. Our cat actually doesn't even like Wiskas, but the cheap Briskies (gel, not sauce) which as 12 for circa 5 CHF. It's more the dry food and litter you should worry about. Cats can be really picky about that.

We had major issues (peing on the couch and elsewhere) in the begining. We found out, that our cat only likes the pebles stuff (cheap bag at Coop is 4-5 chf only, but she loves it compared to the cheap paper stuff from Migros). But also that the litterbox has to be an open one, not a closed with a door. That was really the big thing, when we removed the lid/top, we had no more issues.

Also with the litterbox, some cats dont like that nice easy bag you can put inside the box and then fill litter on top. Fortunately, our does. Makes changing litter so easy. If you dont get the cat used to it, then each time you change the litter, you really to scrub and clean the litterbox really well. Otherwise the cat pee with smell really bad and eat away the plastics eventually.

Also... word of advice.. make your kittens acustomed to having their nails cut. Do this early one and keep doing it. Also when peeting them, touch their paws and push their nails out, so they are comfortable with it. We didnt do this with our cat and each time we have to cut her it is a fight, hairs everywhere and her fighting because she doesnt want to have nails cut. When we are done, she is fine again.

Also... cats like to fight and use the mouth to bite with.. If you dont teach them that using their mouth and biting when playfighting with you, they will continue doing it.

Also.. if you want to teach our cat a lesson, don't hit or smack it gently with your hand. use loud noises or a rolled up newspaper to "punch" it lightly with.

Both kittens are approx. 12 weeks. Getting from around Basel and the other is a rescue from around Baden.
I am going food shopping Monday. But I will definitely go to Freesnapf and look for some good food (1st I will consult with the people who I am getting the kittens from to get some likes/dislikes).

Thanks for all the sound advice given!

Stacey

I don't know if this is the same for cats as dogs, but at Fressnapf, when you buy a small bag of dog food as a trial, you have a money back guarantee if it doesn't agree with your dog. So I would suggest asking if this is the case for cat food as well. At Qualipet they have some small trial packs of certain dog foods which is quite useful. Not sure if this is the same for cat food.

With dog food, the more meat it contains the more expensive it is. As for health problems, for example, kidney trouble, some dogs (and I would imagine this is true for cats) are just prone to this. One of our dogs has a PH level on the high side, and another has a very low one.

Good luck with your new arrivals.

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My best man's, well he wasn't that good otherwise he would have stopped me, mother used to feed the 30 or so stray cats hanging around the back door, finest steak fresh from the butchers.

He came home from coll one weekend to find the back wall splattered in blood - what happened? he delicately enquired - well there were too many cats so I got a man in with a shotgun ....

didn't stop her feeding what was left with .... finest steak fresh from the butcher.

She was from Glasgow - maybe that explains it.


To counteract that rather unsettling tale:

We started off with the cheap stuff from coop and under pressure from moral blackmail from my daughters our beast graduated to the most expensive stuff (Whiskas ?). If I can I buy the stuff in Germany as it is cheaper by far.

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Pot Kettle Black