The best cat food?

[rach]

thanks for all your replies. our local pet shop is extremely unhelpful and rarely have any food at all! They refused to get us kitten food in when we enquired....

we wont stop with the dry food, as they love being able to graze throughout the day and its suits us because we work full time. We like to give them wet food to varty their diet, and they both love variation.

Ill see how we get on with the hi-life as the accessibility could be the answer to our questions!

[swampmaxmum]

I read somewhere that in the wild they'd munch 10 mice a day.  Eeek squeak.

I think I must ring Hills yet again and ask them po-faced how many mice one can of their nosh equates to 

[forever_missing_my_boys(Lisa)]

my cats have asda dry food the tiger one
and they have kitekat or whiskas or felix tins
plus i give them fresh chicken
and for treats they have tuna ,ham , sheba,highlife,cat milk , cat treats such as temptation whiskas treats

and Bridie who has a prescription only diet has the hills id pouches/tins/and dry

[Michelle (furbabystar)]

Mine have Purine One dry food and whiskas pounches

[Susanne (urbantigers)]

Theoretically wet food with a high meat content would be the best food (after raw) as it's the closest to what a cat would eat if it was catching its own prey,  but as has been said, the best food in the world is no good if the cat won't eat it or if it causes digestive problems.  I like natures menu because it's complete and has a high meat content, and my boys like it   I feed a mixture of complete and complementary foods and don't worry too much about it as I know most are complete so they're unlikely to have complementary foods for 2 successive meals (they have something different at each meal)

[swampmaxmum]

Best cat food is probably a mix of what they like plus what their furry coats look like - glossy and shiny you have to be doing something right.  They do need a certain % meat but not sure if anyone's 100% positive how much.

[Lyn-Su]

Hi Life do a complete pouch called Essentials - though it is only sold at Asda and only available in Tuna, Sardine & Chicken.

It's currently £1 for 4 pouches till the end of the year.

[Desley (booktigger)]

RAch, do you have a small friendly pet shop near you? Both the ones near me will happily order anything you like, the only downside is you dont get a discount, you do pay the full RRP. I might see if they can get Applaws for me actually, I have hte same prob with parcels, so dont order online, despite being able to get some of it cheaper!!
With HiLife pouches, you can feed for both meals as long as you feed a complete dry with it - Pebbles had that for quite a while, and her blood tests showed no impact on her health

[rach]

Thanks! The only thing is my husband and I work full time and are never home for the post, so we dont want to have to run around chasing after parcels at the weekend. And we dont have a pets at home near us!

[Gill (sneakiefeline)]

Mine wouldnt eat Natures menu LOL.........think it had too much meat 

[Tiggy's Mum]

I would say the best cat foods are the ones with the highest meat content. Tiggy ate the likes of Felix and Whiskas (4 % or so meat content) for the first 15 or so years of her life, I then switched her to so called 'premium' brands such as Gourmet Pearl pouches but despite being one of the most expensive pouch foods available it still only has a shocking 4% meat    She loved her Gourmet Pearl so as a compromise I started introducing some Natures Menu wet (70% meat) aswell.

I feed my two new kittens Natures Menu, it has a 70% meat content and is "A complete meal with NO artificial ingredients, NO preservatives, NO colouriong, NO flavouring".  Pets at Home do the adult version in multipacks (4 boxes of 12 pouches) for £13.17 so that works out to £3.29 a box which is probably cheaper than Whiskas! James Wellbeloved dry was very popular with Tiggy (especially the Duck and Rice flavour  ), I'll be starting my boys on that aswell in the next few days.

http://www.wellbeloved.co.uk/

http://www.naturesmenu.co.uk/cats/

EDITED TO ADD:  Just gave them some James Wellbeloved, they both give it the paws up 

[Gill (sneakiefeline)]

I agree with Witty 

Also some foods are too rich for some cats. Mine will only eat basic felix in jelly in pouches and they have Purina one fish biscuits and TechniCal biscuits. They also do not like treats or human food!

[Reynard]

I know it's perhaps not much help, but the best cat food is the food that they will actually deign to eat! 

Seriously, you've just got to go round the options and see what suits your furry ones best. Mine get Felix pouches and foil trays as their wet food and a mix of Olli, Hi-life and Tesco balance for their dry. They also get the odd meal of fresh meat.

[Susanne (urbantigers)]

You could try natures menu too (available from Tesco and PAH).  If they like it PAH do multi packs which work out at a reasonable price.  I feed natures menu, hi life, bozita, applaws (sometimes almo nature - very much the same but more flavours), animonda, cosma and a few others.  I get the first two and the applaws from supermarket or pet shop and the rest from zooplus.

[Mark]

The little tins of Hi-life are fine as they are "complete" but the pouches are only "complementary" - they don't have the sugars and vitamins added to make them a complete catfood so can only be fed as a small part of the diet.

[rach]

I have just noticed that hi-life is being sold at Tescos! I may have found a solution, as they both liked the sample ones we bought...

[CurlyCatz]

i hear quite a few peeps saying they like natures menu, applaws, james wellbeloved and many others.

Me personally i'm quite happy with the hills dried and the munster also gets hi life petit pate (only wet food he'll eat )

[COSMIC CREEPERS]

i asked my vet the same question and he said that whiskas has improved there receipe and was quite good ( not sure if this is true )

mango my fussy eater will only have gourmet gold pate and moomin whiskas but i leave also persian 30 dry down all day too

good luck

[rach]

So our little kitties are now big kitties and we are slowly taking the plunge and moving them onto adult food. They have always had Hills dry kitten and then the wet food in the morning too.

I am hearing nothing but bad stuff about hills, especially the new pouches and they do look a tad expensive. So, can anyone recommend a wet food that we can try with Rollins and Manson that doesnt cost the earth? Our vets only stock Hills, and the local pet shop only has Whiskas!