Food for your cat

Overview:

Wet vs dry is usually the first hurdle to solve. Dry food is easier to handle and can be left out, and if your cat(s) self feed ok, the most convenient for you. Dry food does have fillers more often and can cause issues for cats who don't drink enough water.

Wet food:

Our breeder feeds canned wet food twice a day. She leaves it for about 15-20 minutes, and picks up what is not eaten in that time. Most all "experts" agree that what is not eaten in 20 minutes gets thrown out. Also do not keep opened food in the fridge over 24 hours, even covered.

She does not feed beef or fish. Beef can be hard on the digestive system, and she is concerned about bones in the fish.

She also uses and recommends several:

Blue Wilderness: DUck & Pea, Turkey, Chicken, or Liver.

Friskies: she recommendes the "pate" versions, and chicken and rice or chicken and liver.

Fancy Feast is good too, with the wellness version is preferred. I found there is also a kitten variety in small cans. According to Fancy Feast, feed 1 can per 3 to 3 ½ pounds of body weight daily, comes in tender ocean whitefish and tender turkey. Note that the pate varieties are also good for kittens.

Dry Food:

Our breeder says: "The reason we feed 2-3 different dry foods together is if one dry food is recalled than you will not have to change much of their diet." She feeds dry food all day.

She uses a mixture of 2-3 different dry foods in one container:

• Life's Abundance Web Site  Can only be ordered online. (877) 387-4564.
• Orijen Cat and Kitten Web Site  Can be found in local feed stores, but not the big chains. I found the 15 lb for $60 in stores, and the 5 lb for $27, forget buying the .88 pound
• Kirkland Signature Super Premium Maintenance cat. Comes in a purple bag. 20lbs $27 at Costco.
• Royal Canin Kitten, available from Petco/Petsmart, in a pink bag

 places to buy food for me: Pet Nutrition center, 6949 El Camino Real, #104, Carlsbad

What we feed Hudson:

We started with dry food, and mixed it, but we found that Hudson was not getting enough moisture, and he tended to eat more than he needed.

We now have him on wet food only. Being a long hair cat, he was upchucking hairballs a couple of times a month.

After some experimentation, we settled on a 50-50 mix of a hairball formula and his "fun food", chunks of meat in gravy. We also sprinkle a little of his treat, 100% chicken, Halo freeze dried.

We alternate between Diamond Naturals and Hills Science Diet hairball formulations, both are a pate.

The "fun food" alternates between Fancy Feast and the new Chewy "Tiny Tiger"

Fancy Feast in 3 oz cans:

Turkey & Giblets feast in gravy - grilled
Turkey & cheddar cheese feast in gravy - grilled
Liver and Chicken Feast in gravy - grilled (a bit larger chunks of meat in gravy)
Turkey Feast in gravy - grilled
Chicken & cheddar cheese feast in gravy - grilled
Chicken hearts and liver feast in chicken flavored gravy
Chicken Feast in gravy - grilled (small chunks of meat in gravy)

Tiny Tiger in 3 oz cans:

Turkey
Chicken

He does not like the "pate" type ones, I don't blame him, they look like paste. The ones above are nice chunks of turkey or chicken. He gets a different one each meal.

We also give him several small meals each day, he tended to wolf it down and barf it up in the morning, so several small meals have worked better. Clearly it is more like real life, catching a bird or mouse every so often.

Upset stomachs / diarrhea

For upset stomachs, Our breeder uses Iams Digestives (in a pink bag)

We feed only wet food, so we use Hills Science diet I/D now, but it's pretty rare that he gets the runs

Related to this, we found that kitty's tummy was grumbling a lot when we first had him. We bought the Purina Fortiflora and put in his food once a day, solved that, but what a pain, and very expensive.

Since then, we give him probiotics twice a day, I found a great brand that has 23 different strains and is called Nexabiotic for cats, you get it on Amazon. One bottle of 60 capsules (I give 1/2 capsule twice a day) is $26 so it's less than 50 cents a day. The Fortiflora is $1 per pack, usually a pack a day.