Perhaps weight the dry when you put it down, and again at the end of the ay or the next morning so you can get a picture of how much dry theyre eating

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[QUOTE=KittehNom;1061208327]btw, I got one of the tins of kitten food out of the cupboard and NOWHERE on it does it say that its only complimentary I only found out the complimentary bit by browsing on here per chance

Just dropping into the conversation, the Applaws Kitten is the only one in their range that is complete. All the others are complementary and a complementary food should not be fed exclusively a good mixture of foods is good. Variety is the spice of life! I have two Birmans now 17 years old and they love the Applaws.

Just dropping this into the conversation but Applaws kitten is NOT a "complete food".

True, it contains a lot more fat (9%) than the adult stuff but hun, have a look at the calcium and phosphorus values. According to their website, the kitten food contains 77mg of calcium and 180mg of phosphorus. In a well-balanced cat food, the ratio between the two should be roughly 1.2:1, so 1.2 parts of calcium to 1 part phosphorus. In the Applaws kitten that ratio is 1:2.4, i.e. 1 part calcium to 2.4 parts phosphorus. So, WAY TOO much phosphorus.

TBH, I don't know what is going on with the other minerals and vitamins in that food but I don't think it gets much better...

I was feeding Eric applaws wet up until recently as he has applaws biscuits. I think (from what I have read on the packets) that the applaws tins are a complimentary food to the applaws biscuits. So if you are feeding the complete biscuits you are ok to feed the complimentary meat.

However, I do think the applaws meats are quite rich so Eric has moved onto animoda carny.

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Just out of interest, could you define "rich"?

It's 'good' food, pure meat which is obviously a good thing but this means very high protein so I found personally it was a little bit too much for Eric, but that is my humble opinion

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Ah, ok! A lot of people think about fat when they mean "rich", which is why I asked. The Applaws adult tins are almost devoid of any fat, and hence the food is mostly protein (85% as a matter of fact). Which is why it is not a "good" food as it isn't balanced out properly to provide cats with the nutrients they need.

A cat eating food in the wild, ie. prey, also wouldn't just eat chicken breast. It would eat bones, offal, fur/feathers etc all of which have their nutritive place. Just cooked chicken and some stock and a little rice just isn't enough.

So, in the long-term, your cat is way better off with Animonda Carny.

He does love animoda. I give him the odd applaws tin as a treat here in and there.

Just out of interest, would applaws wet be ok with applaws dry? As I mentioned earlier I thought they complimented each other? This may have been an urban legend someone told me though .

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Cheekily copied this from another thread where this topic came up

Yes, technically you are right. The makers of complementary food say that you need to feed a certain amount of dry food a day to make sure that your cat gets all of the nutrients s/he needs.

But I have always struggled with that recommendation. Here is why? So, the complementary food is completely unbalanced - tends to contain not enough fat, no or not enough calcium, little of other minerals (other than phosphorus), few vitamins, little taurine etc.

However, dry food itself isn't cramped full of these either - certainly not in excess. So, a certain amount of dry food (the daily feeding rec if you are feeding it as the sole food) will cover the nutritional requirements of cats - nothing less and nothing more. Now, if you reduce that amount to take into account the nutrient-deficient complementary food you are feeding, then you are also feeding fewer of the nutrients that are in the dry food (by virtue of you feeding less of that stuff).

So I personally cannot see how some dry food can make up for the failings of the treat food.