I'm probably opening a can of worms here but I am very interested in the number of threads and different views covering the various types of cat foods.

Having recently taken on board a Maine Coon boy whose breeder was a very keen raw feeder for her babies, I started to take more notice of what was in the cat foods I'd used before. Horrifying reading to be sure.

My boy is my fourth cat and I have always used bog standard foods of the Whiskers/Felix type [didn't know there was any alternative tbh] and they all did very well on it. My two elder girls, a mother and daughter combo, never had a day's ill health until old age carried them off a year apart at the age of 21. My last cat, Bella, was fourteen when she was taken from us due to misadventure at the vets. Again, very little in the way of ill health.

Can these commercial brands be so awful, bearing the above in mind? Pretty much every cat owner I know [and there are more than a handful] use supermarket type brands and their cats are in fabulous fettle.

I can see that they contain a fair amount of rubbish but am I going to be doing my boy any serious harm by permitting him to have an occasional sachet of Whiskers in his weekly menu? eek: The high meat content foods are quite expensive for my greedy boy and I find myself thinking that his lovely predecessors did very well on a diet entirely purchased from the local supermarket. I'm trying to offer him a compromise diet, 2/3 raw/high meat content such as porta 21, Miamor or Bozitta which he loves but are quite dear with perhaps 3/4 meals a week made up of supermarket type brands.

I know there are a great many strong views on the subject of what to feed our feline friends but it is difficult to do right when you are on a restricted budget.

I'd value opinons and thoughts

To me there is a difference between surviving and thriving.

Plus I don't think many of the better ones are more expensive, considering you can feed less as there is less filler.

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I've not had much success with Bozita myself, but many on these boards regard it as one of the best foods out there.

If my older cat liked Bozita then I would be spending around 75p every day on her food. Currently I'm spending around £1.50 a day by feeding HiLife.

If I was feeding Felix then it would cost between 50p and 75p per day providing I got food that was on BOGOF type offers otherwise it would be about £1.15 per day.

Like gloworm says, the better foods are not necessarily more expensive.

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Check out this thread: Feeding cats for beginners (and more seasoned cat owners alike). Or for those too lazy to click through, here it is. It isn't quite finished yet, but you get the gist

Is supermarket food "junk" food or What is "good" food?




Most people (particularly before they come to forums such as this or before they start to read up on cat food) buy their cat food during their weekly shop at the supermarket. Very often these people are told on forums that they are feeding their cats junk food, deliberately implying that they are harming their cat by feeding this food in the long-term. In return, people who don't feed supermarket food and who label such food as junk food are often outed as "food snobs". So, what is the story with supermarket food? Is it "good" food?

Well, that all hinges on how one defines "good" food? At the most basic level, a good food is a food that contains the nutrients that cats need to maintain their health - i.e. foods that are labelled to be "complete". Any food labelled as being a complete food needs to contain the nutrients a cat needs to maintain its health to a certain degree. However, there are no hard or fast rules; only ranges (albeit with some lower and upper limits) and guidelines, which is why there is so much nutritional variability in the available food. But be aware. There are also "treat" or "complementary" foods that do not contain such nutrients but that often aren't declared as such. For more info on these see the Other food-related titbit section.

However, in my opinion, a food should not only contain the nutrients cats need to maintain their health or to thrive; they should also clearly state what they contain.

Now legally, any pet food manufacturer needs to declare on their labels the statutory minimum, which from a consumer's point of view is completely useless because these are: min 4% meat and animal derivatives of the flavour animal (the flavour meat being the protein source that gives the food the name: i.e Whiskas with Beef in jelly for example would need to contain at least 4% beef; the rest can be other meats), and some top-level heading of the other stuff they put in, such as minerals, vegetable derivatives, oils, sugar, additives etc. Labels can contain a lot more detail but they are at the discretion of the manufacturer (Please note that the labelling regulations are currently changing, allegedly making it easier for consumers to understand them).

Now, the food contains more than 4% of that flavour meat but unless the manufacturer divulges more info on the label, we don't know how much more and what other animal meats are being used. We also don't know how much of this is "real" meat and how much of this is offal or what is termed by-products or animal derivatives.

There is nothing wrong with the use of offal per se; they are a nutritious part of an animal, And if you think about it, a cat hunting prey would also consume things we wouldn't ordinarly eat ourselves. However, imo it is all about the proportions. And let's not forget offal is cheap; cheaper than meat and that is one way they keep costs to themselves down. What manufacturers use is, within certain guidelines, up to them. So, if you want to know what by-products a manufacturer uses either consult their website or ask them. If you are not happy with what they tell you, don't buy it.

For the wet food A-Z (A-Z of wet food for cats) I have tried to find out how much overall meat content there is and how much of that is meat vs offal. While most companies have played ball, the big guns, which also tend to be the ones most often found in supermarkets, are not willing to divulge that information.

So, supermarket foods aren't typically "good" foods because you don't know what they contain. Additionally, they tend to be the ones that are chunks in jelly/gravy, which means that not only will they need to use additives to keep the chunks in chunks but the meat chunks in a tin or pouch also compete with certain fillers - i.e. jelly or gravy. Proportionally these fillers tend to be quite high (well, jelly and gravy is cheaper than meat/offal etc) and are nutritionally questionable. If you can find food that is "pate" food (i.e. the consistency of chicken liver pate). Because of their consistency they need fewer fillers (jelly/gravy), which means that they tend to be higher in meat content.

Lastly, and perhaps for most surprisingly as people tend to associate supermarkets with "cheap" food, these cat foods often available in supermarkets also tend to be either just as pricey, or in some case, even more costly than other food that is better declared but that is only had over the internet.

Again, the wet food A-Z (A-Z of wet food for cats) gives the price not only per 100g (roughly) but also takes the feeding recs into consideration. And no, the best foods aren't necessarily more expensive. Indeed, one of the foods I deem as one of the best ones is one of the cheapest. But the relationship that supermarket = cheap and "better foods" = expensive simply doesn't stack up but the trick is to know where to look!


Also, the brands that you consider high meat - i.e. the Porta 21, Miamor and Bozita, are expensive for what they are. But personally I wouldn't class them as good quality, high meat brands.

Needs to be continued

I think a lot of people like me at one point are suckered in by the claim that Bozita in jelly/gravy contains up to 93% meat content. However, that refers only to the meat in the meaty chunks, which themselves are competing for space in the tetrapaks with the jelly/gravy. Though Bozita didn't want to go on record and say exactly how much jelly/gravy there is, they did say it is less than 50%. Incidentally, the Toplife, which is very similar to Bozita though using an adjusted recipes, have a 50/50 split.

So, the only Bozita that is "good" are the pate ones - particularly the pate tetrapaks, as they contain a better meat to offal ratio than the tins, which have lung as their first ingredient.

If you buy Felix at 2 for a fiver. It costs 21p a pouch (100g)

If you buy Animonda Carny cans it would cost 25p for 1 pouches worth. If they have 3 pouches worth a day, it would cost you 12p more a day to feed them something much better. I'm sure everyone can afford to spend that extra 12p.

Hobbs, what would you do about a cat that won't eat pate type food, and prefers gravy? I've tried adding water to 'make' a bit of gravy but it didn't work. Although, I know it might take longer than a few weeks.

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Cats can be very contrary! Three possible ways:

1) use the gravy based food that your cat likes eating and very sloooooowwwly introduce the pate food. Sloooowwwwly upping the amount of pate food while decreasing the amount of gravy food

2) mash up the gravy food to get a pate consistency and feed or use ploy number 1

3) water down pate food and feed or use ploy number 1 (though you have tried that so leaves you with ploy 1 or 2)

Sure there are some other strategies that you can use that other people will post

I've 5 cats, they are raw fed, mix of whole prey / prey model costs me about £1.75 - £2.00 depending on how much organic / natural reared meats I feed.

Opps, thats to feed all 5 for a day!