[Jackthekitten]

Hi All!

My name is Rachel, and I've got a 10 week old kitten called Jack.
He's a beautiful boy, but we had a bit of trouble with him at first as he wouldn't eat much and threw up everyday.
After a bit of a change of diet, we realised that he was reacting badly to the kitten food. The food just wouldn't settle! We put him onto the same food as our 3 year old female cat, Mary, and he seems to be absolutely fine - with absolutely no vomiting since.

My only worry is that due to the kitten food being jelly, he has completely gone off all kinds of food in jelly. The food in gravy that we give him has a lot of meat/fish - it's not swimming in gravy like some! But I wondered whether there's anything drastically different in nutritional value between jelly and gravy cat food?

Thank you!

 

[helz]

Welcome to the forum.

To be honnest, I wouldn't worry so much about the difference between gravey and jelly. But I would consider the difference between brands of food.

What cat food are you currently feeding them?

 

[Jackthekitten]

Thank you!

At the moment I feed them a selection of pouches from Whiskers, I can't remember the line of them, but they have Chicken, Beef, Salmon and Sardine in jelly/gravy. Mary also has Hills biscuits. I would go somewhere else but Whiskers for pouches but good cat food is hard to find around here!

 

[helz]

Well all 'complete' cat food hold the correct vitamins and nutrients that a cat needs, whiskers included, but many cat food brands pack their cat food out with fillers such as maize.

Whiskers is by far not the worst food out there, but it does only have a 4% meat content, considering cats are carnivors, this does seem a little odd. Most people (myself included until I joined this site) do not read the back of cat food packets, and we just go by popularity.

Your not doing anything wrong by feeding whiskers, but it is worth bearing in mind there are some cat food companies out there with up to 90% meat in their products. This is a big difference.

Also alot of people who look into the meat content in cat food find brands like hi-life and natures menu, these will cost you considerably more than you are paying for the whiskers. I used to feed felix and wanted to change but found the price of these food too high (especially with 4 mouths to feed).
I did some investigating and found Bozita cat food (from Pet Supplies, Pet Food, and Pet Products on Sale Now at zooplus.com) this is actually cheaper than whiskers (and felix) but has about 88% meat.

The only thing with Bozita, is it is more of a jelly consistency, so if your cat is into gravy, then it might not go down too well. Although I must say, my very fussy eaters loved it.

Anyway, just a bit of food for thought. Btw, there are some people on here that really know alot about feeding cats, I have lernt so much since joining this site.

 

[Janee]

Hi

I can endorse Bozita. I buy it for my adult cats and it goes down a treat. They tend to lick all the jelly off first but then also eat the lumps!

One of the big advantages of changing to a high meat content is that poos in litters don't smell so awful. Infact they hardly smell at all.

 

[happysaz133]

I don't think there's much difference between jelly and gravy really. One of my cats doesn't care, and one prefers jelly. My friends cat will not touch gravy food with a bargepole!

 

[kozykatz]

Could you tell me where you found that Bozita contains 88% meat? I know it's better quality than Whiskas etc but I thought that was due to it being Swedish and manufactured under stricter quality control than we have in the UK. As far as I know it just says "greater than 4%" on the package but how much greater?!

Well all 'complete' cat food hold the correct vitamins and nutrients that a cat needs, whiskers included, but many cat food brands pack their cat food out with fillers such as maize.

Whiskers is by far not the worst food out there, but it does only have a 4% meat content, considering cats are carnivors, this does seem a little odd. Most people (myself included until I joined this site) do not read the back of cat food packets, and we just go by popularity.

Your not doing anything wrong by feeding whiskers, but it is worth bearing in mind there are some cat food companies out there with up to 90% meat in their products. This is a big difference.

Also alot of people who look into the meat content in cat food find brands like hi-life and natures menu, these will cost you considerably more than you are paying for the whiskers. I used to feed felix and wanted to change but found the price of these food too high (especially with 4 mouths to feed).
I did some investigating and found Bozita cat food (from Pet Supplies, Pet Food, and Pet Products on Sale Now at zooplus.com) this is actually cheaper than whiskers (and felix) but has about 88% meat.

The only thing with Bozita, is it is more of a jelly consistency, so if your cat is into gravy, then it might not go down too well. Although I must say, my very fussy eaters loved it.

Anyway, just a bit of food for thought. Btw, there are some people on here that really know alot about feeding cats, I have lernt so much since joining this site.

 

[helz]

It used to be stated on the Zooplus website, and until i just checked, I thought it still was. They must have now changed there wording to 'high meat content'.

I think the 4% figure you a referring to, is not the meat content, it is in one case the fat content and in another case the % meat of a certian flavour, for example the crayfish flavour is made of 4% crayfish, the rest of the meat content is from other sources such as chicken.

I will try and find some more infomation for you. I do have a carton here, but there is no english, however, my brothers gf is Sweedish, so I could get you a translation in a couple of days.

...ah okay here we go...

Try this link to a Bozita leaflet. http://www.bozita.co.uk/pdf/bozita_tetra_recart_cat.pdf

Or follow this link to the Bozita website Bozita, click where it says "click here for more infomation", then click the leaflet on the right, you will get a pdf file.

On the first page it says up to 93% meat.
I know from the infomation that used to be on zooplus, most flavours are more like 88 or 89% meat, but I guess the must have one flavour as high as 93% to be able to make this statment.

 

[kozykatz]

many thanks - I've just ordered a batch of tinned Bozita so I'll relax now

It used to be stated on the Zooplus website, and until i just checked, I thought it still was. They must have now changed there wording to 'high meat content'.

I think the 4% figure you a referring to, is not the meat content, it is in one case the fat content and in another case the % meat of a certian flavour, for example the crayfish flavour is made of 4% crayfish, the rest of the meat content is from other sources such as chicken.

I will try and find some more infomation for you. I do have a carton here, but there is no english, however, my brothers gf is Sweedish, so I could get you a translation in a couple of days.

...ah okay here we go...

Try this link to a Bozita leaflet. http://www.bozita.co.uk/pdf/bozita_tetra_recart_cat.pdf

Or follow this link to the Bozita website Bozita, click where it says "click here for more infomation", then click the leaflet on the right, you will get a pdf file.

On the first page it says up to 93% meat.
I know from the infomation that used to be on zooplus, most flavours are more like 88 or 89% meat, but I guess the must have one flavour as high as 93% to be able to make this statment.

 

[goatguru]

Let me first start by saying that none of the popular brands would get away with a meat content of just 4% - that must simply be a misunderstanding.

Also, if you have got your kitten eating something then I would recommend against changing the diet again - unless, of course, your veterinarian suggests otherwise.

 

[helz]

Let me first start by saying that none of the popular brands would get away with a meat content of just 4% - that must simply be a misunderstanding.

Also, if you have got your kitten eating something then I would recommend against changing the diet again - unless, of course, your veterinarian suggests otherwise.

I must admit, I have not looked into the actual ingredients of these products for some time, as I have moved onto feeding Raw food. I have just looked up the ingredients of both whiskers and felix and they too have changed their wording. They no longer specify the amount of meat in their food. However, from looking at the ingredient list, you can see that there is cereal in the food, as cats are carnivores, I see no other reason to have cereal in cat food other than to add as a cheap filler.

There are a few people on this site that are quite hot on nutritional value of cat food, so someone else may be able to shed some more light on the matter.

As for changing a cats diet, of course I would never advice against talking to a vet, however, if you have no reason to believe your cat has any sort of medical or intolerance problem, I cannot see any reason why changing a diet would be a problem, so long as you do it gradually. Especially if what you are changing them to is a better quality food.

 

[Leah100]

I think the 4 % [which is clearly labelled] probably refers to the substance that we would recognise as chicken or beef meat, whilst the rest of the protein content comes from 'derivatives ' of animal or vegetable origin.

 

[helz]

I think the 4 % [which is clearly labelled] probably refers to the substance that we would recognise as chicken or beef meat, whilst the rest of the protein content comes from 'derivatives ' of animal or vegetable origin.

They have labelled the quantity of meat in that flavour, but they have not labelled the quantity of meat in total. I am fairly sure this used to be specified on the packet, but it is no longer shown (maybe due to it being questioned?).

It is understandable that beef flavour cat food may not contain very much beef (just like beef flavour crisps) but you would expect cat food to be largely made of meat in general.

 

[Leah100]

They have labelled the quantity of meat in that flavour, but they have not labelled the quantity of meat in total. I am fairly sure this used to be specified on the packet, but it is no longer shown (maybe due to it being questioned?).

It is understandable that beef flavour cat food may not contain very much beef (just like beef flavour crisps) but you would expect cat food to be largely made of meat in general.

I wonder if it's anything to do with labelling laws? Perhaps the stuff they use to make up the protein content is not strictly allowed to be classified as 'meat'?

 

[helz]

Oh yes I’m sure you right, they do have to follow strict guidelines on their lists, and quite right too, if its not meat, they shouldn’t call it meat. I’m sure they find ways round it though, like when shampoo companies describe water as aqua.

 

[kozykatz]

Yes, the 4% is the "named" meat or fish - the rest of the protein content may be either "meat and animal derivatives" which could be all sorts of parts of the animal (!) or vegetable protein (usually gluten) - Felix certainly state that their food contains vegetable protein, which of course is useless for a carnivore like the cat.
By a simple calculation (using the percentages on the label) you can work out the carbohydrate content of the various foods - most wet foods are under 10% carbs whereas most dry foods are at least 25% and often 30-40%. A cat requires virtually zero carbs in its diet.

They have labelled the quantity of meat in that flavour, but they have not labelled the quantity of meat in total. I am fairly sure this used to be specified on the packet, but it is no longer shown (maybe due to it being questioned?).

It is understandable that beef flavour cat food may not contain very much beef (just like beef flavour crisps) but you would expect cat food to be largely made of meat in general.

 

[kozykatz]

This is exactly what the Campaign for Real Pet Food is all about - improving the labelling on foods so we're able to make a more informed choice.

I wonder if it's anything to do with labelling laws? Perhaps the stuff they use to make up the protein content is not strictly allowed to be classified as 'meat'?