So what do you feed your cat?

[GandolfBold]

Picked up our rescue cat today. Haven't had a cat as an adult. She is beautiful and we are in love. We thought really hard about this and have done loads of prep work, got all the things she will need, but I hadn't even thought about what to feed her. Friends have given conflicting advice, one says yes to cat meat and one says no. As a child we had cats who were fed on tins and biscuits mixed together, but there now seems an alarming selection of brands and types of food!

Don't buy a lot at one time. They are fussy eaters.

Mine is currently on dry food. 20g, three times a day as he's on a bit of a diet and it's much easier to see how much I should be giving him with dry food.
He's not a huge rugby ball of a cat, he's large (7kg!), muscular with a bit of a porky belly so once the tubby gut has gone, I'll look at giving him wet food once a day again.
I feed him Aatu brand from Pets at Home. He's utterly indiscriminate about what he eats so I could buy 50kg at a time without fear he would go off it.
If you choose dry food, make sure it's high in meat protein and not full of grains and carby fillers.

mine get one pouch each in the morning and biscuits put down for them to graze from lunchtime, pouches i buy supermarket own as aldis, asdas, lidls and tescos are all wheat free, rotate which ones i buy so they dont get bored with the same flavour each week , and biscuits funnily enough the most popular ones are tescos own they seem to like theres, there will be people who wil;l tell you only buy the most expensive cat foods but mine are thriving on what i give them

Mine is a very fussy eater but will just about tolerate Tesco pouches. Of course she wolfed down her gourmet brand Christmas treat!

and no milk as most cats are lactose intolerant mine have a communal bowl of fresh water available all the time

When I had a cat I would lovingly purée choice cuts of home cooked chicken mixed with a blend of vitamins and set it with gelatin so it was like the pate sorts of food you get in shops - I’d even add chunks of chicken back in so it had a nice texture

Spoiled little shit, I miss her

I use encore dry food (I get it in asda) which is 80% meat. They dont eat the 'good' wet food as its mostly pate style so eat gourmet solitaire tins and gourmet perle pouches.

Hills T/D dry food (supposed to help reduce plaque, and cat dentals are expensive, plus DGirlCat has a dodgy ticker so I'm loathe to anaesthetise her).
Plus the odd high quality tin / pouch as a treat (applaws or James wellbeloved).
DBoyCat has a sensitive stomach and even very slow attempts to transition onto any other dry food have been... unpleasant.

What were they feeding her as you should carry on with it to start with and then gradually change to the new food

Our chunky rescue cat eats anything going - she's on a diet. She loves tuna as a treat but turned her nose up at mackerel. It's trial an error but don't guess at the weight of dry food or you'll overfeed and they don't all have self control.

Yes, I agree that you should be feeding her whatever she is current,y in at the rescue. Let her settle in for a good while before you start introducing new foods and when you do, introduce them gradually, mixing the new with the old in increasing amounts.

Mine eats a mix of wet & dry. He has Purina Gourmet sachets/pouches & James Wellbeloved anti fur ball biscuit (he is long haired).

My cat was a fussy little minx, used to have pouches and would either lick the jelly or gravy off depending on the flavour and then walk off in disgust. She was a prolific hunter though so never hungry. She became less fussy when we got two dogs but I gave up on the pouches. She has Burgess senior food now,(dry) and whatever she fancies as she is 17. Stilton, porridge and ham, and as advised by the vet, custard as she is a bit thin. She has never had cat milk, always rejected by her but preferred cow's milk and cream and never had any issues from this.

Mine has applaws - it’s basically cooked chicken, tuna etc with vitamins and minerals added. No crap. She eats half a small tin in the morning and more again in the evening with a few biscuits before bed.

Having read up on it, there are huge amounts of conflicting advice but I would recommend grain free products as they have high amounts of animal protein rather than grain “fillers”. It is slightly more expensive than your supermarket staples. As a PP mentioned Encore is good (also known as Applaws) but I would suggest buying small amounts and once you have found what furry pants likes, Zooplus is very good.
Altho’ I have been caught out by ordering a previous fav for it to be totally ignored!

Mine eats dry (James Welbeloved), but once the biscuits aren't too big he's not fussy about which dry food. Or the flavour.

He is odd with wet food. Generally eats very few types. Would have to be fish. Actual fish or a soft pate type (no jelly or gravy type).

He tends to rarely have wet and eats mostly dry. He does drink a lot though (many cats don't) takes a drink before and after eating, done this since a kitten.

My Bengal will only eat purina one or speciality Bengal food he turns his nose up at kittykat or whiskers and sometimes he loves some roast chicken or tuna in sunflower oil.

My cats have felix ‘good as it looks’, one senior as she has a sensitive tummy. Younger slimmer cat has 3x pouches a day, my ‘rounded’ cat has 2. They have a water fountain thing available 24/7, and one likes biscuits to graze on

Only dry here. I buy Iams and get it on subscribe and save through amazon. It works out at under £7 a bag and I get it every 3 weeks. Cats have no complaints but they aren't fussy amazingly.

What is he on now? Start with that and gently wean to something else if you want to.

Mine will only eat royal canin biscuits which wouldn’t be my first choice, but he gives me no choice! I also fed one packet of the simply delicious from Sainsbury’s as it’s affordable and better quality than a lot of others. There was a point when he would only touch thrive, expensive tastes!

I also make some batches of raw as a treat. He loves it. I wouldn’t want to feed exclusively raw though...

Don’t give Felix or Whiskas, they’re just slush, never fill up the cats and are made addictive so your cat won’t touch anything else.

Be careful with the Applaws dry food. Mine used to eat it but theh suddenly changed the recipe and it gave my cat the shits. I went on the website and it was apparently not an isolated case 😂 just buy a small bag to start.

Cats are obligate carnivores so absolutely must eat meat.

Biscuits and dry cat food contain all manner of shite that cats don’t have the capability of digesting effectively. They also dehydrate cats and cats have notoriously poor thirst alarms which is one of the reasons that cats fed mainly a dry diet, suffer with kidney issues further down the line.

So that leaves us with meat pouches (cooked) and meat (raw).

Meat pouches also contain fillers, low protein content and all manner of shite, plus it’s cooked! Cats did not evolve to eat cooked meat.

Which leaves us with raw meat. In my opinion (and experience) cats do best fed on a raw meat and prey diet.

It satisfies them for longer, lessens shedding, improves breath, reduces stools and helps them to lose weight.

If the pinnacle of nutrition for humans is a raw diet based on fruits, leafy greens and nuts and seeds, the pinnacle of nutrition for cats is a raw meat diet.

Kittens will when offered a choice between raw or dry/pouches choose the raw meat and I believe it’s because their instincts are stronger and their tastebuds and sense of smell haven’t been completely messed up with the over powering scent of pouches/dry food.

Encore isn't also known as applaws, it's a different brand made by the same company. Mine have been fine with encore

Ours get James Wellbeloved dry food to graze on and then they each get a packet of Gourmet Perle wet food for breakfast and another for dinner. They get a cat yoghurt (lik-e-lix I think they're called) and a cat stick each as treats. Very rarely they get a few dreamies but I limit these as I think they're bad for them and addictive.

Also don’t fall f9r the nonsense that kittens need a different diet to adult cats!

What do you think they eat in the wild?

My (young) kittens have all enjoyed crunching on whole chicks, rabbits and eat exactly the same as their parents.