Are fancy cat foods worth the money?

[RainyDaze4]

My kitten is nearly old enough to start eating ‘Adult’ food so am thinking about which brand/type to start feeding her as there’s obviously so much choice.

I’m not interested in raw food etc. I’m talking about your normal cat food you can buy in pet shops and supermarkets but even so, I’m bombarded with all the usual Whiskas, Felix, then you’ve got Sheba, Gourmet, Lily’s Kitchen and on to the fanciest looking ones like Royal Canin, Hills, James something etc.

I’m sure there’ll be some people waxing lyrical about how rubbish Whiskas and Felix is but my kitten has thrived on these normal brands!

Does buying a fancy cat food brand make a difference or are they all the same really?

What do you feed your cat?

@RainyDaze4

This is really useful, thank you!

I am thinking stick with the Felix which she likes but invest in some more expensive dry food - she is long haired so I am keen to get one that helps with hair balls (unless that’s just advertising!!) - I’ve seen Royal Canin do one...

I use the Royal Canin Indoor dry, which has a bit of the anti hairball element to it, and occasionally their anti hairball formula, and mine have very few hairballs. OK they are short haired, but very thick coats and as indoors only a) they should have more than average and b) I will find every single hairball they puke up!

Don't know much about cats but with dogs the dry food is much better, and you use far less. Added advantage is you can free feed, with cats this means you can leave them if needed

I've been trying to stop my cats being fussy by buying whatever, wherever.

They'll eat anything from Aldi to Felix, so so far, it's working.

Having said that, they prefer jelly to gravy, they do prefer recognisable meat to the re-moulded chunks, and they prefer meat to fish, so I do bear that in mind.

They won't eat dry food (except treats) and they don't drink water (except once when girl cat started licking the shower floor). They are also partial to a bit of chicken or beef mince (but I know you're not interested in raw food - mine were raised on mainly raw beef mince at their previous home though, so it's what they're used to)

I found Whiskas to be too dry for them (so probably fine if your cats drink), Felix they loved, but no more than Aldi cat pate (which was about 20p, and actually smelled like something I'd be happy to eat!)

It depends
Sometimes it’s Sheba, sometimes posh felix, sometimes soup.
They like to keep me on my toes
I now just buy what’s on special offer at co op.

The vet told us we were feeding our cat the equivalent of junk food - ordinary supermarket brands - and her teeth were suffering. He recommended a brand he stocked! To be fair, the cat is coming up to 8 years old now and has great teeth and has been very healthy.

My cat is 14 and is in great health. She's really fussy and refuses to eat most expensive and cheap cat food. At the moment she is tolerating Friskies Surf & Turf dry food and Mackeral Feast. Occasionally she will have some Italian brand lobster and shrimp "natural" food but that is a complimentary food without added nutrients.

From what I understand from our vet, a lot of supermarket brands are full of sodium (bad for kidneys). Given that we lost one cat to renal failure and another had early stage renal failure (but lost her to cancer), we switched to Thrive tins. That's now the wet food for our cats, alongside Royal Canin indoor (main dry) and Hill's T/D (top up for dry) to maintain their teeth.

My cats will eat Felix/Sheba etc as long as it's in gravy. They love Felix the soup pouches and really lap them up. I also give them some crunchy stuff like Go Cat. I tend to vary the brands at each shop so they don't get used to one particular brand!

Mine eats purina gourmet. We tried seriously fancy brands, they weren't popular.

Now I look at the analytical constituents and choose food with high protein %.

I fed my long haired cat James well be good biscuits. She gets hyper with other biscuits and a dodgy stomach. Think it’s due to them being hypoallergenic and a higher meat count. She will only eat gourmet pearl wet food and Sheba small pouches. Not the Sheba normal size pouches, which I am fairly sure are the same. Nose up at everything else.

Or if she could tuna , ham or chicken. She appears from nowhere at the sound of the tuna tin opening

My cats have only eaten James Wellbeloved since we got them. Vet asked at their last vaccination as she said it showed they were eating hood quality food. They need something with a majority meat/fish content. Cheaper foods are bulked out with cereal. Certainly see the difference in them from my past cats. Works out cheaper too even though you initially pay out for a bulk buy.

Mine seem to prefer fish varieties of wet food apart from the beef and tomato gourmet solitaire that they also eat.

When I was young we had cats on felix and whiskas and they were always healthy and lived long lives.

But my two now I have on super high quality dry food - around 75% meat content and grain free which compares to something like 4% in the cheap supermarket brands. It costs about £30 a month to feed both cats. I just feel better knowing they're eating a good quality food - as someone above said, they're part of my family.

The 4% refers to named meat e.g. chicken, beef, etc. They do contain much more meat than that but it can be a mix of sources.

Re: dry food - look for meat as a first ingredient as stuff like Go Cat has cereals first.

Ours has Hills dry young adult. It probably is a bit more expensive but a big bag lasts ages. I think it satiates his hunger more. He would just lick the jelly off the cheap food and the begging! He would beg for food all the time, he must have been starving. He eventually went on hunger strike and wouldn't touch anything which is when we tried the hills and he very rarely begs anymore.

The cheap stuff made his poop smell god awful too

Cats will invariably enjoy only the most expensive food you give them.

This. I'm feeding a stray cat, as well as my own, and even he is getting fussy and rolling his eyes at the ordinary stuff

Hi!

We have a Ragdoll and we feed her Royal Canin digestive care. There has been a huge difference in the amount she poos and how smelly it is! We fed her basic cat food from the shop before this as I didn’t really believe brand mattered- how wrong I was! I went to stay at my parents house for a few weeks and I didn’t bring enough cat food so I was trying to use my Mum’s Asda own brand and because we’d made the switch to Royal Canin my cat wouldn’t touch it! She literally would rather starve herself than eat that so there must be a difference in taste too

Like several PP, we ignore the supermarket 'fancy' brands in favour of high meat, no grain stuff sold on Zooplus. No grain was important as eating even tiny amounts of cereal was making him fart like crazy.
Zooplus gives you a detailed analysis of the contents for each product, so some years back I put in the work of checking contents and finding about 7/8 brands that would fit - then we buy small quantities of each to do a taste test.
Once your furry overlord/lady has approved each product you can order in larger quantities, which works out way cheaper. I tend to buy enough to last 3 months each time, plus a large bag of dry that lasts 6 months. My experience is that the high quality online stuff in bulk is way cheaper than smaller quantities of supermarket stuff like Sheba, Whiskas or Felix. And our cat is another one who regularly gets compliments from the vet about his condition. Putting in an order now takes a few clicks because all my preferences are stored, and of course it's all brought to the door.
Current brands we buy, all grain free:
Animonda vom Feinsten
Sanabelle
Feringa
Wild Freedom
Grau
Smilla
Bozita
Katz Finefood
and Applaws dry food

Zooplus is originally German so stocks lots of continental brands, but recommended high quality British brands are James Wellbeloved and Butchers.
I think the supermarket own brands can be a bit hit or miss - like the wine they sell!

My kitten is purina dry (I mix the kitten and the adult indoor packs together at the moment) and then a pouch of felix wet daily (split over 2 meals) as after a long ans varied experiment this is what he prefers. He's indoor and neutered.

Encore dry is the same as applaws but can be cheaper
Thrive dry is 90% meat
Purizon dry is also high meat and from zooplus.
Mine don't like pate style food so that rules out a lot of the 'good' wet food

My vet recommended starting from the cheapest and work up til we found one she liked.
If anything she gets bored so we switch up a few brands every box or so. But I prefer the pouches and trays that are one use only.
Having an open tin makes me wanna not envy.

mine are a bit fussy. They love Felix pouches in jelly and a couple of other brands, but there are many they will just turn their nose up at and just keep screeching.

Id really like to find a tinned food that theyd consistently eat. Why dont cat food companies do tinned food that much anymore, or make their tinned foods better. Tins are much easier to recycle than pouches

Mine will eat most things but I started experimenting with better quality food when one of them developed a chronic illness. I settled on KatKin and have been so impressed with the quality of the food they provide. Ingredients are high quality and the improvement in their overall health has been fantastic. It’s also given them wonderful soft glossy coats. They are both 13 and I pay £52 every 4-6 weeks for a pack of mixed foods (chicken, turkey, fish etc) which come frozen and can be defrosted as needed. I supplement this with some purina dry food for their teeth and ‘treats’ such as fresh cooked chicken, turkey etc

I've seen big butchers tins in the supermarket and maybe whiskas. I buy the small tins alongside pouches

We used to give ours whiskers but changed to purina one. We did notice a difference in their coats after a few weeks. We bulk by from amazon subscribe and safe - saves a fortune!