Expensive cat food vs. ordinary

[zafferana]

We just adopted a healthy cat from the RSPCA. She was being fed Royal Canin at the kennels and I got a voucher for 2 free bags of the stuff, which she seems to like. However, it is really expensive, so I'm just wondering if it's worth buying this kind of premium food on a permanent basis? We can afford it and I certainly don't want to feed her rubbish as I wouldn't eat rubbish myself, but what is the real difference between this fancy stuff and the bog standard Whiskas, Felix, Gourmet whatever?

Cheap cat food is grain based, which isn't good for them. You want cat food which has high meat and veg content.

Also - she seems to always be hungry - although I'm careful to give her the exact amount listed on the packet for her size (44g per day over two meals - so 22g at breakfast and at dinner). Is this normal?

Royal canin is pretty crap too despite its price tag. I'd look for high meat, no grain stuff. Mine like encore (80% meat) and thrive (90% meat) - both dry foods. Zooplus has grain free stuff too

What age is she? So you give any wet food too?

Cats dont need veg either, they are carnivores

I feed mine a combination of royal canin dry and encore wet (high meat content for the wet!!)
I use the website fetch to order and order 10kg at a time which lasts for ages. (Fetch is brilliant!)

She has biscuits available all day and half a tin of encore in the evening.

Better quality food is generally better suited to a cats needs.
Cheaper food has filler type ingredients - some cats will be fine, others less so.
I tend to buy mid price stuff for my older cat and the kittens are on a good (but not exceptional) food. They all get at least one meal a day though that is actual meat or fish. Which bumps up their overall protein intake. They're on royal canin biscuits but don't care for the pouches.
They all seem quite healthy, alert and with glossy coats.

Royal canin is full of wheat and rice and other non meat ingredients. I wouldn't feed it to my cats

I think royal canin market their products heavily to vets/breeders etc. My kittens were being fed it when I got them and I have a bag to use up. They don't seem overly keen on it though and try and eat the other cats biscuits instead!

Typical royal canin ingredients:

Poultry protein (dried), rice, maize, animal fat, wheat, animal protein (hydrolysed), vegetable protein isolate, maize gluten meal, yeast and its derivatives, dried beet pulp, fish oil, minerals, coconut oil, soya oil, fructo-oligosaccharides, yeast hydrolysate (source of mannan-oligosaccharides), borage oil, marigold meal (source of lutein), hydrolysate from crustaceans (source of glucosamine), hydrolysate from cartilage (source of chondroitin).

(Theres a lot in there cats dont need and cant digest and cats are often sensitive to wheat)

That's interesting @dementedpixie. The brand Pets at Home recommended wasn't Royal Canin, it was AVA, which is a grain-free type of food that says on the packet that it's recommended by vets. Maybe I'll use that in future, but I think I'll try her on a mix of wet and dry to vary her diet. She's certainly in good health at the moment - her coat is smooth and glossy and she's bright eyed and energetic.

AVA is the petsathome own brand. My 2 had it at one point. I get encore from a larger morrisons store and thrive from zooplus

Mine used to be on Applaws (good quality but very expensive to feed 4 cats) years ago. The past few years though I’ve been feeding them this no grain high meat content one from Zooplus

www.zooplus.co.uk/shop/cats/dry_cat_food/porta_21/porta21_feline_finest/170885

You can feed grain-free at less expense if you shop the foreign brands at Zooplus. Also the cat needs to eat far less of it than highstreet brands like Felix etc so it doesn't work out massively more expensive.

However cats are cats. They will still tell you they are hungry if theythink they can get away with it.

I'm very glad I asked you lot - this is very helpful. Right, no more Royal Canin - I'll use up the free bags but after that I'll get her something different. I don't eat wheat myself and I don't see why a cat would need it. Their natural diet is surely mice and voles and things like that - not grain!

My older cat feeds herself a mouse most days too.
Apparently it helps keep their teeth clean too and the bones are quite a natural part of their diets. Yum...

To be honest it all depends on what the cat will eat! With the best will in the world you won't force a cat to eat high quality food if they don't want to. Harry has James Wellbeloved senior wet which is grain free but he also has their senior dry food which isn't. He's happy on it so I'm not changing it!

If you want to change her food, do it gradually, increasing the amount of new food over weeks.

I've ordered some a few of the Encore and Thrive sachets/tins for her to try. I'll stick with Royal Canin for the other meal and see what she likes. I know from growing up with a cat that they can be fussy about textures and flavours and will turn their noses up at anything they don't like!

Ours has Encore (mostly real meat / fish) for breakfast (it's a complementary food) and will not touch anything else... she is a tortoiseshell!!

Mine did really well on Royal Canin, however it made Cheddar sick, so I swapped to Iams vitality as it's wheat free. She's much better on that and it's cheaper.

We use grain free kibble along with tinned cat food, it costs us about 10.00 a week, totally worth it to see them sleek, with lush coats, and no more winter itch for them

The tins arrived today and she polished off a Thrive 'Ocean Fish' for dinner. There wasn't a morsel left in the dish, so I'll take that as a sign of approval!

Zooplus is a good place to buy good quality, high protein foods from European brands at affordable prices. Bozita, Smilla, Animonda, Wild Freedom, Cosma etc. are all good choices and they do sample packs.

The Bozita comes in Elk flavour