Cost effective food, litter, insurance

[AlltheFs]

We have had a sad 18 months with no cats after we tragically lost our 3 close together. This summer though we are hopefully getting 2 kittens/young cats and the house will be happy again.

Our last cats though cost an absolute fortune on expensive food and liberal Catsan, we were not on a budget then and they had the best of everything. In the current climate I’d like to try and start out with more modest spending!

They will be on a plan at our vets that covers all their flea/worming/jabs etc and we will insure.

Can anyone recommend the following though?

Good value food -wet and dry as we tend to feed both
Alternative cat litter to Catsan, especially while they are in 24/7. Needs to contain smell. They will have a lidded tray when bigger and will eventually go outside.
Insurance-our last lot had ridiculously expensive unlimited lifetime cover that was over £100pm for 2. What amounts do most people insure for? I want to be well
insured but I think we need something a bit less expensive.

Just to be clear, we can afford to have them but need to try and moderate the cost a bit. I am hoping to keep it to around £130pm all in. We have all the kit already. The vets plan will be £32pm for both.

Aldi and asda do a pretty decent budget litter. less than £3 for a bag.

aldi select wet food is £3.20 for 12

The issue with food is that you can only feed what your cats will eat - no point buying budget supermarket food if it's just going to sit in the bowls untouched.

Litter-wise we use Greenwoods - it's £30 for 30l but it lasts ages, doesn't smell isn't too rough on the feet. It's made of plant material and we get it from ZooPlus.

Insurance wise ours are insured for 7k each with Tesco ☺️ I pay around £25 for all three cats - they're 8, 7 and 3 and we've never had to claim so far.

Yes appreciate what you are saying about food as I had fussy ones before but we started out on expensive food and it’s hard to go back from that. So with kittens or young rescues I was hoping to start at something cheaper and then if we are lucky it won’t escalate too much.

£7k insurance sounds reasonable. We’ve not had a good experience sadly with 2 of ours, - £11k in vets bills (was insured) and still died so whilst I want them well insured I don’t want to be paying too much when odds are we won’t claim. Hopefully we can’t be that unlucky a second time.

Will look at Greenwoods thanks.

My boy has Acana dry food which costs £20 per month. He's a fussy bugger though. He's insured via many pets, unlimited lifetime policy for around £22 per month. They have a 24/7 video vet service which can save you trips to the vets. Can send you a referral if you want, I think we'd both get a £50 amazon gift card. 😉

Insurance wise we went for the best we could afford. Didnt want to end up institution where we couldn't afford vets.

We feed the pets at home wainwright's. Think it's 9.99 for 12 pouches kitten wet food. They have offer on the min so we bought plenty so save.

We use the asda yellow label litter. Scoop at least once a day and full clean every week. Weve found this fine.