Is the expensive subscription wet food really worth the price?

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I tried my My three 4 month old kittens on untamed. After initial enthusiasm with the trial box and then a big purchase they refused to eat it- of would eat just a bit and then their noses up.
i have been struggling to find any wet food they actually love. At the moment they will tolerate purina in tins.
They enjoy kibble- royal canin kitten- but I have heard that it is also not great.🤷🏻‍♀️
They have water fountain which they drink frequently from.
i am so confused by all this cat food malarkey and the aggressive sales pitches of those top end subscription brands.
i have had cats most of my life. Things are so different even from my last set of kittens food wise.
I want to give them a good start- but the advice is so confusing and conflicting .
Thoughts would be very welcome🙂

On Facebook there are constant adds for high end food. I replied on one for untamed saying my kittens were not keen. They then sent me a message - very Fri saying that had cancelled my subscription based on my post but I was welcome to restart.
I thought that was awful- surely it’s up to me to make that decision?
They gave me some money back when I mentioned that the chicken tins were quite dry.

Cats are fussy buggers aren't they.
But I agree with you there is so much hard selling and a vast choice it is hard to know which way to turn.
Gone are the days of whiskers , kit e kat, feilx and go cat were the only choices.
I don't use a subscription service as I have found them in the past a pain to cancel or amend and get 100s of emails that I just can't be bothered with.
My overlord has sheba in jelly and go-cat indoor biscuits and thrive on them so that will do me..

This is a good summary https://cats.com/cat-food-reviews

There are good non subscription options (lily's kitchen, scrumbles), but the subscription foods generally score higher. Ultimately it probably doesn't matter much unless there is an issue i.e. I thought it was normal for cats to vomit relatively regularly until I switched to grain free, my vet said loads of cats are sensitive to grains. Also I feed far less in terms of volume after switching to higher quality food, it generally has higher calories per gram and so is more satiating.

I tried my cats on Untamed wet subscription wet food and I can honestly say it has made a massive difference and worth every penny. They do a £8 trial pack so not too expensive to try. The cats litter doesn’t smell at all, their coats are soft and shiny, no upset tummies or hairballs. I think it’s given them more energy too!

you can tell it’s all human grade meat and looks appealing not like those dark brown ‘ chunks’ in dark brown ‘gravy’ in other cat foods.

We fed our two cats Katkin and have been for the past couple of years since one developed IBD and food intolerances. There was a little blip when they messed with the recipes / packaging but it's all good again now. We make it as economical as possible by ordering the largest pack size (400kcal) and splitting that between 2 cats rather than getting 2 separate 300kcal subscriptions and choosing 6 weekly deliveries rather than 4 weekly to reduce delivery costs. Like all the subscription services they have a refer a friend code, so if you'd like to try at half price this code should work... 50% Katkin Intro

You can get good quality food without being locked into the hassle of a subscription. Have a look on Zooplus. Personally I don't want subscriptions. I also have ethical concerns about regularly feeding my cats 'human grade meat' on environmental grounds - I feel it's much more justifiable keeping carnivorous pets if they are eating the by-products of the meat industry and so animal products that would otherwise go to waste (e.g. offal, lung, udder). If I give them human grade meat, that's massively increasing their carbon footprint.

We have had Feringa (they loved this for a while and then randomly went off it), Lily's Kitchen (I thought it looked good but cats didn't agree), Naturo kitten (big no from the cats), Animondo Carny and Bozita (both of these approved by cats currently) They are all high protein content, have a high percentage of the type of meat they are advertised as, and are grain free and sugar free.

My kittens stopped eating untamed- as I said in my first post 🙂

We did Untamed with our girl cat when she was vomiting a lot - she loved it, but it transpired the vomiting had a serious underlying cause (intestinal lymphoma) and we sadly had to have her PTS. I found the customer service really good actually.

We now have a little boy cat who isn't a wet food fan. He liked the tuna Untamed but not the meat ones, wouldn't even look at Katkin when we tried that. He now has Sheba wet which sometimes he eats all up, sometimes just licks the gravy off. He drinks plenty but just is not a wet food kinda guy.

I know some cats are fussy but ours will eat pretty much anything. We move between scrumbles, lily's kitchen, encore, applaws, blink, feringa, animondo carne etc depending what vouchers/discount codes I have. All high protein, grain free which are the main criteria for me. Both of our cats have been big, lean with shiny coats. We feed dry and wet, dry similar brands to above again high protein no grain.

My boy cat loved untamed wet food for the last 6 months until a couple of weeks ago he now won’t touch it at all.
Cats….

Thanks all. As much as I would like them to eat higher end food- esp when they are growing- I feel frustrated. One is greedy and unfussy, another semi picky and the male kitten is a nightmare.
I will check out the other brands. They hate their food too chunky as it is hard for them without their adult teeth- I end up cutting it up with scissors before I feed them( embarrassing admission )They hate pate. They hate jelly.

My cats aren’t wild about pate either (they are now 8 months). I get a fork and chop it into smaller chunks and then they eat more.

The Bozita kitten is good from that perspective as it comes as tiny chunks

I feed a reasonably decent grain free wet (Harringtons at present) and a good quality dry. After much research & asking around, I decided that it was OK to feed one type of food cheaply as long as the other was good quality, assuming they ate both.

I've tried a couple of the subscription foods and the cats haven't liked them.

I'm quite lucky in that at the same time as me trying to sort out the best wet & dry to suit Tobias's stomach issues while still trying to get the excess weight off him, DSis had her 2 new cats so was trying them on various types & makes of food. If we find that say my cats don't like one brand then hers get the rest of the pack to try & vice versa - mine are currently VERY pleased that hers didn't like Hi Life Tuna wet food, as she'd bought a large box and they LOVE it!

That was my thinking. What dry food is good food? I suspect royal canin isn’t all that amazing tbh🤷🏻‍♀️

Well it IS one that just about all vets recommend, along with Hills. It certainly isn't Go Cat standard!

We do RC dry with Sheba wet - our vet is happy with that although there is a poster on here who always pops up saying it’s terrible (not sure if he - Simon something or other - is possibly a vet himself actually).

If they've no allergies or health issues can't they just eat whiskas or Felix wet food? If not maybe try the RC sensitivity control one? My little cat had allergies but he's good now with the wet and dry version of that.
Most cats when they're grown should have 1.5 sachets and 1.5 bowls of dried food a day I think. Or less of they're little or under a year old.

They re eating like fiends. The vet said to feed them a much as they want to eat all the time that they are growing this quickly. They should eat less once the are around 8 months. It has been very expensive keeping them full. Some days they want more than others. Today they have had 4 wet feeds as well a free feeding on kibble. They have one pouch or tin between them each feed- small tummies seem to get full quickly but need feeding more frequently ?.

We have Katkin and it has definitely reduced the vomiting, litter tray smells. Mog is now a healthy weight according to the vet who was concerned by the weight loss when she had Whiskas and Felix.

You can't really say "most cats when they are grown" - my friend has 3 adult cats weighing 3.5kg, 7.5kg and 8kg. All moggies so no special breeds - the 2 bigger ones had a mother smaller than his "small" cat! There was 1.5kg difference between my litter siblings (4.5kg and 6kg), and similar between my DSis's 2 cats though over a kilo smaller.

Then factor in indoor/outdoor, age, temperament, breed...

My dm's fussy older cat enjoyed Katkin but dm wasn't happy about how many flies were attracted in during the summer, due to it being fresh meat.