Is fresh cat food really better, or is Felix perfectly fine?

[LoisGriffinskitchen]

I have two rescue cats and have got them on KatKin fresh cat food. Tbh it’s wonderful, the cats are thriving on it, it’s simple to prepare and stores in the freezer.

However it’s £70 a box and money is tight at times.

I'm pretty certain if I speak to my lovely local vet Aggie she is likely to pull a face and say Felix As Good As it Looks is fine 😁.

Just wondering what other people’s opinions are on fresh food. Is it truly superior? Am I letting my girls down by buying a huge box of Felix and giving that at times.

Litter tray definitely smells better while on this food.

https://petfoodexpert.com/?species=cat

They sell Katkin at Jolleys - currently on BOGOF. Single packs are about £1.75. Not sure how that compares cost wise but may be option if you wanted just feed it now and again without having to spend £70 at a time

We feed applaws or purizon dry

And then he had a mix of wet from premium to cheaper depending on offers. I just feed wet once a day in afternoon ( dry all
day from food automat).
I buy from zooplus and it probably averages at more like £40 a month

The main problem with Felix is it gives them very stinky poos ( and farts 🤢). Plus as another poster notes it doesn't really fill up Marvin . However it is completely addictive and I'm finding it almost impossible to completely wean him off. I have had some success with Kangaroo as a novel protein but only buried in a Mon Petit Gourmet slop. 😐

And isn’t this just the truth.

cats are weird

give it a few weeks and they will go off katkin and devour felix

you just need to rotate the brands of food

Our previous cat died from (or rather was pts because of) intestinal lymphoma, which is a form of stomach cancer, aged ten. Our vet said it was absolutely nothing to do with her food, absolutely nothing we did or didn’t do, and very common in cats. Just unlucky, like human cancer. If Go Cat caused cancer surely it wouldn’t be sold in every supermarket in the UK. I would be really surprised if your uncle’s vet said that.

I asked our vet about our current cat’s diet (and he actually does get Go Cat alternated with Royal Canin as dry food) and she was very happy with it, and with him as a whole. I’m sure she would have red flagged it since she had to usher me out a back door, distraught, after putting our previous cat to sleep with stomach cancer. (FWIW, she did not eat Go Cat.)

I do the same. I agree - tbh the decent stuff is not that much more expensive.

Why would you feed a cat a diet that is 90% carbs when they actually need 90% meat and protein? No wonder they fart!

Wouldn’t know about the cat’s poo. They go off outside and do that

My uncle’s cat probably didn’t get cancer from the food, I agree. It was likely genetic. I was just making the point that I do all I can to ensure I did my very best and didn’t cause illness.

Cat breeders advise raw food diets. I don’t have the time for that so the next best thing is high meat content dry and wet food.

Mine won’t touch any decent stuff. And I’ve tried and tried from raw to Katkin to Scrumbles to ordering half of zooplus
he will eat decent dry food but because he’s had cystitis he’s on no dry food at all now, so he gets his shit wet food topped up with the odd bit of raw that he will eat

Yes it’s very difficult when they just won’t eat something.

Our cat was a stray kitten found in a shed, so i think he’s doing okay on his high-low fussy boy approved mix of Untamed/Sheba/Royal Canin/Go Cat! I also agree with your points about feeding the best you can, but suggesting that people cause their cats to get cancer by feeding one of the leading brands was quite upsetting to read.

Little brat that he is!

Some people will criticise you for giving them the supermarket stuff and tell you its terrible for them. However, I have grown up with cats as pets who have lived off the likes of whiskas, felix etc, all of them have lived into thier 20s, rarely sick or needed vet attention. It can't be that terrible for them.🤷‍♀️

I buy my 2 cats Republic of Cats little tins and I did notice their fur was softer and shinier coats after they had it for about 2 weeks. My big half maincoon prefers a Felix pouch though. He has one tin and one pouch twice a day. My little female cat will eat a pouch but really prefers the Purina kibble. I give her one tin twice a day and a little bit of kibble at lunch times. I give them a chicken breast between them chopped up twice a week and that is really their favourite. Plus if I cook a roast dinner I often chop up leftover cooked beef or pork and add a drop of gravy. I just leave off a sachet if they get meat.

Feed the best quality you can afford but don't leave yourself short.
I feed Harrington's wet & dry. Would say it's mid range. It's free from any crap and high meat content so I'm not wasting money on stuff they don't digest / filler but equally whilst fresh may well be the ideal it's not affordable for me.

I'm getting a little bored with all the posters who say that cheaper brands of wet food only have 5-10% animal protein or less. The lowest I've found so far is Felix (tends to be anything from 14% - 20%).

The Harringtons I geed, which is grain free, works out at about 50p a pouch and is 32% named animal proteins and has a total of 80% animal proteins altogether. The HiLife, which is also grain free, is 50% named fish. Brands like Lily's, Scrumbles etc have about 60-70% animal proteins which are usually named.

So there's a difference, but not anywhere near as much as some make it out to be.

I think it‘s more specific than whether your cat lives to some extreme age or other _ you‘re always going to get a cat on the highest quality food dying unusually early, and another cat on the worst rubbish living to 24. There will always be outliers, as with humans. It‘s probably more about gastric health, quality of life and smooth, glossy fur. Having said that, GoCat dry food has had a longstanding reputation for making (especially) male cats more susceptible to crystals and urinary problems - not sure how true that is.

I used to feed Felix AGAIL but unfortunately a few years back something went wrong with the food and many cats were getting sick on it.
Mine was throwing up green bile.
Fortunately I found the Facebook group detailing the sickness, vet bills and sadly deaths of cats while on Felix.
Switched from the brand immediately.

I think as long as your cat likes the food that is number 1, after that I think its up to your budget and choosing the best diet you can, I feed Bella and Duke raw food (the large frozen order is much better value than the standard size), it lasts over 3 months & I have tried most brands (applaws, harringtons, nature's variety, untamed, nood, gourmet, felix etc) B&D is her favourite & she has a beautiful glossy coat etc. She does sometimes also have a gourmet or other gravy sachet but if offered the raw she will choose that.

Ours has a sensitive tummy so for wet he gets Smilla fine or the Sainsbury's delicious (?) - something like that, like shredded chicken in pouches, dark grey box. Then scrumbles dry. And this seems to suit him but cheaper supermarket brands give him runny poo. Although he now goes outside mostly so it's hard to keep track.

I read somewhere that Felix contains ingredients that aren't great for cats but I don't know how much truth there is to that. Our cat has Whiskas daily and an Encore Tuna Loin on Fridays as a treat.

I always thought that the food they had at the vets was just because they were paid to sell it. But...our cat has early kidney issues so needed to be on kidney friendly food. She is now on Hills kidney food and loves it, something I'd heard might not happen as most dislike it. I also feel we aren't going through as much as we were when she was on Purina.
I would now be much more wary of supermarket brands for any future pets. My dog was fed a grain free diet as I read grain could cause itchy skin

I don’t think there should be too much judgement when it comes to feeding cats. Particularly given they will wolf something down and then turn their nose up when you’ve done a bulk buy 😹

Personally, I think the main thing to achieve is that their diet is classed as “complete” food. Mine are fed on Applaws dry (complete) and this is available for free grazing all the time. They then get a small tine of Applaws wet every evening as a treat - it’s not classed as complete, it’s classed as complementary. Their poos are good, their coats are good and I’m happy with it. Am fully aware it’s not the cheapest option, but it’s not the most expensive either. The most important thing is that they love both and have never turned their noses up at it, so I haven’t had the song and dance of being tricked into bulk buying something they then won’t eat! Plus the tins of wet food would, in a zombie apocalypse, be a temptation for me in an emergency.

Everyone has different circumstances and different budgets. Main aim is for cats to have food, water, warmth and love. If you can then add a caveat of the best “complete” food for them then that’s great. That would always be by main criteria, whatever budget I’m on - is their main source of food, whether wet or dry, classed as complete.