<p>Ha, ha, Atomom, the odor issue of the canned food and the litter box contents are what drives my choice of foods. But my cats have lived ridiculously long and healthy lives. </p>
<p>Oh - the Royal Canin Urinary SO food we give our cats is prescription. I get it from our vet and neither cat has had a UTI so we’ve been happy with it. And they love their food. Our boys are 9 years old.</p>
<p>We have older cats, so we make a thick chicken soup and then put the meat in a bowl, add little salt, cover with soup to 3/4, then mix it with a handheld stick mixer until it’s a thick mousse. The mousse is then put into the fridge. The cats LOVE it cold!
No more canned food. Only the mousse and Science Diet kitten food (yes even for senior cats). One of our cats lived happily to age 19 like this! </p>
<p>It’s certainly important to feed your cat what he is actually willing to eat, but using the rational that he “loves it” isn’t actually a ringing endorsement of that food’s quality, only it’s palatability. Fast food is extremely tasty to children, and many would eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner, but that wouldn’t make for a health sustaining diet. You can live a very long time on poor quality food, but obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and cancer will likely compromise your quality of life at some point. The manufacturing process for dry kibble allows for the inclusion of some pretty hideous ingredients of extremely poor quality, according to all I’ve been able to research so far. The final step involves the spray on application of a greasy slurry that cats can’t seem to resist (a kind of kitty crack). Most Kibble is extremely cheap to produce, and fattens the manufacturer’s bottom line, but it’s not actually good for cats. It’s an extremely easy sell, though, because let’s face it, we humans (especially we Americans) are pretty enslaved by our own tasty, but unhealthy diets. If it’s fast, convenient, and very pleasing to the taste, we have a hard time resisting its call. </p>
<p>I’m still trying to figure out how to feed my brand new kitten a healthful diet without breaking the budget, and without having to expend exorbitant amounts of time tracking down and combining ingredients and supplements. I’ll let you all know what I come up with.</p>
<p>On a side note, my breeder included recommendations in the Kitten Kit for certain things, including probiotics for “stinky gas”. When I first read it, I was a little incredulous, thinking, how bad can a little kitten farts actually be…Well, let me just say that, so far, they have inspired nothing short of shock and awe 
I means 태민’s are probably capable of peeling paint! Needless to say, I plan on making a trip across town to my favorite Heathfood store tomorrow 
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<p>Poetsheart - true that palatibility doesn’t equal healthiness but my boys are picky so the fact they like something that’s good for them is important - it means they’ll eat it. </p>
<p>Kitty farts? :)) Oh yeah… </p>
<p>Our cat was eating half a can of wet food plus (9 Lives, usually: cheap) and about half a cup of IAMS dry food per day, plus the occasional chipmunk or bird, and as much dog food as the dog would tolerate (IAMS there, too), and getting fat. The vet told us “Cats are Atkins-y” and said we should just give her wet food. We did that, and she slimmed down some, but she kept eating the dog food (and the animals, too). She really wanted dry food, no question about it. I finally started giving her 1/4 cup sometimes, and she gets a can of wet food (but sometimes doesn’t eat all of it) a day.</p>
<p>Re innards: Sometimes the cat will leave a little pile of innards by our back door, for the dog.</p>
<p>I admire y’all, and I love my cats, but I had to laugh at the idea of making homemade chicken soup for my CATS! I don’t even cook for my husband! :)</p>
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<p>Sounds good, but I don’t understand adding salt. A cat wouldn’t seek out salt in the wild, so are you adding it more as a “human” personal taste?</p>
<p>Lots of thought provoking posts here. Will have to re-examine what I’m doing.</p>
<p>^^^ Agree - very interesting thread!</p>
<p>"I admire y’all, and I love my cats, but I had to laugh at the idea of making homemade chicken soup for my CATS! I don’t even cook for my husband! "</p>
<p>Haha, I wouldn’t cook for a boyfriend, but I would definitely cook for my dog ;)</p>
<p>As far as animals not liking the food. I agree animals can be picky. It’s especially true with some guinea pigs and switching from bad pellets to good pellets. A lot of owners have the complaint that the pig just won’t eat it. The best advice I have heard is just not to give in. Provide only the healthy foods, not the unhealthy options (of course monitor weight daily and make sure the animal is not losing weight), but in the vast majority of cases, the piggy (or any other animal) WILL switch over to the healthier food. You can add in some tasty (but healthy) treats to encourage them to eat the food. </p>
<p>As someone upthread said, yes, a lot of the junkier pet food appeals to animals, just like junkier food appeals to humans, but you can set them on a good diet, and that’s a wonderful gift you can make to your animal.</p>
<p>3 somewhat “rounded” cats live at our house …the vet flat out called my girls fat! And put them on Prescription Purina DM formula (Diabetic Managment–they arent diabetic but it is higher protein and suppose to help them shed pounds…not working so far after 5 months…and not cheap!)
The vet also highly recommended wet food over dry so now they share a bowl of dry (which I can confirm cats do not actually chew since when they throw it up the kibble is fully intact!) and they share a can of wet food mornings adn evenings…some days they love it and others days they sniff at it and give me the saddest look and walk away…no clue as to why…I am tempted to try to baby food route…I would really like them getting more wet food each day for their kidney function…Cats are way more work than dogs ever were!!</p>
<p>We feed our cats nothing but wet food (from Trader Joe’s) to make sure they intake enough water. No dry food at all. </p>
<p>We’ve got an elderly cat (19 years) who has had kidney and bladder stones for several years; also long term digestive issues where she’s needed periodic enemas, including one recently. She also has low potassium, high calcium, and has just moved above the high normal on thyroid. I think she’s been on every kind of Hills there is - currently on A/D to try and get her weight up (the most serious immediate issue). Previously she was on W/D for the calcium. Avoiding dry food because of the digestive issues. She’s supposed to eat Y/D for the thyroid but doesn’t really like it. We also give her Fancy Feast canned part of the time (but only poultry; avoiding fish/meat because of the stones). I’m also giving her prescribed antihistamines to stimulate her appetite (only working a little). Her vet may try anti-nausea pills next week. </p>
<p>Yes, she does like my homemade chicken soup but I only make that in the winter. She also likes soft bread but doesn’t get it because of the digestive issues. Our vet said to avoid much people food because it doesn’t include taurine, which is an essential nutrient for cats.</p>
<p>Incidentally, I get the pills into her by crushing them, mixing them with a dab of butter and a drop of cream, then basically smear them on her gums. She doesn’t hide and spit it out like she does with the potassium gel, nutrical gel, and actual capsules.</p>
<p>Other than all this digestive stuff and her labs, her life is fairly content. She caught a chipmunk a few weeks ago and wakes my husband early every morning. Then she goes off to take a nap :).</p>
<p>What matters to me is outcomes. My vet, who only treats cats and who owns cats, doesn’t care whether it’s dry or wet food because his experience is that both work. His biggest issue with food is over-feeding, mostly of indoor cats because many lose their ability to self-regulate weight as they age (just like people do). He doesn’t see different outcomes based on food and says the key thing is to find something the cat likes and tolerates well … with the understanding that some cats simply throw up much more than others. Once upon a time, some foods didn’t include enough taurine and that could kill cats, but that’s not true anymore. </p>
<p>According to all my research, cats simply do not need added carbohydrates in their diet. People often seem to have a hard time wrapping their brains around the concept that cats (and dogs) are carnivors—meat eaters. Tigers and Scottish Folds may look almost nothing alike, but physiologically speaking, their digestive tracts are built exactly the same. Evolution has done nothing to alter the two in that regard. They live better on a high quality meat diet. Any vegetables, fruits, seeds, and nuts cats obtain in the wild come from the stomachs of their prey. Never, ever do cats need bread or grains. It’s a recipe for diabetes in cats and dogs. Some may have become conditioned to find it palatable, but pet parents should never provide it for the animals they love. The pet food manufacturers are really savvy in the way they market their product. Their packaging shows a pretty array of meats, vegetables and grains, and claim their meals are " balanced and complete", and because we omnivores know this is health sustaining for us, we assume it’s true for our animals as well. It simply isn’t. The packaging further deceives because the non-meat components are nothing that resemble what’s pictured. The fillers and bi-products in most pet foods are nothing an informed pet owner would happily feed their animals.</p>
<p>Yup, absolutely agree - the “best” cat food is a mouse or a bird. In the absence of said foods, we settle for what’s convenient for us, humans - pet foods. Grain fillers are detrimental to cats’ health, however, feeding a cat white chicken meat all the time is a recipe for disaster, too.</p>
<p>JHS- it’s so nice when pets share…</p>
<p>Does anyone know why my cats likes to eat plants. I buy him his own wheat grass just so he leaves the spider plant alone. 8-| </p>
<p>Yes cats are meat eaters but I’m only interested in outcomes. Actual evidence. I’ve seen dozens of sites that speak about how it’s clear that wet food is better, that only meat is better but then they at most rely on anecdotes or claims that in their experience dry food leads to stones. Over the years, I’ve looked at some of the studies and they show stuff like this: no difference between dry and wet food for incidence of diabetes, meaning no effect of the carbs (study from Missouri, 2012). Other research says that diet is not a major risk factor as long as it provides the correct nutrients. Here is a small part of a summary from The Canadian Veternary Journal (from 2008): “Current published evidence thus does not support a direct role for diet in general, or carbohydrates in particular, on disease risk in domestic cats. However, available evidence does suggest that environmental and developmental factors may play a larger role in the development of chronic disease in cats than previously appreciated. If so, it may explain the focus on dry foods, which are very commonly fed to indoor-housed cats, and so might be expected to co-vary with other factors.” That latter means over-feeding and other problems with what the article describes as zoo-like conditions for indoor animals. </p>
<p>Other studies have looked at the problems of specific breeds, meaning those bred and bred and bred and thus prone to problems. These find no difference caused by diet. So my guess is that x person has a Siamese and that cat has a problem and this gets blamed on dry food when the aggregate evidence says it happens because the cat is a Siamese.</p>
<p>In terms of logic, if you say x leads to y, you need to test that. So yes cats eat meat but it seems their systems work fine with carbs as long as they get the right nutrients (and right number of calories).</p>
<p>"…the right number of calories" - I suspect overfeeding is the culprit with pet foods in general. Wet food comes pretty well portioned, with dry food, there is a chart that shows how much we have to feed our precious furball, measured in cups. What exactly is a cup? 
How many of cat owners bother to measure the dry kibble? </p>