Oh, the canned food thing... I have a bad feeling that since the only place
you knew to buy vitamin supplements was Walmart, you may actually be feeding
that stuff they call "cat food" that you can buy in Walmart or the grocery
store. That stuff is NOT any good at all. Friskies, Cat Chow, Alley Cat, etc,
all TRASH; Pro Plan, Iams, Hill's, all only one step above TRASH. You should
only buy pet food at a vet's office or a specialty pet supply store. Look for
the "super premium" brands. A can of cat food should NEVER cost less than $0.75
for a 5.5 oz can (most good ones are near a dollar a can or more), or you aren't
buying good quality. Friskies, Purina, Fancy Feast, those are all BAD foods.
Read the ingredients labels, the first ingredient should always be some kind of
MEAT (not meat by products, or bone meal, or anything except MEAT). Cat food
should never contain any corn. Cat food should ideally not contain anything you
can't pronounce, unless it's a vitamin or mineral (carrageenan, guar gum, BHA,
BHT, etc, all not so great wet cat food ingredients). Sometimes you can't get
around the guar gum, just look for ones with LESS of it). Make sure that any cat
food you feed has TAURINE in it. Even the super premium brands, in wet food,
they will be lower protein than dry foods. This is due to the amount of water
used to make it. It's not any less quality of protein, it's just watered down.
Cats fed all wet food diets will tend to drink less water on the side, cats that
eat all dry food diets will drink more. It works out about the same in the end.
Most people choose to feed both dry and wet, others choose all dry (usually due
to convenience), others choose all wet (cats tend to prefer wet food, many
owners claim it's more natural since raw dead animals are very wet by nature).
Still other owners choose to feed all raw diets of REAL dead animals, the MOST
natural diet for any carnivore, such as a cat. Lot's of us just don't have that
much time, that's my excuse anyways. I feed free choice dry food in an
auto-feeder and give wet food as a treat only upon occasion. But I work two
jobs, and just don't have much time to do "what's best". It's all what WORKS for
you, and what your cat does the best on. It's very trial&error. :)
Here is the brands I feed, their website is very good, you can view each
variety of cat food, and read all the ingredients, and nutritional info for each
one. They even let you compare four kinds side by side:
Their Innova EVO is the highest protein cat food they make (I
personally feed the California Natural brand):
Other good brands:
Wellness:
Chicken Soup:
Felidae:
Wysong:
(there are others, just read labels)
If you don't have a good vet store or pet supply store near you, this is a
good online pet food store:
http://petfooddirect.com/store/
(you can look up many brands and compare on this site, a wonderful
resource)
Just so you know, there are super premium cat food brands that aren't very
good too, so you have to read labels. One to avoid is Flint River... it's all
corn and by-products, yet very expensive.
I hope that helps!
Jenn
PLEASE Adopt a cat from Little Cheetah Cat Rescue!!!
http://ucat.us/adopt.html DONATE: We could really use a power saw (for construction), a digital
camera (for pictures) and HOMES for CATS!
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