Continuation of “cat food chat”

A few days ago I wrote a lovely, long entry about cat food and our cats’ new diet, and then my browser froze before I could submit it to my blog.  Rather than be annoyed, I’ll just figure that everything happens for a reason, so perhaps this entry on the same topic will be even better than the old one.  You’ll never know if it’s worse, anyway.

We’ve always had food issues with our pets.  The parrots eat meals I prepare fresh for them daily, and they eat no birdseed because the pionus has bad cholesterol problems.  Phoenix eats a diet void of all the most common allergens, especially corn, because she has terrible allergies.  Derek eats a veterinary diet because he’s prone to bladder crystals.  The big dogs eat a senior kibble that’s high in glucosamine and chondroitin for their joints, and they don’t eat canned or fresh food because it makes them “food aggressive”.  With so many animals and so many dietary needs under one roof, I’ve tried to find the best ways to streamline what everyone eats so that their food is nutritious as well as easy to dole out.

With the arrival of the kittens, I hoped I could find some food solution which would allow me to feed the adult cats and the kittens the same food.  All the adult cats had been eating Derek’s prescription diet of kibble + canned food, but I’d never been happy with the ingredients on the label, the price, or the results of feeding that I saw in the cats.  Yes, the food kept Derek from forming bladder crystals (which he’s only had once in his life), but it also seemed to make all the cats fat.  I kept feeding them less and less of the amount they were supposed to eat until they were down to just a quarter cup of kibble and a sixth of a can of wet food eat day, but they remained chubby and lethargic.  I did some reading and consulted with some vets as I tried to find the best food to feed the kittens, and I came to the conclusion that cats would do best on a canned diet with very few, if any, grains, and that the kibble should probably be scrapped altogether.  My mind really wrestled with this concept, because I had a hard time letting go of the idea that kibble was good for dental health, but the more I read, the more I was convinced.

I read lots and lots of cat food labels—lots of them!—as I looked for a wet food I’d feel good about feeding.  I decided against brands like Felidae because they contained so much rice, and didn’t like the grocery store brands which contained mostly by-products.  I finally settled on a few of the foods made by Merrick, as they contained the ingredients I was looking for (“human grade” organic muscle meats, vegetables, few carbs), and because they looked like they were quality foods.  Instead of just being a can of mushy goop like many foods, when you open a can of Merrick’s food you can see actual chunks of chicken, pieces of carrot, etc.  The food truly smells good.  Perhaps that’s not a big issue to my cats, but it’s important to me.  I’ll admit that I might be being “played” by the marketing department of Merrick because I do find their presentation, (both the inside of the cans and the outside), to be appealing, but I think the results I’ve seen from feeding their foods speaks volumes.  I’ve also noticed that my cats prefer Merrick to other good brands, like Wellness—I think they like the variety of textures.

As I wrote in my last short entry, feeding Merrick has been a great thing.  It’s been about six weeks since we started to feed all the cats (kittens and adults) wet food exclusively, and all of the adult cats are in great condition.  Chelsea has lost a couple of pounds and is much more active.  Derek is also more active and has lost weight, although he tends to be a food mooch so he’s eating a bit more than he should.  Both Flippy and I noticed that Derek’s coat is no longer greasy and flaky—it’s now a lot smoother and shinier.  As for the kittens, they’re all thriving—active, happy, cuddly, and very bright.  Derek will have to go to the vet later this month for a check of his urine to make sure he’s not forming crystals again, but with the wet food I know he’s getting a lot of moisture into his system, and that should help keep him flushed out.  I check his litterbox production regularly and so far all is normal—there’s no sign of the small, frequent pee spots he left when he had the crystal problem last year.

Call me shallow, but the very, very best part of this entire experiment has been what’s happened in the litterbox.  When the cats ate a lot of kibble, the litterbox constantly stank.  I’d scoop all three boxes in our house at least half a dozen times a day because the smell of urine and poop was so overwhelming.  Flippy and I were both dismayed that sometimes a poop smell hung over our livingroom like a big green cloud, even when the litterbox was empty, and the cats inevitably pooped while we were eating.  They’d also all poop at least twice a day, if not three times, so that was at least 14 poop piles I was tackling daily.  It was rather unpleasant.  Since putting all the cats on the Merrick food, poop production is greatly, greatly reduced!  Yay!  Everyone deposits one delicate poop per day in the litterbox, and it just doesn’t stink.  Maybe if you picked it up and sniffed it, it wouldn’t smell like roses, but once it’s covered there’s no horrid smell hanging over the house.  It’s obvious that the cats are able to digest and use a majority of what they’re ingesting now, so there’s barely any waste.  Just to confirm that kibble was the smelly culprit I’ve added some back to their diets two or three times, and the stench returns, as does the litterbox volume.  Not only do I have to scoop a lot less frequently now, I use a lot less cat litter.

I was so happy with the results we saw with the cats that we began a two-month canned food experiment with the two little dogs as well.  So far, Phoenix looks great (no skin problems, including stinky, greasy skin), and the enthusiasm with which Phoenix and Cricket greet dinnertime is really entertaining.  They try to sit patiently, then they dance a bit, then they sit, and then they eat like I’ve given them a bowl of surf and turf.  We supplement their diet with dental snacks to keep their teeth in good shape, because on an all-kibble diet we’ve been blessed with dogs with really great teeth who rarely need dental work.  The father of our next-door neighbour is a vet, and he feels a wet diet promotes better dental health than kibble because of something to do with the saliva, but I guess we’ll see what sort of results we have in that department.  I’m happy to say that our small dog poop volume has also been dramatically reduced, down from up to three poops a day while eating Innova Senior kibble, down to just one small poop each day.  Again, the dogs are obviously digesting a lot more of their intake so there’s less waste overall.

I’ll admit that I think some of our cats, especially the kittens, prefer kibble.  I’ve felt badly depriving them of kibble entirely, so I buy small sample packages of brands like Innova Evo and I’ll toss a small handful around the floor once a week so they can “hunt for kibble”.  I’ve tried to get them to eat feline dental snacks but they want nothing to do with them, despite the fact they’ll eat just about anything else.  The dental snacks seem to be fishy pellets which feel like styrofoam, so perhaps I don’t blame them.  By keeping the cats enthused about wet food and kibble, I think it will be easier to come up with solutions for medicating them when that need arises.

I don’t want anyone to think that I’m telling them what to feed their pets, because I’m not.  So many things factor in to what you feed your pet, including brand availability, cost, your pet’s health needs, and your pet’s personal preferences.  I know of many cats who refuse to eat anything but kibble (including my own dear departed Sweet Pea), so you’ve got to work within your individual situation.  Still, I feel happy with the routine we’ve developed here, and I think the cats are benefiting from it.  As long as they’re happy and healthy, I think that’s what matters.  My one regret is that I’m not going to be able to switch the big dogs to a canned food diet because of cost factors.  The small dogs eat a combined total of one large can of food per day, at $1.50 per can (I buy it on sale at SitStay.com on their discount Tuesdays).  The large dogs would eat a combined total of ten cans per day, based on their weight, which would cost $450 per month.  That’s just not going to happen right now.

If you’re interested in reading some of the material I used for my research, check out the article Feeding Your Cat by Lisa A. Pierson, DVM.  She advocates a raw diet, but gives you ideas on how to choose a kibble or canned food if that’s more appropriate for you.  She’s willing to name specific brands, which I like.  I also read a book which is now out of print, called The Consumer’s Guide to Cat Food.  You can buy a used copy of it via that link for about $1.50.  It’s a bit out of date as it’s almost 10 years old, but it does compare ingredients of common grocery store brands and talks about cat nutrition.  I also read Dr. Pitcairn’s New Complete Guide to Natural Health for Dogs and Cats, which mostly advocates a raw diet, but still gives you some good basic information about what cats need to eat to stay healthy.

I wish you, your cats, your dogs, your parrots, and any other critters in your home “happy eating”!

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 05/08 at 11:05 PM

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  1. Thank you for researching and writing all this. It’s truly fascinating. I’m now quite tempted to try a switch to canned for our kitty, just for the selfish litter box benefits.

    By the way, the complexity of your pets’ feeding needs makes my head spin.

    Posted by Diana  on  05/09  at  05:40 AM

  2. I was a little hesitant to write this blog entry, because the “pet food discussion” is just as volatile as any discussion of abortion, the death penalty, religion, etc.  I’ve seen so many message boards where threads go up in flames when pet foods are discussed.  I think everyone wants to do the best they can for their pet, but because there’s no simple “one” right answer, the discussion can quickly turn into an argument.

    I did a bunch of reading, experimented a bit, and found what works best for me.  In my case, I have a preference for the Merrick brand food, but I don’t necessarily think it’s the best food available.  I’m not sure what is, I just know that the Merrick feels right.  Is Merrick better than a raw or homemade diet?  Probably not, but again, that depends on who you talk to.  I’ve seen breeders who won’t sell you a cat unless you promise to feed a raw diet, and I’ve had vets roll their eyes at me when I mention a raw diet.  There’s just no consensus.  I also don’t know how a high-quality kibble (say, Innova or Wellness), compares to a cheap canned food full of by-products and fillers.  In that case, perhaps the kibble is more nutritious, but I’m just not sure.  The AAFCO regulates the pet food industry and has minimum standards that must be met in all foods, but in reality that means “35% protein” could be protein from organic, free-range chicken breast, or protein from chicken feet—they only count the protein, they don’t rate the source of it.  That was one problem I had with feeding the cats their prescription canned diet—it was made entirely from by-products, and it just didn’t smell good.  It always smelled a bit sour, like bad meat.

    Here’s one thing I feel like I can say point-blank, without fear of controversy:  if possible, try to train your cat to eat both canned food and kibble.  That way you’ll have options available for medicating.  You can often break up and mix a pill into wet food, and Baytril comes in a liver-flavoured pill which the cat could just crunch down.  It’s not always possible to have such an open-minded cat, but it’s handy if you can arrange it.

    Posted by Leigh-Ann  on  05/10  at  12:04 AM

  3. Excellent! I was going to put up a blog about cat nutrition but you beat me to it. Well, OK - I will because nutrition does matter. And too many people rely on just kibble, which is terrible for cats. I read one article by a vet researcher at Colorado State, I think - finding that an all-dry diet is actually worse for cats’ teeth. Although I know several kibble have abrasives added, but ground bone (like in my rabbit) does that too.
    Anyhow. I haven’t tried the Merrick, I’ll check it out. I have Wellness, Natural Balance and (oh for shame LOL) 9 Lives canned, and a bag of Chicken Soup kibble.
    I mix around various canned foods, and since I feed the dogs mostly raw the cat gets some too - he just adores ground rabbit (I get it ground whole, bones guts & all, from a raw supplier.) I don’t want Elvis to get too picky, and I want to be sure he gets enough taurine, so I mix his diet around.
    Tip for easy medicating: many meds are water soluble. If you leave a pill in a little water until it’s dissolved into a slurry, it can be poured over dry food or mixed with canned or whatever. When all else fails and you have a sick cat who MUST have medication, it can by sucked into a syringe along with some broth for taste, and “force-fed” that way. Less traumatic for the animal than trying to force-feed a pill, which can be quite the challenge!
    You are right, there’s no consensus but with a little common-sense it’s fine to mix it up a bit.

    Posted by Carina  on  05/10  at  04:31 AM

  4. OK, here’s the link to what I mentioned before about dry diets and teeth:
    http://www.petmed.com/cdiet.htm
    I have more, but it’s time for me to walk the Rottweilers and get to work!! Later.

    Posted by Carina  on  05/10  at  04:40 AM

  5. Wonderful information.

    My 6 yr old tabby, Darren, also had a case of feline cystitus where he develops crystals in his urine.  We had a bad scare in which he did end up completely blocked due to my husband’s inexperience in recognizing the symptoms.  Hubby was horrified and ever since has been super careful about Darren’s care.

    Since then we’ve been feeding Darren a quarter can of specially formulated wet food in the morning and a measured amount of kibble in the evenings.  He always seems hungry and his litter is quite stinky.  And he did seem to have a lot of weight gain at first that prompted us to really cut down how much we were feeding him.

    I think now that I’ve read the information you’ve provided, I’m going to do a little more research and consult our vet to see what might be recommended to tweak Darren’s diet to ensure a happy, healthy loved one.

    So thank you. :)

    Posted by prajantr  on  05/10  at  08:07 AM

  6. I switched to Wellness an Inova food in July of 2004 after I lost my 14.5 year old boy to kidney failure. I just started looking into diet and went to the good pet supply shop here. Now we still have Brendan, Finnegan’s brother, who at 16.5 looks great and has a beautiful coat. After switching his diet, his fur became very healthy. I have read that if you can feel oil on your cat’s fur, it is the diet.
    Everyone eats Wenness canned and the Merrick dishes which they love. They eat a small amount of munchies but more as a snack to tide them over at 4 AM and between meals.
    I cringe when I see people buying awful stuff at the supermarket like I used to do.

    Posted by Zuleme  on  05/10  at  03:39 PM

  7. Carina, I became skeptical about the “kibble keeps teeth clean” concept when I noticed new veterinary diets designed solely for the purpose of good dental health.  The advertisements said that the kibble was formulated to turn into “shards” when bitten, thus rubbing the entire surface of the tooth down to the gumline.  I figured regular kibble must not be “all that” when it came to dental health, because otherwise a specially designed kibble wouldn’t serve any purpose.  Not that pet owners aren’t marketed anything and everything, but…

    Prajantr, I’ve read (and had one vet confirm), that cats can develop crystals and UTIs while under stress.  That’s what made me wonder if our cat needed a prescription diet at all, because he developed his crystals after he’d been bitten and had developed a nasty, painful abcess.  He’d never had crystals before, and I really wanted to try him on a “regular” diet of just wet food, but another vet discouraged us from doing that.  I feel we’re responsible/reliable enough to keep Derek’s urine monitored via regular vet checkups, which is why I decided a trial of regular wet food would be acceptable.  We work from home, so it’s not as if he’s ever unsupervised.  For your cat, at the very least you might want to ask your vet about cutting out the kibble.  Check your label, but the kibble often contains a lot of corn and I think that goes in one end and out the other with very little nutritional value.

    Zuleme, I’d really like to explore the issue of which supermarket foods are “least bad” :)  I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that a can of Friskies is better than a bag of Cat Chow kibble, just because the Friskies is going to be mainly meat, but the kibble is going to be mainly grain.  I’m assuming this—I don’t have any labels in front of me to check.  Dr. Pierson, who I linked to in my blog entry, has a page at http://www.catinfo.org/commercialcannedfoods.htm where she categorizes commercial foods based on their ingredients.  She has Newman’s Own canned food on her “acceptable” list, and I know it can be purchased in some grocery stores.  She also says that *some* varieties of Fancy Feast have muscle meat as a first ingredient, and that those are okay foods if a buyer reads the label. 

    One of the reasons I’ve tried to “tread lightly” around the feeding issue is because different people have different levels of income, and I think pet ownership should be open to anyone who can provide a loving, caring home.  I’d rather see someone feed Friskies to a cat than not get a cat at all because they can’t give it “the very best”.  Friskies is often .20 cents a can, whereas a can of Innova Evo I saw today was $1.75, and I know that’s just not in everyone’s budget.  It might be if you have one cat, but with us having seven, well, we pay for pet food every month what some people pay to rent a two-bedroom apartment.  Being self-employed we often go through income fluctuations, so I’m trying to explore the alternatives to the premium brands in case we need to cut back at some point. 

    One last comment… PetSmart sells their own brand of food under the horrible name, “Sophisticat”.  While the first ingredient is water, the next three ingredients are all muscle meat, and there are no grains.  At just .51 cents for a 12.5 oz. can, it might be one of those acceptable alternatives to the $1.15 cans of Merrick, Wellness, et al.  The only decent flavour of Sophisticat seems to be their Sliced Chicken dinner, though—all the rest are filled with by-products and fillers.  Their “Salmon Platter” doesn’t even list salmon on the label.

    Posted by Leigh-Ann  on  05/10  at  04:30 PM

  8. What to feed our furkids.. such a dilemma.  There are just soooo many options.  I too have done a lot of research on both cat and dog foods.  My problem is, I have two very fussy eaters.  My cat, Bear, was very sick a year ago.  He became anorexic, developed Hepatic Lipidosis and we almost lost him.  We fed him via an e-tube for 6 weeks and now he is doing very well.  My research at the time also suggested that wet cat food was the way to go.  The only thing is.. Bear will have NONE of it.  I tried a smorgasbord of wet cat foods.  All were refused. Finally I went with Natural Balance kibble that he eats fine and has done very well on.  The fear of the liver failure still haunts me.. and now that he is thriving on his kibble I am hesitant to try anything else.
    Coco, my little dog, also eats Natural Balance kibble.  He has always been a fussy little guy and also will not eat wet dog food. He is the first dog I have ever owned that did not love the wet stuff.  But .. he also only eats what he wants and never over eats.. so the upside is .. I am hoping that he will never have a weight problem

    Yes.. what to feed our beloved pets. Quite the dilemma.

    Posted by Simply Coll  on  05/11  at  05:46 AM

  9. Finnovar saw this post last night and wants to solve the dilemma for one and all.  He says that what everyone ought to be feeding their cat is poached free-range salmon in hollandaise sauce garnished with shallots, fresh parsley and a lemon wedge, alongside 5 spears of asparagus and some baby russet potatoes topped with fresh minced garlic and chives, followed by a snifter of Napoleon XO. 

    Hey, don’t look at me like that, I’m just the messenger.

    Posted by Helly  on  05/11  at  01:59 PM

  10. Colleen, wouldn’t it be great if pet food manufacturers could make a “transition” food?  They make those types of things for parrots, with pellets in different sizes and textures and get parrots to eat them instead of seed, yet I’ve never seen anything similar for dogs or cats. 

    My cat Sweet Pea refused to eat anything unless it was crunchy, yet she’d occasionally ask for a piece of chicken or cheese off my plate if I was eating.  If I put the same item in her bowl, she wasn’t interested in it.

    Helly, you need to stop leaving the Food Network on the TV when you go to work :)

    Posted by Leigh-Ann  on  05/12  at  12:45 AM

  11. Congratulations on finding a way to feed that works for you and your pets.  I feed my two dogs raw food because I am lazy :-) .  Scooping is easy, and if I don’t get around to scooping the backyard, the stuff biodegrades quickly and with virtually no smell.  Also love not needing to clean teeth (my girls are 10 and 12, have been fed raw for 9 and 6 years respectively and have never had vet dental cleanings).

    I do think variety is important, no matter what one feeds.  For kibble feeders, switching the variety of the kibble every bag or so may help ensure that micronutrient needs are met (since each kibble will vary a bit).  Also, if a pet will only eat one particular variety of one particular food, if the manufacturer changes the formulation in a way the pet dislikes, the owner may be in a pickle.

    I do like your sensible approach.  I’m on some healthy-dog lists where people are rabidly raw-and-only-raw, and it’s very off-putting.  So are the people who believe that only vet-prescribed and delivered food can keep your pet healthy.  Yes, I feed raw and prefer to feed raw.  Should my circumstances change in a way that precludes raw feeding, I’ll change over my girls rather than rehoming them.  The quality of love they receive is even more important than the quality of the food they eat.

    Posted by kabbage  on  05/12  at  09:30 AM

  12. Hi Leigh Ann! Finally visiting your blog. I have read Dr. Piersons wonderful articles and it convinced me about the canned diet over the kibble diet. Mine still eat both, but its more out of convenience to myself. Cats are carnivores! They need meat, not grains. I saw one kibble food in the grocery store that says it contains the “grains cats crave”. I thought to myself ‘huh?’. Cats crave meat! I read somewhere during all the research I did just like you went through that even the worst can of canned cat food is better than kibble. Food for thought. sss’s mom

    Posted by Scooby, Shaggy & Scout  on  05/12  at  10:37 AM

  13. Hi Leigh-Ann, you inspired me to write my long-planned blog entry on cat nutrition. Yours is much more detailed than mine, so I linked to yours. And if I ever figure out how to list other blogs I like without messing up the code on mine and making it disappear (I did that, thought it was gone forever!), I will list yours.
    Kabbage, I bet I know which rabid-raw dog (and cat) lists you’ve visited! (They wouldn’t be yahoogroups, would they…?) ;~)
    sss’s mom, “cats crave grains”? LOL.

    Posted by Carina  on  05/12  at  01:32 PM

  14. This has been such a great discussion—I’ve really enjoyed reading what everyone has to say. 

    Scooby, Shaggy, and Scout, I believe I see you often over at Caturday, and I’m very happy you came for a visit! 

    Kabbage, I’ve contemplated trying a raw food diet but I feel rather restricted right now by lack of time and lack of funds.  We’ve got so many animals with so many special needs that I just can’t handle the extra committment it would take to obtain the required meat, to prepare it, etc.  I feel like I could do better in the feeding department, but it’s just one of those situations where I’ve had to compromise to allow us to have all the pets we do have.  It may be something I attempt to integrate into one “group” of pets at a time—for example, it’s easy for me to try new feeding techniques with our two little dogs, as they don’t eat very much, so experiments are affordable.  If only Bill Gates would leave me his fortune, I’d hire the pets their own personal chef :)  You know, I stay away from most pet-related message boards and lists because there’s just too much finger-pointing and condescension.  There just isn’t one solution which works for everyone—not everyone can afford certain foods, not everyone has access to certain foods, not everyone has a pet who’ll eat what’s best for them, etc.  I want to learn as much as possible, but I don’t want to be lectured or called a bad owner because of the choices I’ve made.  I truly do try to be informed.

    Carina, your blog entry about nutrition and dental health was great.  I think there must be a genetic component to dental health, just as there seems to be in humans, because I’ve found a couple of dogs who just never, ever have tartar buildup despite a lifetime of kibble.  On the other hand, I’ve got rescued cats with barely any teeth, and I’m sure that was a result of dietary problems.

    Posted by Leigh-Ann  on  05/12  at  11:39 PM

  15. Leigh-Ann (and anyone else), I have a dog nutrition/health/behaviour/whatever yahoogroup. Extremely relaxed & friendly, lots of knowlegable people, no chastising or condescending!
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BARF-lite/
    If anyone is interested. Emphasis on raw diets but almost anything goes, really.
    I agree about the genetic component to dental & general health, most definitely. Although diet & dental care certainly plays a large role too.

    Posted by Carina  on  05/13  at  12:19 PM
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