Healthiest Canned Cat Food?

[Proffie]

I have two senior cats (12 and 13) and have been trying to do some research into what brands of canned food are the healthiest for them. My vet said canned is definitely healthier than dry, and that I should look for high protein/low carb foods with low amounts of by-products (vs. muscle meats).

I left the vet thinking I could just do some Googling and find the best brands, but instead became more confused by all of the data and math, and am having a lot of trouble finding info that isn’t biased (i.e., aren’t manufacturer web sites or blogs sponsored by brands).

Before I go further down the rabbit hole, has anyone done the math or otherwise knows which specific brands/flavors are objectively the healthiest for an older indoor cat?

[clint]

There are a couple of brands I like and the cats like too, and I think I have tried most of them. Weruva Cats in the Kitchen is a big favorite with my cats of all ages, in almost every flavor. It is low in fat, okay for protein, and has no by products. It is also a texture cats seem to find very appealing. The other is one I just tried called First Mate. It has limited ingredients, no by products, and also decent protein and a more fat than the Weruva. It fed very well to my cats. The flavor I tried was turkey, but it also comes in chicken and salmon.

[CindyB59]

I don’t know the answer, but look into this. I feed my 17 y/o Primal chicken & salmon. It’s freeze dried, so I add water to it. She’s gained weight & is doing fabulous on it. Not cheap - but worth it.

[RPM]

I will be following this thread with interest since I have a 13-year-old who is the pickiest eater in the world when it comes to canned food. I would like to switch her to canned food only because she needs to lose a little weight.

We have gone through Weruva, Fancy Feast, Friskies, Purina, Meow Mix, and Nutrish – she may like them one day but may not touch them the next. The price doesn’t matter, neither does the variety. Right now she prefers 9 Lives with cheese bits, but I don’t trust its quality, and cheese isn’t good for kitties anyway, so I have to scoop the cheese out and it is messy!

[clint]

Why isn’t cheese good for cats?

[RPM]

Lactose intolerance.

[Tornado_Run_Farm]

@CindyB59

I don’t know the answer, but look into this. I feed my 17 y/o Primal chicken & salmon. It’s freeze dried, so I add water to it. She’s gained weight & is doing fabulous on it. Not cheap - but worth it.

I’m curious, Cindy - does your kitty have renal issues? I have a 17yo kitty, as well, but she has kidney disease. The only prescription food she occasionally eats is Hill’s K/D kibble (a few bytes/week). I can’t get her to touch the K/D tuna or chicken wet food at all. So she’s decided she likes Friskies wet right now - before that she was all about Fancy Feast. I know this is bad, bad, bad for her but it boils down to feeding her stuff she likes vs. her starving herself out of protest. She can’t lose more weight - she’s extremely thin, only weighs about 6 lbs.

My sister suggested the Primal raw diet - she’s thrilled with it for her dogs. But when I asked the vet about it, I got a cold stare and that I needed to try harder to get her to like the K/D - I guess fish oil, appetite stimulant, warming isn’t hard enough …

Anyway, does your kitty have health issues?

[Sugarwells]

@RPM

Lactose intolerance.

???

[Bartleby]

One of the mantras I’ve always heard from the cat folks, both enthusiasts and the feline specialists I’ve followed, has been that even the lower quality canned is better than the highest quality dry. So my cat gets a half canned further diluted with a couple tablespoons of water every morning and then about a quarter cup dry every night. I do this because I’ve always had better luck making sure my pets have a wide variety of foods that they are accused to eat, so if I board or have someone looking after them they do not have super specific feeding requirements AND if something ever happened to a favored brand I don’t have to worry about them not taking to a new one. The dry gets fed in a puzzle toy so she can get some brain work in. Anyway, I digress.

I buy a huge variety of canned brands, from the lower quality Friskies and FF all the way to Weruva products. The only thing Adele is adamant about is she prefers pate style…except in Weruva. I do feed a lot of Wellness Core, typically buying the 24 can flats and then rotating in the various other brands. I think CORE has one of the better bang for your buck nutrition profiles and Adele really loves their chicken and duck based versions.

[clint]

@Bartleby

One of the mantras I’ve always heard from the cat folks, both enthusiasts and the feline specialists I’ve followed, has been that even the lower quality canned is better than the highest quality dry. So my cat gets a half canned further diluted with a couple tablespoons of water every morning and then about a quarter cup dry every night. I do this because I’ve always had better luck making sure my pets have a wide variety of foods that they are accused to eat, so if I board or have someone looking after them they do not have super specific feeding requirements AND if something ever happened to a favored brand I don’t have to worry about them not taking to a new one. The dry gets fed in a puzzle toy so she can get some brain work in. Anyway, I digress.

I buy a huge variety of canned brands, from the lower quality Friskies and FF all the way to Weruva products. The only thing Adele is adamant about is she prefers pate style…except in Weruva. I do feed a lot of Wellness Core, typically buying the 24 can flats and then rotating in the various other brands. I think CORE has one of the better bang for your buck nutrition profiles and Adele really loves their chicken and duck based versions.

This is how I feed as well. I have a variety of foods of different brands, operating under the philosophy of “the worst wet food is better than the best dry food”. I feed my cats brands ranging from Friskies to Weruva and everything in between. (Except Wellness; no cat of mine of any age has ever liked it.) Sometimes I think they read the price tag though, as they prefer pricier food than Friskies.

I have never heard of cats being lactose intolerant to cheese. Milk yes, but not cheese, and in fact I have cats I have fed cat food with cheese in it for at least a decade with no issues. Some of them like it a bunch.

[Chall]

When I had cats I feed dried (always available), canned (Fancy Feast). plus raw chicken hearts, chicken livers and shrimp.
Of the 3 cats, all ate shrimp, but only one loved the livers and hearts.
I felt better providing the raw food and that cat lived the longest.
They will tell you when they need a break from whatever you are feeding.
(and you have to take the plates away ,thow out, after two hours with the raw food)

[RPM]

What could be wrong with offering your cat a saucer of milk or a piece of cheese? Most cats are lactose-intolerant. Their digestive system cannot process dairy foods, and the result can be digestive upset with diarrhea.

https://pets.webmd.com/cats/ss/slide…ould-never-eat

Many cats love cheese, and it’s a good source of protein for them. And although some cats are able to eat it without any problem, you’ll find that dairy products often make the list of dangerous foods for cats. That’s because as many cats mature to adulthood, they become lactose intolerant. For these adult cats, any cheese, milk or other dairy will cause diarrhea.
https://www.care2.com/greenliving/5-…s-can-eat.html

I could go on, but y’all can Google it yourselves. My own kitty got a UTI from eating tiny servings of cheese, and milk, several years ago. I haven’t fed her either since.

[Zevida]

I prefer to feed a 95% meat wet food, so I feed Wild Calling, or if that’s out of stock Hound & Gatos. I order online at Chewy. Those brands definitely aren’t at the grocery store, and probably not at the pet store. My cats do so well on it, they are 16 and healthy and alert - basically still act like they are 10.

My younger cat who is 10 won’t eat wet food unless some dry is mixed in, so they all get a sprinkle of grain free dry (less than 1/8 cup) mixed in, Blue Buffalo brand.

[Kyrabee]

@RPM

We have gone through Weruva, Fancy Feast, Friskies, Purina, Meow Mix, and Nutrish – she may like them one day but may not touch them the next. The price doesn’t matter, neither does the variety. Right now she prefers 9 Lives with cheese bits, but I don’t trust its quality, and cheese isn’t good for kitties anyway, so I have to scoop the cheese out and it is messy!

I was going to say the best canned food is whatever they will eat:lol:.

I feed a commercial raw food (RadCat) plus some canned (about 1/2 and 1/2). Mine will eat Fancy Feast and Sheba.I stick to the pate as it has the least weird stuff in it (gluten and such). They also in the past liked Wellness but I have avoided it because of the caragheenan but they took that out. So now I am using the Wellness. They like chicken, turkey and salmon and chicken and herring. I keep the Sheba around for ‘snacks’. I work a weird shift where I don’t get off until 3AM so I will give them a tub of Sheba before I go to work around 4PM. Convenient and quick. But then, you just never know when they decide they no longer like something. Weird animals.

Susan

[RPM]

I know this will probably sound gross, and I’m not very serious, but practically, I wonder if cats would be less picky if stores offered canned chipmunk, mouse, egg, frog, etc. I have read that in the UK you can buy canned rabbit cat food (I think one store near me has it sometimes), and after all some people relish frogs’ legs and escargot!

Not that I’m at all in favor of feeding chipmunk (I love the cute little critters ), but am just thinking about what it is cats might actually like to eat (seeing as how they don’t normally hunt cows, or chickens, or tuna for themselves).

[Larbear]

@RPM

I know this will probably sound gross, and I’m not very serious, but practically, I wonder if cats would be less picky if stores offered canned chipmunk, mouse, egg, frog, etc. \

Well…you can buy the frozen feeder mice either online or in pet stores. There are online stores that sell things of that nature for people who have snakes. I buy frozen feeder mice for my kitty, he loves them.

[Simkie]

@RPM

I know this will probably sound gross, and I’m not very serious, but practically, I wonder if cats would be less picky if stores offered canned chipmunk, mouse, egg, frog, etc. I have read that in the UK you can buy canned rabbit cat food (I think one store near me has it sometimes), and after all some people relish frogs’ legs and escargot!

Not that I’m at all in favor of feeding chipmunk (I love the cute little critters ), but am just thinking about what it is cats might actually like to eat (seeing as how they don’t normally hunt cows, or chickens, or tuna for themselves).

I used to feed rabbit. Hound and Gatos used to make one, and I think Wild Calling still does. Evangers might also.

You can also purchase whole mice or ground from Hare Today.

I agree with @Zevida that Wild Calling and Hound & Gatos are some of the best top quality brands on the market.

[CindyB59]

@Tornado Run Farm

I’m curious, Cindy - does your kitty have renal issues? I have a 17yo kitty, as well, but she has kidney disease. The only prescription food she occasionally eats is Hill’s K/D kibble (a few bytes/week). I can’t get her to touch the K/D tuna or chicken wet food at all. So she’s decided she likes Friskies wet right now - before that she was all about Fancy Feast. I know this is bad, bad, bad for her but it boils down to feeding her stuff she likes vs. her starving herself out of protest. She can’t lose more weight - she’s extremely thin, only weighs about 6 lbs.

My sister suggested the Primal raw diet - she’s thrilled with it for her dogs. But when I asked the vet about it, I got a cold stare and that I needed to try harder to get her to like the K/D - I guess fish oil, appetite stimulant, warming isn’t hard enough …

Anyway, does your kitty have health issues?

Yes - she has kidney disease. She wouldn’t eat any of the K/D foods & was losing weight rapidly. So, I went back to her normal dry then talked to someone at our local pet store. He is very knowledgeable about cat stuff. He suggested the Primal. She loves it - gained weight back and this year her blood tests were only a tiny bit higher - the vet was surprised (she’s almost 18),. I’m sold on it.

[Angela_Freda]

This is one of the best resources out there to look at cat food.
Healthiest is relative.
My cat is diabetic, alas he also has IBD and some kidney issues… so he needs low carb, low phosphorous, and they have to be novel proteins- OY!

https://catinfo.org/docs/CatFoodProteinFatCarbPhosphorusChart.pdf

[Simkie]

@Angela Freda

My cat is diabetic, alas he also has IBD and some kidney issues… so he needs low carb, low phosphorous, and they have to be novel proteins- OY!

What a tricky list! What on earth do you feed? The phosphorus really tripped me up when I had a kidney cat–that’s HARD to find with low carb, never mind novel protein!