WHAT I FEED MY CATS

After YEARS of research, trial and error, and countless vet visits with unexpected medical diagnoses, this is what I landed on to feed my 3 cats.

Please keep in mind a few things

1) Cats are obligate carnivores. Meaning they are biologically designed to be 100% meat eaters. Yes, they do also ingest the roughage found in the bellies of the animals they hunt but it’s not a huge part of their diet.

2) That being said, each animal is unique, with individual nuances that could alter its dietary needs. For example, bladder, kidney, cardiac, digestive, etc. issues could change the way that you need to feed your fur baby. Always use the holistic (whole picture) approach in determining what is ultimately best to feed your individual cats. Needs could even be different within the same household.

3) Be open to the fact that things can change and you might need to adjust your fur babies food at any given time. It is always a good idea to get bi-annual or annual checkups with blood work, urine, fecal and heart rate/blood pressure tests to make sure everything is as it should be.

4) It is good to give your cat a variety of foods, rather than the same single food or brand of food day in and day out. Different meats and even different body parts within the same animal, contain different vitamins and minerals. So mix things up. This also helps to diversify the microbiome in the gut and makes it easier to help switch foods up when needed, with very little belly upset.

5) Just because a brand makes one excellent recipe, does NOT mean that every recipe they make is good or appropriate. Read labels! I can think of several brands off the top of my head that have some recipes that I highly recommend in their lines, as well as others that I wouldn’t ever feed to my fur babies.

Smalls

I feed Smalls gently cooked food only a couple meals per week. Just to mix things up honestly. This brand uses green beans as the second ingredient in the recipes, which I’m not a huge fan of but other than that, I think it’s great.

FYI - ingredients are listed in order of what the product has the most of.

WERUVA

All 3 of my cats are obsessed with this brand. They devour both the Paw Lickin’ Chicken and Amazon Livin’ recipes.

EVANGER’S

I can’t say enough good things about this brand for both cats and dogs. It’s so hard to find organic cat food, even harder one that cats like! I give my 3 cats these two flavors and they love them! Want to try with a discount? Click my link and it will be automatically applied. Browse ——> HERE

TIKI CAT

I usually purchase just the quail egg recipe, which I had just run out before I took this photo but sometimes I also get them the variety pack to mix things up, sometimes they enjoy other flavors and sometimes they refuse to eat them.

RAWZ

RAWZ shredded seems to be a fan favorite for my 3 kitties. I have tried about 8 of their recipes (different textures) and they liked just about all of them but especially the shredded! These are the recipes that I keep on hand at all times. Their favorite is the plain shredded chicken recipe.

NULO

We recently added this brand to our rotation, ever since taking away the freeze dried raw foods that they were eating prior to the bird flu outbreak. It’s still fairly new and it’s hit or miss at this time. Some days I think they love it and we found an absolute winner other days they won’t touch it.

STELLA & CHEWY’S

I recently switched to this food from their freeze dried raw food since the avian flu outbreak. I’m staying away from anything raw for the time being. All 3 cats seems to like this food. Especially Mocha and Shark. We do these 3 recipes because I try to stay away from fish for the most part, with the exception of an occasional treat or their anchovies or other small fish toppers. Chicken & chicken liver, Chicken & turkey, and Chicken & beef seem to be the crowd pleasers in our house.

IDENTITY

We are relatively new to this brand but after discovering it about 1 month ago, I was a quick fan of their product lineup! Their ingredients are clean and high quality and they are one of a very small number of brands that make gently cooked cat food. We feed both their canned and gently cooked options to our kitties. Fun fact, I love this brand so much that I decided to carry it in my online pet store! :) Although I don’t have qualms with people who feed their fur babies raw, I personally prefer gently cooked as my first option and canned as my second choice. My cats DO also get kibble daily but it is not the majority of their diet. That being said, I am a firm believer that “fed is best”, so if you can only afford kibble, I am thankful that your baby has you and is getting a full belly and a warm bed daily. The next brand I will share is a kibble brand and it is a high quality brand out of Italy but available here in the USA for us too.

GOODNESS GRACIOUS

Where do I even begin? We recently tried this brand to try to add more gently cooked food into their diets and they DEVOURED IT!!!! We tried the rabbit recipe and it is definitely going to be a part of our food rotation!

N & D

I feed my senior cat the ancient grains recipe and my other 2 cats the urinary recipe. My Maine Coon is really the only one that needs the urinary recipe but since they live together, they eat each others food. I am actually waiting for an appointment with a board certified feline nutritionist to make sure that these foods are ok or if I should go back to pure protein for all 3 of them (their canned foods are pure protein). My senior cats cardiologist told me to stay away from grain free diets for heart patients and my Maine Coons veterinarian told me that he needs to be on a urinary recipe for the rest of his life. These are the best ones that I found without LOADS of crap ingredients like corn, meat byproducts, etc.

I also include other toppers and supplements not listed here because I wanted to stick to “complete and balanced” items in this blog post. They get 3 supplements daily and 3 others a couple of times per week. The daily ones are a probiotic and urinary health supplement and a mushroom supplement and the 2-3 times weekly ones are omegas, taurine and coQ10. For toppers, I love to add a variety of the items that I sell in my online store 2-3 times per week, toppers only make up about 10% of their entire meal, on the days that they get them. They LOVE their toppers though and always appreciate the meals that have them!