For those that aren't cat people, this post probably won't interest you at all. In fact, it will probably annoy you, so you may want to skip it. But! Those who have fuzzies probably may want to take a read or two.
As most of you know, I am a "meowmy" to Memphis, a 1.5 year old black domestic short hair, and Tenny, a 1.5 year old tabby domestic medium hair with one eye. Very easy to tell apart. Despite popular belief, they are both girls; I always wanted a black cat named Memphis, regardless of gender, and Tenny (short for Tennessee) goes well with it.
Cat food is one of those things that people normally say, "It's just a cat. It's fine" when it comes to brands, types, and quality. I guess it's a philosophical question: "What is Hecuba to he and he to Hecuba?" as Hamlet says it. Me personally, I consider the cats my furry children: I'm responsible for their health and well-being, they make me happy, and both sides of the equation enjoy the others' company. Since I've put them under my care, they are my responsibility. They could have gone to a different home -- but they didn't.
That all said, I accidentally got "into" cat nutrition. Memphis decided to scream her furry little head off outside a friend's apartment, and since he couldn't take her, I did. Upon arriving home, I attempted to feed her the Meow Mix my friend gave me. Baby couldn't do it; her little teeth couldn't crunch the kibble. Plan B it was then! I had gotten the little furball a bunch of tiny 3-oz cans of wet food for her to try, ranging from Walmart's Special Kitty to Iams to Newman's Own (I was looking more for baby serving size than ingredients).
Well, ate she did. Some more than others. Hmm. Why? And was there something I should be feeding her, since she was so little? And so down the rabbit hole of catfood I went.
It's best to start early on a soft, high grade food. Kittens are very easy to switch foods; older cats, not so much. For pet owners trying to get the cat over to a healthier food, I think steps are key. Your cat likes the cheap cat food because it's tasty -- supertasty because it's been sprayed with chemicals that make it taste ridiculously good. But that hides the fact it's not real meat. Cats are obligate carnivores -- their diet is almost exclusively meat, unlike a dog, who can eat meat and non-meat food. As a result, cats don't process grains, fruits, and vegetables very well. Then there are things that make foodies nuts when they see it in human food: high fructose corn syrup, artificial colors and flavors, animal byproducts. All that filler is junk food. What happens when you feed a kid exclusively junk food instead of a good diet? Fat kid. Fat cat. More on this later.
Online searches immediately made me feel bad that I fed Memphis Special Kitty and Iams that first week. I felt far less guilty about Newman's Own. When I got Tenny, I switched her from her dry food to the food I had settled on for Memphis: Felidae Cat and Kitten canned with the equivalent dry food as a bribe. It was an affordable cat food that I could buy a case of -- and Felidae has a frequent buyer program wherein if you buy 12 cases, you get one free. Sounds like alot, but when you have two fuzzies, it goes surprisingly quick.
This was fine until May 2010. Then Memphis started getting red ears and itchy, so much to the point that I thought she had ringworm. We'd had an outbreak with Tenny's arrival (poor dear), and I thought it had been conquered. Fortunately, the vet assessed it as an allergy or irritation to something in the environment. Nothing had been changed, so he suggested looking at her food to see if she'd developed an allergy to something.
Just like humans, cats will develop allergies as they get older. Most adult humans have some level of lactose intolerance and can't drink straight, whole milk anymore without some consequence. Apparently this was the case with Memphis. The problem was what. She was already on an all-natural food. So I grabbed a few cans of the grain free Felidae. With adequate experimentation, Memphis' problem causer was brown rice. She hasn't had fire-engine red ears since I switched her over to completely grain free food.
The transition was easy -- it was within the same brand, and it really was just an elimination of an ingredient more than a complete switch. If your cat food make has a healthier or grain-free variation of its food (I know Fancy Feast does have grain free varieties, for example ), go ahead and start on that, adding a bit of it to the mix everyday. It got to the point where if I didn't mix the food, Memphis would eat the grain free and leave the side of the plate with the grain cat food alone.
Of course, the problem now is that there is one store in the whole city where one can purchase Felidae Grain Free. Another problem point is that most dry food, even if they have "grain free" as a plug, do have brown rice somewhere in the list. Now that I had a healthy baseline food, the next mission was to branch out.
We first started with Innova's Evo last summer. That was a great filler to stretch out those Felidae cans, but it wasn't very well received. I mixed 3 spoonfuls of Felidae with one spoonful of Evo to start, and then gradually pared down the Felidae contribution and raised the Evo. I continued to feed the Felidae dry, as finding a dry food without rice is MUCH harder than finding a wet food without it. Evo wasn't sorely missed when I stopped feeding it out last summer, but I think I'll try it again just to see how goes it.
Much like introductions, introducing a new food takes about a few weeks before all things are well. Also like introductions, you start with very small, brief exposures, and work your way up. Evo was not fed exclusively as a meal until week 6. If you cat has a few days of diarrhea whenever you add more of the new food, but then it regulates, let the cat be regular before changing the food content again. It could take months before the cat is completely switched. Slow and steady wins the conversion race. Also, make sure the fuzzy eats every day, even if you have to bribe it with old food. This process is easier if you're just trying to add new things to the diet rather than a complete conversion.
That said, I'm using a different tactic at the moment to explore flavors for the cats. I haven't committed to one "official" secondary food yet. Rather, what I'm doing is trying to sort out what flavors the cats like. Felidae Cat and Kitten is a mix of chicken, turkey, lamb, and fish. So on the weekends -- when I'm home and can observe them all the time and take care of emergencies -- I feed them small 3 oz can or pouch of different food rather than the Felidae. I split it between the cats. It's just one meal, once a week, that's out of the ordinary. Should they reject it out of hand, the Felidae is procured and immediately gobbled. I normally put Felidae out before I go to bed these nights so that they aren't hungry, since their dinner was smaller than usual. At times, if they really enjoyed dinner last night, they may make a stink about eating "the usual" again the next morning. Remember, you know they like their regular food, and the other food is simply being used as a treat right now.
Once you start using that new food as more than a treat, you may see a change in litter box output, as I indicated previously -- that's fairly normal. If it doesn't normalize within a week or if the cat behaves differently, then you need to be concerned and stop the new food, and let the cat get back to normal on their regular diet. Watch carefully. I haven't reached this point yet, as I'm just doing "Saturday night treats" in order to feel out what my cats like. I've only had one bad reaction to a Saturday night nom, and that was Memphis and the Wellness Beef and Chicken. Apparently, the princess no can has cheeseburger, because even though she loooooves it, it doesn't love her back and makes her vomit. Tenny ate it fine.
Whenever you go hunting for a new food, check to make sure there aren't any recalls out for any reason -- you don't want a sick cat, and you also don't want a "false negative" on your kitty dietary exploration. Cats are smart -- if it's a bad can or a bad case, and they can tell, they will turn their noses up at it. We had one bad can this week -- a regular grain free Felidae one. Rest of the case was fine, but Memphis staunchly refused to go near her food bowl, and Tenny (who is a living garbage disposal) picked at it and then threw it up immediately, then again during her nap. Not good. It was the last can in that case, and so far they've been very happy with the new case of Felidae.
Both cats have turned their noses up at straight chicken, be it Blue Wilderness or Wellness. Tenny loooves turkey though, but prefers the Wellness over the BW, judging from how much she ate. Duck is an eh response for both cats in the Wellness variety. Memphis has become a fish snob, particularly over salmon Wellness. Both cats eat Wellness tuna with gusto, but I've found that most cat experts would caution against using fish-based cat food as a main dietary staple, since there is risk of mercury and other issues with fish. So fish a few times a week is fine, but not every day.
On the downside, both don't like shellfish at all, and Memphis can't tolerate beef. So far, those are my findings. I've taken out the Wellness beef and salmon can I was going to give them next week, and I'm keeping it on the side to donate to a shelter or something. Even when experimenting, I make sure the fuzzies don't go hungry -- they aren't punished for not liking something.
Costs. That's the last thing I'll discuss here, and for a lot of people, it's the bottom line as to whether they'd go through all this for the cat. I think that's unfortunate, but true. Feeding a cat cheap food can result in obesity, urinary crystals, dehydration, and a lot of other health problems. These may accumulate into an early death or massive vet bills to avoid that. The extra money per can or per bag you spend is more of a sting coming out of the pocketbook, but it beats the vet bills later. Additionally, cats eat until they get what they need -- your can will likely eat less of a better brand than they would a low-grade brand. So instead of a full can of cat food, they may only need to eat half. Without the additives and fillers, they get more of what they directly need and skip the poundage. There are many stories I've seen where the food switch resulted in a cat losing a lot of weight, but regaining it in the form of muscle. Cats are more active, playful, happy, and look gorgeous on better food. Those things are not measurable in $$ but the lack of vet bills and the additional number of years you get with your cat are. Good food paired with regular vet visits and playtime result in the happiest cats.
Other than the research I've found using my fuzzies as guinea pigs, I do have to give credit where credit is due to the various blogs and support groups I've read.
www.thewayofcats.org -- the first cat blog I ever stumbled upon, and it's been a massive help in terms of food and behavior modification. And Toys! And cat stress reduction! And human stress reduction! And really everything else -- I think everyone should be reading this.
www.ibdkitties.net -- one Catster member's website; Alex the cat has a sad story, but the mission she inspired is impressive. Alex's owner has great advice on switching and is an advocate of the raw diet. I haven't discussed it here, as it is something to be learned and mastered. She also has a massive list of grain-free, healthy foods for people to try who can't do raw.
www.catster.com -- the forums on food and nutrition are excellent sources. There are a wide variety of cats with a wide variety of dietary requirements, issues, and cautions. And it's a great group to go for support -- they've seen it all, and they all are cat crazy like you are (if you managed to read the entire post, haha). They were brilliant when I was stressed over having Tenny's eye removed.
