Best kibble for my kitty?

April 21, 2018 4:22 PM

My kitty needs a new dry cat food. Researching what's actually good and what's just marketing is super overwhelming and contradictory and I am lost!

We were finally able to move this lovely lady named Cindy into our apartment from my parent's house back in November. My mother gave me a bag of Good Life dry food she had been feeding her, which we have been using. We have had some issues with her throwing up occasionally but aren't sure if that was due to the food, her age, or some other factor. We're running low on food for the first time (it was a big bag, and she's a tiny cat, so she went through it slowly) and I went to order more of the same on Amazon only to find a ton of reviews saying they've found sharp objects in the kibble. Yikes! To make matters worse, Cindy threw up her food twice today, which is making me nervous.

I've been trying to find a different brand that's reliably safe and healthy but am totally lost. I've heard Purina is bad, grain-free is bad but also maybe misleading because it's carbs that are bad, except some are good, protein is good but fish is bad because metals, and and and...

Can you help us out? Here's the current state of affairs: She's a 14 year old kitty, but generally very healthy; she's very energetic and playful and honestly acts younger than most of the 5-10 year old cats I know. We free feed her because she's very good at self regulating. She also doesn't eat any scraps so weight isn't a concern. She's very small, probably about 9 lbs.

Previous questions/answers on this topic basically all say "feed your cat wet food" and we would love to, because we know it's better for older kitties, but she is Not Having That. My mother is a "kibble is evil and raw organic free range meat is the only way!!" sort so I assure you she tried very hard to switch her over. Cindy wouldn't even touch kibble if it had a dollop of wet food on it. I do have one or two ideas to try myself (e.g. warming it up, because I discovered she prefers warm water to cool water) but am not going to have the time or energy to try and make that switch until summer. We try and get more water in her basically by being her personal water servants and filling her bowl up with warm water four or five times a day which does seem to encourage her to drink more.

But for now I need something to at least last her until summer. We may not stay with it if we can get her on wet food, but if that doesn't work I want something that will be safe and healthy. What should I be looking for in a kibble? Specific brand recommendations would also be superb. My budget is somewhat limited, but on the other hand she doesn't eat much so I might be able to go for something a bit more expensive. For reference, the bag we had was 16 lbs and it lasted us about 5 months, and on Amazon it costs $20. I could probably do up to $250 on cat food per year or so.

Also, I've read that cats can develop food allergies from being fed the same thing for so long. Could this be responsible for the throwing up? Should we switch to a different protein (current protein is chicken)?

posted by brook horse to Pets & Animals (17 answers total)

Also, I've read that cats can develop food allergies from being fed the same thing for so long. Could this be responsible for the throwing up? Should we switch to a different protein (current protein is chicken)?

I'd recommend a vet trip--our cat was doing the same thing and that's how we discovered her kidney disease.

Much like your cat, our cat loathes wet food. Since you've been having vomiting problems, and if you won't take a jaunt to the vet, try switching to a hypoallergenic, novel protein diet and cutting out anything that isn't that your new novel-protein, hypoallergenic food.

(What are novel proteins? A protein to which your cat is unlikely to have been exposed before, and which is the only protein in the kibble. Our cat is currently on a duck-based kibble diet.)
posted by flibbertigibbet at 4:38 PM on April 21, 2018 [1 favorite]

I have four cats, and at least two of them have sensitive stomachs, so they all eat the same “sensitive stomach” food. I used Royal Canin Special 33 for years, but they changed their formula in early 2017 and the new formula made all 4 of my cats barf daily. That was a miserable several months until I figured out it was the food.

I switched to Blue Buffalo for sensitive stomachs and the barfing stopped immediately. They like the food, they tolerate it well (stinkier poos for a while though) and no barfing. It’s not terribly expensive (cheaper than Royal Canin) and you can find it at Target as well as pet-specific chains.
posted by Autumnheart at 4:39 PM on April 21, 2018

Oh, also my cats don’t particularly care for wet food, but they go NUTS for Fancy Feast Broths, which is basically flavored gravy with a few bits of food in it. If anyone has a cat who will lick the gravy off wet food but not eat the food, I suggest giving those a try for adding more liquid in their diet in an appealing fashion.
posted by Autumnheart at 4:42 PM on April 21, 2018 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Car trips are (and always have been) very hard on her, she throws up constantly. She also hasn't been to the vet in a very long time (my mother was anti-vaccine, and we haven't had a chance to figure out the transportation thing to get her up to date) so it would potentially be pretty traumatizing for her. Are there any other warning signs that might indicate it's kidney disease or anything else serious? Like I said, she's very energetic and doesn't seem to show any other signs of distress. I'm willing to take her if need be, but it would be far from a quick jaunt so I'd like to avoid distressing her if it's not super likely.
posted by brook horse at 5:01 PM on April 21, 2018

Best answer: Have you tried locating a home visit vet in your area? Older companion animals traumatized by travel are practically the reason they exist. If a quick online search doesn't yield a name, try calling a local animal hospital or two and ask for a recommendation. IME, many are independent vets who are semi-retired, new grads yet to land at a practice, or otherwise prefer part-time practice. Some drive vans equipped with treatment bay, lab and surgical suite, but others just carry a bag and restrict their practice to in-home exams, blood draws, vaccinations, and medical diagnosis/treatment. You might pay a slight premium for the visit, but it can be more than worth it to save yourself and Cindy the stress of a car trip.

As for feeding wet food, I've had some picky, picky cats who turned up their noses at any brand or flavor of canned cat food we could find -- but eagerly took a bit of beef, turkey or chicken baby food. That even did the trick when they were sick and nothing else would tempt them to eat. For kibble, seconding the recommendations for a high quality novel protein.
posted by peakcomm at 5:38 PM on April 21, 2018 [1 favorite]

If your cat is at all prone to urinary crystals, I would recommend staying away from Blue Buffalo. We switched to it some years back, were fine for a while, then our male cat had crystals several times. Our vet said she'd noticed an uptick in the number of people feeding Blue Buffalo with cats that had the same issue.

Our frequent puker now gets 1/4 tablet Cerenia every few days, which is an anti-nausea medication, because there was no change at all with any food we tried with her, for twelve years. The difference with Cerenia is night and day. Still no idea why she pukes so much, and she's much happier with her food not changing because she does not deal well with change.
posted by telophase at 5:51 PM on April 21, 2018

We feed our cats Young Again Zero kibble along with various low-carb wet foods. The vet researched it for us and couldn't find much info that she considered reliable either pro or con, but it seems pretty good to us. Caveat: one of our cats vomits, but that started long before this food and has continued; we haven't been able to figure out exactly what is going on. The other cat has no known digestive tract issues and does fine with this food, though to be fair he's also done fine with every other food we've given him.
posted by 2 cats in the yard at 5:57 PM on April 21, 2018

Good to know about the crystal trend! 3 of my cats are male so I’ll keep an eye on them.
posted by Autumnheart at 7:45 PM on April 21, 2018

Best answer: My cats have done very well on Acana. It may seem more expensive upon price comparison, but because it has no fillers, they actually end up eating about half as much kibble.(and making half as much litter box mess...) Shedding becomes pretty much non-existent, and they never had dental issues at all or health issues until well into old age.
posted by OnefortheLast at 7:46 PM on April 21, 2018

Best answer: This is a total non-answer to your question, but with respect to your cat preferring warm water: have you considered a heated bowl? Water bowls designed for outdoor use could keep your cat’s water warm, so you don’t have to constantly refill. This one is ugly but has decent reviews.
posted by bluloo at 8:09 PM on April 21, 2018

Best answer: Full disclosure - this is my site, providing cat food reviews for just about every manufactured cat food I can find: CatFoodDB.com. In general, I look at every cat food and evaluate them in an unbiased way - cat foods are rated based on their carb and protein counts (higher protein and lower carb percentages are good!), and on their ingredient lists (as just as in human foods, some ingredients are better that others). A few months ago we published our Best Dry Cat Foods blog post. In general though you want to look for named proteins, avoid generic "meat" ingredients, and cheap carby fillers. The nature of dry food means there will be more carby filters almost by definition, but whole grains are better than corn and other cheap fillers.

Also, since Cindy seems to prefer dry, if you really wanted to get more protein into her you can try some of the dehydrated "raw" foods out there - Stella & Chewy, Primal, etc. You don't have to add the water; some cats prefer them dry. Not all cats will eat the dehydrated food though; mine hate it unfortunately. And since it can pricey, try a small bag first to see if she's into it.
posted by cgg at 9:27 PM on April 21, 2018 [4 favorites]

The vomiting merits a vet consultation, especially given that yours is a (darling!) senior kitty who "hasn't been to the vet in a very long time," in your own words.

I support peakcomm's suggestion of a home visit vet. I've had good experiences with a skittish kitty and a vet who makes house calls, and if you're still in the city mentioned in your profile, a Google search revealed several home visit vets in that community.

Good luck! I know how frustrating it can be to pin down what's up with our critters' health.
posted by virago at 9:36 PM on April 21, 2018 [2 favorites]

Nthing a house-call vet! If you live in or near a fairly large metro area or affluent suburb, they are pretty easily available IME. Cindy is not the only cat who is hard to get to the vet, and house-call vets do a good business with cats and small animals.

My cats go NUTS for this Simply Nourish Grain Free Chicken and Rabbit dry food, available at PetSmart or online from PetSmart's website. I have a cat, Daenerys, who has various auto-immune conditions and eating grain-free (Kitty Paleo or Catkins!) really helps her stay healthy. Mine love this dry food more than anything else.
posted by Rosie M. Banks at 5:50 AM on April 22, 2018

I use Orijen. It is more expensive but my cat eats less of it and LOVES it. Also, I do part wet food. My cat hated about ten different kinds of wet food but turned out to LOVE Merrick grain free limited ingredient canned food. Half can per day with the rest dry food keeps it manageable financially.
posted by the twistinside at 6:10 AM on April 22, 2018 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Look at the ingredients list on your bag of dry cat food. Write down the ingredients on that list. You can stop at the stage where it starts listing the vitamins. There will be some kind of starch filler and hopefully the filler won't be listed as 'corn and/or rice and/or wheat and/or peas. Peas in cat food are a starch filler not a vegetable.

Take that list to the store - start with a grocery store because they are cheaper - and go over the ingredients on the bags of food that they sell there. When you find a brand that has the same type(s) of starch filler do an internet search on how safe the food is. If reviews and such seem to consider it safe, buy the smallest possible bag you can and try it on her to see if she will eat it.

Cindy is a senior and Cindy is sensitive. At this point if she were mine (I wish!) I would be starting from the stand point that keeping her happily eating is my first goal, with preventing kidney disease etc. as a secondary point. You might find that she rejects different dry foods, so your first order of business will be to find anything you are comfortable feeding her. If she gets something that a month later you consider junk food it will not be a disaster, (I'm sure you have eaten potato chips in your life.) but if she goes off her food for a month both you and her will be miserable.

Make sure she has a ton of water available and try to coax her to drink as much as you can. If she is begging for attention or food, give her some water first and see if she will drink it. And make sure there are at least two water dishes, or a water fountain around that are not beside her food dish. She is more likely to drink water that is not near food.

Introduce her to some other foods than canned cat food. Un-processed cooked animal meat and grease will be good for her. So not bacon, not ham, etc. but a scrap of chicken thigh that has no seasoning on it, a scrap of hamburger that hasn't been seasoned etc. By products such as skin are fine. Land animal meat is priority but if that doesn't work try her on fish. She should not be living on fish, as again it will be hard on her kidneys but she might be willing to eat a wee bit of canned tuna in water, and a little fish is not a bad thing.

Other than non-processed cooked meat it would be useful for her to eat pumpkin and tomato. Both of these provide some protection against kidney problems. So the next time you have some tomato juice or tomato sauce (yeah, added salt is okay, but not other vegetables) dribble a tea spoon of it on her dry food and see if she will still eat it. Don't introduce other vegetables. Onions, for example are toxic to cats. However you can try her on boiled egg.

The idea of adding the pure meat scraps and the pumpkin and the tomato are to dilute the stress that the heavy starch diet is providing to her kidneys. The secondary factor is to try to widen her taste in food. You want to do this if she is fussy because she will be in trouble if she only eats a certain cat food and then suddenly the food becomes un-available, or melamine is found in it, or they change the formula. I would advise giving her a bit of whatever meat you are cooking - assuming you are not vegan - as that is much easier than buying her people food specifically. Do not feed her at the table. you can put the cooked tidbit in the fridge and bring it out when it is her feeding time.
posted by Jane the Brown at 6:50 AM on April 22, 2018 [1 favorite]

Are there any other warning signs that might indicate it's kidney disease or anything else serious?

Yeah, so, there's... a massive amount of possible symptoms for renal failure. (Which can take years to actually fail! A lot of those symptoms are of the 'final days' variety. Most early cases of chronic renal failure, like my kitty's, are found due to regular blood tests or due to unexplained vomiting or sudden increase in drinking.)

The most common clinical factors seen are dehydration (67% according to Sparkes' metaanalysis), which itself has many symptoms (lethargy, loss of appetite, dry mouth, panting, sunken eyes), as well as: loss of appetite (separate from dehydration); excessive drinking or urine production (PU/PD); anemia and pale mucosal membranes (e.g. pale gums) as well as lethargy; diarrhea; poor coat; bad breath, etc.
posted by flibbertigibbet at 11:25 AM on April 22, 2018

Response by poster: Thanks all--we went with Acana Appalachian Ranch (novel protein for her). We were worried she might be picky about it but we transitioned it with her old food and now she's eating it totally fine! We haven't had any more vomiting. If it happens again I will immediately call an in-home vet, but we're just going to keep an eye on her and see if perhaps it was the food.
posted by brook horse at 10:18 AM on April 26, 2018