BellaOnline Forums Home and Garden Cats What do you feed your cat

I'm currently feeding my cat Iams and she seems to like it but she has some problems digesting. I've been considering changing her food and I'm curious if anyone feeds their cats Taste of the Wild pet food? They have a formula specifically for felines and it is supposed to be perfect for kittens that have problems digesting their foods. Their website also lists the benefits of all the ingredients in it which I think is neat. Any reviews would be great!

I have never heard of it but my cats do very well on Nutro. It really improved their little litter box issues they were having. And no one is getting sick and coughing up hairballs now.

Ours has been eating Science Diet for the last 10 years. Currently she's on the senior fur ball formula.

Our current cat (see my avatar) is only two years old, and we've spent a lot of time experimenting with different foods, trying desperately to find a food that is healthy, appetizing, and helps her drop a pound or two. Evo (from the makers of Innova) is definitely the best cat food we've come across, and it's been her primary food for many months, but even with carefully rationed feedings, she still wasn't losing weight. So we recently tried a small bag of Purina One's indoor formula for weight and hairball control. She started losing weight, and had more energy...

But she was never satisfied, and for the first time EVER overstuffed herself until she was ill... three times in a week. I took that to mean there was some vital nutrient she wasn't getting enough of. And the food obviously wasn't very filling. Also, I was concerned she was dropping weight a little too fast. It didn't seem right that we could see an obvious difference in her shape in just under a week.

However, she loves the Purina, and I'm sure it could help her weight issues, so I've settled on a happy medium for now. She's eating a 50-50 mix of Evo and Purina in her usual, rationed meals. This stage of the experiment is young, but I hope that we've finally found the right food to give her all the nutrients she needs, flavor she likes, and get her weight under control while she's still young. Wish us luck!

Thanks for the suggestions! I think I will have to fiddle around with what she is eating to find out what works best. Myrabeth, it sounds like we have a similar situation. My cat, Matilda, is also two years old and needs to lose about 2 pounds. We feed her rationed meals but she eats it so fast that she will sometimes make herself sick. We have been using Iams Digestive Care to help with that but it still happens about once a week. That is a big reason why I was interested in Taste of the Wild. It is supposed to help with that and also has all the necessary nutrients she needs. I got a sample of it a few days ago and have been mixing it with her evening meals and so far so good!

We always feed our cats "pouch food" - they really need the moisture content in their diet. Cats in the wild eat moist foods, and they are built to handle water as part of the meat intake, not as a separate liquid. So we alternate between Iams and the pure-fish varieties, to try to stay away from preservatives.

We find their coats are *so* much healthier on the wet food than on any dry food we've tried. And fish oils are good for anybody

It really caused us trouble when Iams had that taint problem a few months ago but luckily they are over that!!

Our cat turns her nose up at any canned food. Most cats LOVE canned food. She also doesn't really like fish flavored hard food....very wierd cat! We finally found one she likes and that is Hill's Science Diet from Pets Mart.

I know cats can be VERY picky about what they eat and even a subtle change like another flavor from the same maker can make their tummies upset

I do not seem to have a picky cat.... she likes everything! We do not change her food very often but when we have she hasn't had a problem getting used to it. And with canned food I've noticed that she is happy with almost all the flavors. The last few evenings I've been giving her kibbles of the taste of the wild food instead of mixing it to see if she actually likes it or was just hungry for her food. She eats it right up!

Beastie is VERY picky about canned foods. The flavor, piece size, and overall texture have to be "just so" or she just licks up the gravy and leaves the rest. She's much more easy going with dry foods. Canned food is now an occasional treat for her. The only ones we're certain she likes are pretty weak in nutritional value, and kind of fattening, so we don't want them to be mainstays in her diet.

But sometimes she wants some moisture with her dry food (which she shows by trying to splash water into the food from the neighboring bowl or begging at the cat food cabinet when her food bowl is freshly filled). So we bought a bottle of "spray on" cat vitamins. It's mineral and fish oil based and loaded with nutrients she needs, so it's a very healthy way of adding liquid to dry food. The downside is that she wants more moisture than the recommended 2 sprays per meal allows, so we dilute it with water (distilled, like all the water she drinks --she isn't any more fond of our city's tap water than we are). The mixture is approximately 3 parts water to one part liquid vitamins, well shaken before each use. With the bottle marked "diluted," we can give her meals a few extra squirts safely and she gets damp dry food. Everybody's happy.

By the way, the Purina-Evo mixed food experiment is going very well. She's getting all the higher-energy benefits of the Purina without the super-fast weight loss, and she's not upchucking or completely insatiable. The Evo is very filling, meets her dietary needs wonderfully, and keeps her coat shiny. It balances out the Purina nicely. She seems happy, is more active, and is very slowly trimming down into a normal cat shape. I'm very excited about this. I suppose that's obvious. It's been a long struggle to find the perfect food for Beastie.

I hope this helps. The point of all this rambling is to realize that the perfect food (regarding nutritional value, weight loss, and satisfied cat) may not exist for your specific cat. You might have to get creative. With us, it looks like that's going to be a mixture of two very different dry foods, sometimes topped with generous squirts of watered down vitamins.

I was just rereading this before posting and realized how spoiled that cat sounds...and how much her pet humans cater to her. But she's worth it! Good luck with Matilda!