worried about the food my cat is eating...?

Question

I have a female adult cat and currently she is eating Meow Mix Hairball Control. I did a lot of research on healthy cat foods and the ingredients in Meow Mix are scaring me. There's a bunch of "chicken by-product, corn gluten meal, food coloring, digest, etc." What is all this?? Wtf is "digest"? and "by-product?" And cats don't eat corn!! I looked up high quality food such as Wellness and Innova, but they are so expensive and I can only buy it online. Wellness is like, $13 just for a 3 lb bag!! Solid Gold is the cheapest I've found so far; it's $7.99 for a 4 lb bag. But my mom won't buy it! She said "it's too expensive," and "you cat is fine". I do NOT want my cat eating this cheap Meow Mix crap!! I'm the only one who actually CARES for Lola! (that's my cat's name, by the way). I've already tried negotiating with my mom, but she just won't come around. What am I supposed to do??!! All I want is for my cat to live a long and healthy life!!

Answer 1

GOOD FOR YOU! You're absolutely correct about the ingredients. The What to feed link below will tell you more about what those items are, how to select a good food, and also includes some suggestions on better foods. Note that the suggestions are only for canned food.

Also included is a link to some other better quality dry foods. In addition to Core, there is one other grainless one out there - Nature's Variety Raw Instincts. (But it's likely to be pricy as well).

However, I don't recommend feeding dry food - canned is better. If you buy it at the grocery store (Friskies, Iams, 9-Lives), you're going to get inferior product.

There's a couple things you can do - offer to pay the difference for the better foods. I don't think it'll amount to all that much.....

Switch to one of the dry foods from the link below, but find the least expensive of them. Even if it's still not of the greatest quality, it'll still be better than MM.

Switch your cat to canned food - even one of the supermarket ones. Canned food is superior to dry, so even if the ingredients aren't much better, your cat will be better off (see Why cats need canned food).

Provide these articles to your mother. Maybe she'll have a change of heart when she realizes the truth.

Answer 2

Get cat food at any health food store. The average price is usually around $8.00 for a 4 to 6 pound bag. I have convinced friends and family to switch and they say the their cats inhale it at first, but later eat much less because they get the nutrition they need in a small amount. Overall it can be cheaper. If you consider the vet bills you won't have to pay it is EXTREMELY cheaper in the long run! Specialty pet stores usually have prices that are way to high. I buy all of my food and my 7 cats food at a health food store. It is cheaper and higher quality then the over priced brands. Most of it is even organic and human grade meat. Feel safe buying the cheapest food at a health food store that sells mostly organic. They never contain animal by-products. Meow Mix is the WORST cat food with a brand name! I have read the ingrediants. My grandmother fed it to her 3 cats a long time ago and they all died even after she spent over $3,000 in vet bills. A little better food would make a major differance, even one that costs an extra $2 or $3 a bag. You can print coupons off the internet to save money.

At the average grocery store the best food is "Purina Natuarals" It does not contain any harmful chemicals used to artificaly flaver it. It does contain corn, but in a small amount. It is better then expensive and by-product full Iams. $1.00 coupons on this are available online and in the Sunday paper every three weeks or so. The best would be some at a health food store but you can definatly aford a few extra cents for something 10 times better.

Answer 3

Try Nutro Natural Choice, it is a good compromise and my cats have done well on it. The thing is the cat will be a lot healthier, WAY less likely to have a urinary tract infection, have a better softer coat, will eat less and have less smelly poop (the last two are better convincers). Solid gold is good stuff, but your cat will do well on Nutro as well.

The thing too is that so often the ingredients in things like Friskies are awful!! It's essentially like junk food, you can live on it, but it may or may not make you ill. The only requirements that pet foods seem to have is that they have x amount of protein and X amount of certain vitamins and vegetables. Cats do NOT digest grains or corn or rice well at all, and many supermarket pet foods have their proteins as vegetable proteins which are hardly digestable at all. Ick!

My other suggestion would be to figure out how you can make enough money to make up the difference in the cost. I imagine your mom wouldn't say no if you were obviously willing to work to make some money (chores maybe if you aren't old enough for another job) to pay the difference.

By the way, ROCK ON! I am so impressed you have read the ingredients and are thinking about what you feed your pet!! Digest is chemically digested meat that makes the cat food taste better. So nice....

NOTE: ALL cat food contains taurine, ALL of it. That is an essential ingredient. Cheap stuff is cheap stuff and cheap for a reason. That whiskas has grain as the first ingredient. That is NOT easy on the cat's gut.

Answer 4

There are lower cost cat foods that you can find at pet supply stores. The stuff offered at grocery stores isn't all that good.

Check if you have Purina One, their new one is actually pretty good with high protien. Also Chicken Soup for the Cat Lovers Soul is a bag of dry for $9 that will last one cat a whole month. Royal Canin Siamese 38 is excellent, costs $11 but will last the entire month also.

Fromm's "Go" is good, the silver Wysong bag called Vitality (none of their other choices are worth buying, they're too low in protien) is $8, and I think NutroCat has a dry bagged food that's around $8 too.

We feed 5 cats here and have them on Wysong, Royal Canin Siamese and Evo. Evo is expensive, but we've got a diabetic cat that needs it. Wellness is expensive too, but there are a number of others that aren't. Solid Gold is ok, but not the best.

Look for food with at LEAST 33% protien, and which have 3 of the first 4 ingredients be a meat source (but NOT a by-product). If there's grain in the first four it should not be a corn product.

By-products are pieces of animals that are not feathers or hair, and are not muscle meat. This means ground chicken legs and heads, ground bone, hide/skin, some organs allowed by law and who knows what else. Not good. You need muscle meat for good nutrition.

Your mom should be ok with a monthly budget of $10 for the cat I would think. Ask her what she budgets for the cat and see if it's in the right range. You can supplement her dry food with baked chicken occasionally (no coating, no spices).

Answer 5

Good question. The Food and Drug Admin (FDA) has very strict guidelines with regards to animal food, stricter than that of human food. Through considerable research, cats and dogs are to receive vitamins minerals, fat, protein and grain in their diets.

The bottom line is that any cat food would fit that requirement. I feed one cat Triumph canned food and the other cat Friskies; the 3 oz (85g) can of Triumph costs 68 cents vs the 13 oz (368g) can of Friskies at 68 cents.

With regards to dry food - try to buy a food that had grain (rice, rice meal, wheat) as the fourth or fifth ingredient. Most dry food manufacturers add grain and claim that it's "easy to digest". That's not true because grain allows the feed manufacturer to cut costs and offer the product more cheaply. Grain isn't usually part of a carnivore's (cats) diet.

By products generally are things like ground up bones- when, when not cooked are softer, and other things that humans don't eat, such as organ meats - hearts, spleens, liver, kidney's, etc.

Friskies also has a 25 ounce can of food - well balanced - selling for $1.15 / can.

Answer 6

Whaddaya mean "cats don't eat corn" -- our cat LOVES corn - loose or on the cob!

I'm sure the Meow Mix folks would argue with you, but if you want to feed your cat something that has ingredients more to your liking, maybe you could offer to do some additional work around the house to generate some equivalent $$ and pay for the higher cost food.

Answer 7

Is there a way for you to pay for the cat's food yourself? If you're too young for a job, what about earning an allowance?

The high quality food should be available somewhere near you -- a lot of pet stores carry these brands now.

Keep in mind that because there's less by-product and more nutrition, often pets eat less of the high-quality food than they would eat of the cheaper brands.

Answer 8

Our cat Snowy ate Whisker dry food! Similar ingredients and she lived until 13-14yrs. She was a stray.

I much rather feed a cheap feed without Garlic, then feed a natural product that contains garlic! Which is Toxic to cats&dogs!
Brocolli is safe.
http://www.petalia.com.au/templates/storytemplate_process.cfm?story_no=257


http://www.whiskas.com.au/WhiskasAU/en-AU/food/vita-bites/vita-bites_furball/default.htm

Ingredients in Whisker Furball;Wholegrain cereals, meat&meat by-products(Poultry, beef&or sheep);vegetable protein, sugar beet pulp, animal tallow&or vegetable oil, salt, all essential vitamins and minerals, fish meat, food colouring flavours, amino acids(including taurine) antioxidants and sodium tripolyphosphate.

Taurine is essential for cats! Not all dry food contain this, and not all wet food contains this either.

Cats do need dry food as not all canned food contain Taurine.

Frisky is a expection to that.Frisky canned food I believe contain Taurine. Without this cats can go blind.

Digest=would mean digestable protein

Cats essential vitamin

http://www.catsofaustralia.com/cat-nutrition.htm

http://www.petcaretips.net/cat_taurine.html


Our cat Snowy loved Corn on the cob! Didn't do her any harm.

Answer 9

i hear you. good quality cat food is expensive. i fed mine iams for years and its expensive and i was really mad when it was on the recall list. you can try not to buy the ones with those ingredients but you'd have to get the ones at the pet store instead of the ones at the grocery store. are you old enough to work a small job to earn the money to help your mom pay for the cat food? she might agree to the higher priced ones if you show her that you are serious enough to help her out with the cost....

Answer 10

One thing to know about the higher quality foods is that you feed less than the cheaper foods. I switched to California Natural for my dogs and cat and my food costs remained about the same because they needed to eat less of it. And the poop got smaller too, as side benefit, lol.