Maureen K. Fleury’s article, “Choosing Cat Food” is a great place to start in order to learn about the different types of cat food available. This article and "Review of Popular Cat Foods" will review the different name brands of dry food along with my personal preferences and recommendations. This article, will review the low to mid-priced cat food brands, and the above mentioned article will review the higher priced brands.
One thing I always say when I recommend foods to my clients is that you should get the best brand of food for your kitty that you can afford. If you can afford to feed your cat Royal Canin, then most certainly do! If you can afford a little better food but not the most expensive, then check out Nutro or Purina Pro Plan. If you’re doing rescue and trying to feed dozens of needy kittens and are doing well to afford store brand foods, then just keep up the great job and help every cat you can!
Purina Pro Plan, Purina One, and other Purina products
For those of you who remember Purina as “Cat Chow” and “Dog Chow” only, you might just want to check out the Purina of today! They are producing an excellent line of foods, and I personally feed these foods to my breeding cats, with Purina Pro Plan being my favorite. Pro Plan is an Iams comparable food. Real chicken is the first ingredient, and it contains DHA for brain and vision development. My kittens thrive on it! Purina One, however, is a little more easily found without going to the pet store.
Another of my favorite Purina products is Purina Complete for households that have different ages of cats, and I’ve also been really happy with their Vitality formula. Purina is also now producing a natural line. The Natural line, however, though it does contain salmon, it is lower on the list, and the first ingredients are still chicken meal and corn gluten meal rather than real chicken or fish. Purina products are a little more budget-conscious than the following name brands and all-in-all, a great value.
Cat Chow and Kitten Chow run as little as $6.49 for an 18 lb bag, with Purina One running around $8.99 for a 3.5 lb bag, and Pro Plan being $16.99 for an 8 lb container.
Authority
Authority is PetSmart’s version of Nutro and is an excellent mid-priced food. They’ve got a wide selection and are a good quality, nutritional food with real chicken as the first ingredient. However, its Nutro counterpart must taste a little bit better, as I’ve had some difficulties getting my cats to like it. The ones that did like it did very well on it and had beautiful, shiny coats!
Authority tries to run a few dollars less than Nutro, Authority’s 20 lb bag being $18.99 compared to Nutro’s $26.99.
Eukanuba and Iams
Eukanuba and Iams foods are made by the same company, with Eukanuba being the better of these two foods; however, both lines are good, quality foods and have a long history of providing excellent nutrition and consistent satisfaction. Eukanuba’s top 10 ingredients on its kitten food are impressive, but it has a lower protein amount than Purina’s Pro Plan. Cats need lots of protein! The first ingredient is chicken, and the fat source is chicken liver. These lines are just a couple dollars more than Pro Plan or Purina One, and Eukanuba will probably have to be bought at the pet store, where Iams is normally easily found. Eukanuba is the higher priced of these two lines and should really be categorized into higher end brands.
Eukanuba is about $28.49 per 12.8 lb bag, and Iams will run about $21.59 for a 20 lb bag.
If you have any questions or comments, please drop by the discussion area!
You might also find Ash Content in Cat Food very interesting!
