I'm looking for recommendations for a better quality of wet food for my cats.
I'm currently feeding them Friskies, because that's the primary food my late wife chose. I was shocked to discover how poorly it's rated on Cats.com and other sites I've looked at.
Problem is, I've got four cats, and I'm not independently wealthy. I already wince at the cost of my cat food orders. Most of the foods Cats.com recommends cost four to six times more, and I can't stomach (pun intended) that.
The Cats.com "best wet foods" page lists Dave's Turkey Formula as "best budget pick," and I feel fairly safe in assuming that other Dave's products would be about as good. They cost around $0.30/oz, and I can live with that. But Dave's only sells three distinct flavors, and I want to give my cats more variety than that; so I'm looking for other foods that are reasonably high quality and reasonably cheap.
Between Cats.com and Chewy.com I can find the information I need, but checking out the price of each high-rated brand is going to take forever. I'm looking for recommendations to help me shorten the process.
Hello! I'm one of the product testers/reviewers, so I'm happy to give you my opinion on wet foods. First, let me put your mind at ease a little bit. Friskies does have a low score according to our specific metrics, yes, but many cats do well on it and it's definitely one of the most affordable options out there. My cats ate it for years when I was a new cat owner and we never had an issue.
It's great that you want to improve the quality of your cats' diets but keep in mind that you don't necessarily have to make a wholesale switch. Introducing a product made with whole proteins and fewer artificial additives once a day or a couple times a week could be a good place to start, especially while you're finding out what other flavors your cats like.
To that end, I personally like Weruva because they have a ton of different flavors and many variety packs that help reduce the price. I think it's the Cats in the Kitchen line that is most affordable. There's a few recipes from Nulo that come in bigger cans which reduces the price to around $0.30 per ounce, similar to Dave's. Also, I feed one of my cats some of the Purrfect Portions from Sheba. They contain some animal by-products (which aren't necessarily bad) but don't have as many artificial colors and flavors as Friskies does.
We also have a roundup of affordable cat foods here: https://cats.com/best-cheap-cat-food
It's a little outdated but you might find some good suggestions there or in the comments. Hope that helps!
- Kate
In case my reply shows up with a different screen name, this is the original poster. I'll explain at the end.
Thank you for your response, your assurance, and your advice. I think a partial upgrade is a great idea, as my cat food budget is not unlimited.
I have some Weruva, but I don't want to make it a regular part of my cats' diet because, as far as I know, they only sell 3.3 oz cans. I don't want to open six little cans a day when 5.5 oz cans are cheaper as well as more convenient. I've seen some brands that sell 10 oz cans, and I'm open to that too. One 10 oz can would feed all four cats for 1/2 day.
I don't feel that I have to be concerned about what my cats like. Three of them will wolf down anything they can get, including vegetables off my dinner plate if they've been sauted in oil. The fourth eats more slowly but doesn't refuse anything I've given her.
Regarding the screen name: This is the first time I've tried to log in since I created my account and posted my original message, and the cats.com sign-in page was extremely uncooperative. When I loaded it, it auto-filled my password -- but not my email address. When I entered the email address and clicked "log in," it cleared the email address and then refused to log me in because the email address was empty! It did that three or four times before I gave up and logged in with one of my Google accounts instead, which is why this message may have a different screen name or none. The log-in page seems to need some debugging.
Hello, I've got a follow-up question that I hope you can answer.
I'm planning the big shift in diet now. I want to order six different types of wet food, chosen mainly from the ones cats.com has recommended.
However, I realized that all of the recommendations I'm using (the lower-priced ones) are either chicken or turkey. I want to have a greater variety of flavors. Somehow I don't think my cats will appreciate the variety offered by several different brands of chicken!
So, my question: Is it reasonable to assume that other flavors from the same manufacturers and product lines should be about as good as the ones recommended?