I will be getting two ragdolls kittens in a few weeks' time. I have been doing LOTS of reading on cat food and have opted to not feed dry food, except a little at the beginning because it seems that they are currently being fed some.
I'd like to find a complete natural wet cat food that has no grains or other unsavoury things in it. I was shocked to see many expensive brands like Royal Canin have "animal products" rather than pure meat as well as grain, yeast (!) and other things which are not great. But they are not alone. Almost all expensive brands in pet stores are like this - fillers, flavour enhancers, poor cuts of meat (probably), etc. If these are in expensive food, what actually goes into cheap cat food?!
High quality cat food that actually has chunks of chicken in it (like organic Applaws) seems to be "complementary" and not complete, meaning they do not offer all the necessary nutrients. This is a shame.
I found this article which was written in the US. Lots of great recommendations here, but NONE of the brands seem to be available in Switzerland (or they are, but I cannot find them).
http://consciouscat.net/2012/03/22/t...-for-your-cat/
Any suggestions? At some point once I get used to being a cat owner, I will probably cook their food from scratch. But at the moment, I'd like to find a good alternative for the adjustment period and when I am away and cooking will be impossible.
Thanks so much.
You can look at this thread:
Cat food advice.
I am preparing their raw food myself, so I can not really recommend any special brand.
One thing you need to do though, is to add TAURIN to their wet food.
For some reason - that I don't get - the wet food in CH, unlike the dry food, has no taurin added.
You can either by it as supplement, or give raw chicken hearts.
Caveat: I don't have cats, nor do I know much about them.
So why am I posting here?
The company that makes my mutt's favorite food (Terra Canis) also makes a premium cat food, Terra Faelis:
http://www.terrafaelis.de/index.php
This is a small company in Bayern, DE that ticks my canine 'must haves': Lebensmittel quality, named meat source and parts (venison muscle and heart, for instance, instead of just the name of the animal), a grain free line, ethical production, etc.
A quick look shows that Taurine is indeed added to the cat food.
Terra Faelis can be bought here in Switzerland at Meiko or Zooplus (both .ch and .de)
I'm quite a fan of the dog food so I'm tossing out the cat food info, in case you might want to look into it. But as per the caveat above, I don't know much about kitties.
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Another premium cat food possibility is Gina and Fritz, a small Swiss manufacturer. Looks like they do not add Taurine, though.
http://www.gina-und-fritz.ch/ch_ch/o...enfutter.html/
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Wishing you and the kittens all the best...
I did the same search you are doing when I first got my cat. It's not easy to find high quality pet food anywhere in fact.
It's great you care so much about your pets and are doing research, I love seeing that. When I do feed canned food I use this the Select Gold brand from Maxi Zoo.
But 95% of the time I prepare my own raw cat food, which really isn't that difficult and you can buy all the meat at Migros/Coop. I share all about my process on recipe on my blog.
If you have any questions I'm here to help.
Yes, Jennaasis. I have seen your blog! Very nice. I definitely want to go more into this direction once I get more settled.
I really want to make sure they eat well. I was shocked to see all the ugliness in most processed cat food. Then I read an article about Royal Canin and other big but top brands and how they are owned by Mars and other enormous companies because there is big money to be made. So yet another thing that is driven by profit rather than quality. Granted, these top brands are better than Meow Mix but still. It is probably not that hard to do.
I found two brands on Zooplus, which other people recommended elsewhere:
Thrive Complete
Catz Finefood
So, I have bought some and hopefully it will be okay.
I will definitely be in touch once my life with my new kitties settles down.
Thanks!
Thanks so much. I like their site. I will definitely explore their food!