Hi yall! So my kitten is currently around 5 months old and he is LOVED. My partner and I were wondering what is the most healthy diet to put him on. Currently he’s on the Sheba kitten food snap meals with Simply nourish kitten dry food. We are wanting to keep grains in his diet as recommended by the vet. However I want to know what is the best dry and wet food on the market for him growing up. Around Christmas time is when we expect to start transitioning his food to youth cat diet. Are there any food toppers, vitamins, or specialty things we can put him on? We are dual income no kids with no plans to have any.

I've been going down a bit of a rabbit hole trying to figure out what I should be feeding my cats long-term, and I'd love to hear other people's opinions/experiences. I am specifically referring to kibble in this thread.

For years I've generally leaned toward grain-free foods because cats are obligate carnivores, and I've been feeding them Tiki Cat. However, I've recently been questioning whether avoiding grains like corn, wheat, rice, etc. actually provides a meaningful health benefit.

What has me conflicted is that some highly reputable, veterinarian-recommended foods like Hill's Science Diet contain ingredients such as corn, wheat, rice, and other grains. If grains are inherently inappropriate for cats, I'm trying to understand why foods with so much veterinary and nutritional research behind them routinely include those ingredients.

At the same time, many premium foods heavily advertise being grain-free, which is what I've historically gravitated toward. From what I've been reading, though, cats apparently can digest properly processed grains reasonably well, so I'm starting to wonder whether I've been putting too much importance on "grain-free" when evaluating a food.

The other thing I'm looking at now is phosphorus. I lost a cat to kidney disease, so kidney health is something I'm particularly concerned about with my other cats. I understand that phosphorus is an essential nutrient and that healthy cats don't need prescription renal diets, but I've been reading research suggesting that excessively high dietary phosphorus, particularly highly bioavailable inorganic phosphate sources and poorly balanced calcium to phosphorus ratios, may be undesirable for long-term kidney health.

So I'm trying to find a normal adult maintenance food that has:

• Good animal-based protein

• Reasonable/moderate phosphorus

• A sensible calcium-to-phosphorus ratio

• Ideally no unnecessary added inorganic phosphate salts

• Good manufacturer quality control/nutritional formulation

• And preferably grain-free, if being grain-free actually provides a meaningful benefit

One food I've been looking at is Nulo Indoor Duck & Cod. It's grain-free, around 40% protein with most of the protein coming from animal sources, and its published phosphorus/calcium numbers look considerably more appealing to me than some of the other premium dry foods I've looked at like Tiki Cat.

I've also been looking at foods like Hill's Science Diet, which obviously approaches formulation very differently and includes grains despite its reputation and the amount of nutritional research behind the brand.

So I'm curious:

Do you specifically avoid grains in your cats' food? If so, why? Or do you think the grain-free thing is mostly marketing as long as the overall formulation is good?

And for anyone who pays attention to kidney health/nutrition, how much attention do you pay to phosphorus levels in food for otherwise healthy adult cats?

I'm not looking for a prescription renal diet or trying to severely restrict phosphorus in healthy cats. I'm basically trying to find the best balance between good nutrition now and reducing avoidable risk factors as they get older.

I'd especially love to hear from anyone with a veterinary/nutrition background, but I'm interested in everyone's experiences.

Literally the food isn't fair. Everyone has different needs and I'm trying to simplify it with this next haul.

Orange = kittens

Blue = Bandit

Red = Lucifer

That's just what's in the drawers. I'm taking inventory of what I have because we are moving Thursday and I need to know how much food to order in. I haven't counted the desk food yet. I had to toss 6 cans today when I was going thru them due to missing broken seals from shipping. Luckily nothing found those cans before I did. I tried explaining how many cans I go thru a day. She uses only dry and doesn't understand calories. She just fills up a huge pan of food and her cats devour it several times a day.

I'm trying to stay ahead of running out. Bandit hates that fancy feast can his blue is marked thru.

This is all some big math equation that gets harder every day. It gets overwhelming.

I wish everything was easier but it's not. It's hard as hell. I gotta get stickers to put on these cans as well so I never grab the wrong one.

Before anyone says that's not alot of food that's just the drawers. I keep at least a weeks stash on the desk I think there's more than that this time on the desk.

I gotta order in a couple supplements and toppers(only if I got enough after the food order. Supplements are a must but they are just a probiotic and colostrum nothing crazy). I'm just overwhelmed lately. Didn't help that so many thing went wrong with the recent haul. I got so many dented cans, the turkey sucks but gotta use it or toss it can't toss it yet due to the other chicken kitten not being in, and the carb counts I did using the food wasn't accurate. I'm double checking everything from now on with the "feed cats like cats" and the "feline diabetes group" food lists for Lucifer that way I get accurate carb counts.

I have recently adopted a cat and in the shelter she ate only dry food but i plan to feed her wet. She eats 3 times a day. How should i ween her off dry food without upsetting her stomach ?

I’ve a cat named Rani. She’s 1 year old and I had been giving her wet food from 2 different brands and dry food that’s from a brand named Purpet until she was diagnosed with renal calculi. So my vet asked me to stop Purpet and give her Royal Canine’s Urinary S/O food. Thankfully she got better but I’m always confused on what’s best for her.

I’ve been reading and seeing Ina lot of places that home cooked food with supplements works good for cats but some say that it’s not enough for them that way and that they need packaged food fo better supplements.

Now my question is that I’m giving my cat plain boiled chicken breast (she loves it) and royal canine’s urinary S/O dry food as recommended by the vet. Is this much okay for my cat. Or should I be doing something differently?

I got two of these as samples from my Purina rewards, and I gave one to my sister for her cat. I just gave Storm this and he is killing it! Lol. I may have to buy more of these Fancy feast gems mousse wet food if he gonna eat it like this! 🤣🤣🤣

I have a lovely female Russian Blue who is 9 months old, 10 pounds. Which apparently is above average.

According to Chewy, a cat that age/weight should be eating about 540 calories a day.

I calculate she eats half that on average.

She loves the 1/3 cup dry food we give to her as a "fourth meal" before bed, scarfs it down. It's about 170 calories.

However, she's been very picky about her wet food, eventually settling on Nulo Salmon and Trout which she gets 3x day, however eats between half and 3/4th a can a day, 90-135 cals.

Clearly this isn't enough. But she's very active (we play 3-4x day for up to 1.5 hrs total), can't see any ribs, generally happy kitty.

TLDR: Is our kitten eating less calories than she "should" a cause for concern? We are trying to do a hybrid dry/wet diet, and she does like her wet food, she's just a lot more finnicky about eating it -- perhaps we should tip the balance more in the favor of dry food?

She’s been eating hard food and I gave her wet food a couple days ago which gave her diarrhea for 3 days and she’s seems to have lost weight and energy. After that I gave her 50/50 pedialyte and water and she started gaining her energy back but her poop is still watery and she doesn’t seem to have gained her weight back.

Any suggestions?

Edit: I’ll be going to the vet tmr

this is red, he tested positive on protozoa in his stool which caused him to have watery stools. the vet gave him medicine and royal canin recovery food, he said to not give anything else. he has been eating his recovery food and medicine for the past 2 days and his stool has improved a lot. This morning he took a few bites of his food and left. gave him the same thing for lunch and he only ate the chicken breast i added on top, he also keeps trying to steal his partners food 🥲 any tips on how to get him to eat his food until friday? i contacted the vet and asked if i could mix it some of his regular food but they haven't replied to me yet.

Won't eat wet food

Long post warning

So I have a question. First let me lay out that he's 15 months old and approximately 10-12 pounds. So I always look on the back of Storm's dry food to see how many grams to give him. For his approximate weight, I can give him between 66-85 grams of dry food a day, splitting it into meals of course. I've decided to up his intake of dry food to 70 grams of dry food per day, along with 1 3 oz can of wet food ( This will mean he has a good calorie intake for his weight ). 66 grams would be underfeeding him because he eats so much, I can just tell that's not enough for him. Im still doing the wet/dry food mixture every meal because that's how he will eat his food. I'm also still feeding him 4-5 meals a day because that's how he likes it, and as long as he's getting his calories in, im okay with it too. But my question is how did y'all come to the conclusion that you needed to up YOUR cat's food intake? Was it that you seen your cat's body weight? Was it just eyeing it and going with your cat's flow of how he eats? I'm just curious because I just seen how he was eating and I realized also that the amount I was giving him was just not enough for him now. He needs more food, and I didn't realize it until literally yesterday lol. He's not that small and he's growing so fast, so I need to be on top of this more for sure!

P.S. This is how big Storm is right now in the picture in case y'all was curious too!

FYI for all IAMS buyers:

Just got off of the phone with a customer service rep from Mars…who makes IAMS cat food. Ever since opening this last bag of kibble, our cat runs around the house throwing up after eating it. We have used IAMS for 3 years…until now!

The rep said, in June they changed the recipe to almost all of their foods and there have been multiple complaints of cats getting sick or worse. We buy the orange chicken bag. The Guy Admitted It!!! IAMS has left us with a sick cat and only a resolution of a refund in 4 weeks.

Nothing on the bag says new recipe either. I will no longer buy IAMS ever!

Please give advice on what other brands to buy as we need to switch out brands.

this is louie. today i discovered he has an allergy to fish and chicken. what do I feed him?

We first noticed this a few years ago, during COVID, when the Friskies Ocean Whitefish & Tuna Paté was in cans with a different lid from the other flavors in a variety pack (cans have a circle in the middle of the lid, rather than a pill shape). It had a very different consistency - lower moisture, more of a paste in texture. Eventually, we stopped seeing those cans in the variety packs we were buying, so we figured they were something that got pressed into service during pandemic weirdness.

Not so fast, it turns out. One of our pickier eaters suddenly decided that he likes the Ocean Whitefish paté, but Friskies appears to have changed something in the formula for Poultry Platter (one of his other favorites), and now he sniffs at that, but won't eat it. So, we figured we'd get a case of the Ocean Whitefish, only to find ourselves with 24 cans of the weird stuff from the weird cans.

How can these two cans of food have the same label on them? Can on the left is the low-moisture weird stuff, can on the right comes from a Seafood & Chicken Favorites 40-can variety pack.

Edit for context: through an unfortunate set of circumstances involving a neighbor (an old lady who loves kittens but doesn't take her cats to the vet or get them fixed), we have a lot of cats indoors - it was as many as eight a few years ago, but is now six - and care for others that remain outdoors. We started out with three shelter cats, but we're down to one now (we lost one to old age at almost 19, and another at 11 to cancer). The rest are a combination of kittens connected to our neighbor (either born in her house, or brought to us by one of her cats, because she doesn't feed them enough) just prior to and during Covid, and neighborhood strays. After one of her cats brought his second litter to us, we trapped and paid to TNR him and his male offspring, and continue to care for them.

Our most recent arrival is an older cat that we TNR'ed a few years ago and provided shelter to for a while - he was never friendly, and when he disappeared for several months, we thought we'd seen the last of him. Then he suddenly reappeared during the summer of 2025, and surprisingly became friendly after a bit of coaxing. We took him in a little over a year ago and discovered that he's FIV+, but he's doing well and gets along with most of the other indoor cats (we have to do a bit of a dance with him and our youngest male).

We have been assured by our vet that Friskies is perfectly fine - yes, we know that there are "better" options out there, but we spend a fortune on our cats as it is, and we've made peace with the notion that we've been able to provide a better life for more animals with the way we spend our not-unlimited funds.

My 5 year old orange tabby cat had a urinary blockage at age 1. He's been on Iams ProActive urinary health dry cat food ever since.

He recently had 4 teeth pulled, and the vet recommended dental treats.

I need either:

1. Dental treats ok for cats with urinary issues.

2. Dental food that is ok for cats with urinary issues.

I would prefer non-prescription due to cost, but will do what's needed to keep him healthy.

I'd also prefer to switch to a dental diet. I'm already doing a lot of care-giving, and treated are one more thing to remember.

Thanks for your help!

What’s with all the cat food brands having heavy amounts of lead and whatnot in the food???!! Now I’m worried for my babe, she’s picky already, but now I’m wondering if she’s picky bc she can taste the nasty shit in her foods 🤮 lately she’s been only having an interest for her greenies treats so I give her a big handful to eat when she doesn’t eat her kibble or tuna. Do yall think greenies is a safe food or is it on the bad foods list? Can she eat greenies as a main food? I know the back of the box says it’s a balanced meal sooo 🤷‍♀️ what are some Safe foods yall are giving ur cats?

My cat recently had her second dental where she had almost all of her teeth removed. She pretty much refuses to eat wet food, unfortunately and the bigger kibble is a problem. She loves her kitten food. It’s small, easy to swallow. But long-term this isn’t a solution because dietary wise it’s not the best for her as a 9 year old cat with lung and heart disease.

She loves Royal canin and I’d prefer to stay there. Any recommendations for ones that have kibble the size of kitten food and for adults( for the dentally impaired)?

Can anyone help me identify this food? It came from a food pantry but it almost smells looks like dog food?? Thank you in advance

Hi all- i am trialing a new flavor of food for my newly diagnosed as allergic to fish cat. This is Weruva beef/chicken pate. When i opened it, i noticed it had some white flecks on top - they are gritty and almost sand like. I’m worried they’re bone fragments or something else. Not sure to feed them to my gang or not, the internet has provided mixed messages. It’s been so hard to find something that she’s willing to eat so this is very frustrating 🥲

Cat tax pic of course

Hello! I have auto feeders for my cats because it seems to help with food fights.
My pets are also all overweight. They know how to beg the right people…
I’m trying to get their calories under control. But I can’t see how many times the feed button has been pressed. Am I missing that somewhere? I know how many times I’ve scheduled it and what I’ve done outside that, but tracking what other people do is a lot more difficult.

*WOULD LAST

I don't like the sheba(too low calorie and seems poor quality) but it was the only variety pack I found the boys can share since it's low carb. Aiming for a month

Hi all, I came onto this thread to ask for advice on what to get for my cat. Shes 6 years old with a sensitive tummy and an allergen to chicken so it’s really hard to find food that she likes because she loved chicken based cat food 🥲 I’ve had her on a salmon limited ingredient diet but i’ve noticed that she doesn’t care for her kibble or wet food anymore but prefers the freeze dried pieces that come with her kibble. I’ve been considering just buying her freeze dried meat but i’m not sure if that’d be good for her long term even after rehydrating the pieces and i don’t want to derive her of important nutrients but when she does not like her food she will not eat it. I’m also curious as to what other meats would be a good option for her because she hated rabbit, pork, and it seems like she’s getting sick of salmon (i also worry about too much mercury exposure from a fish only diet). She is my world and i want to ensure that she has the best quality of life and i also don’t want to stress about wether or not she’s eating enough. Any guidance or food recommendations would be perfect.
Apologies for how jumbled my post is.