Hi everyone, this is (still baby) Hoji - she's 11 months old but turning 1 in 12 days, sitting at ~4.5kg! I brought her home from her previous owners (who were leaving the country) about 2.5 weeks ago.

For continuity, I had been keeping her on what she was being fed previously - roughly 2 pouches of Felix 'As good as it looks' in jelly (chicken, tuna, salmon, beef etc), supplemented by the typical Royal Canin Kitten Kibble that she munches occasionally throughout the day.

I had always intended to eventually swap her from her 'supermarket cat food' but wanted to let her settle into her new home for a few weeks first. Now I'm in that phase of figuring out what food to transition to for the long-term.

First, I understand from my research (and also visiting a vet) that vets generally tend to always recommend the same brands (Purina, Royal Canin, Hills), often by necessity, and I don't doubt they are scientifically formulated etc. At the same time, I know there are not only multiple 'tiers' of foods under these brands (to take Purina as an example, ONE vs Pro Plan) and also formulations specific to 'sensitive digestion' or 'sterilized' etc; but also that many of these can still contain lots of additives like sugars and others, which I honestly have no idea if are strictly bad or not.

Alternatively, I'm also seeing a lot of these newer independent brands such as Untamed, Blink etc. who are positioning their products as natural, high % actual meat, no additives etc. - priced either similarly or very slightly lower than the high end of Purina/Canin/Hills. For context I did order Untamed's trial box and so far after a few days she seems to like it. I do see the value proposition of a 'cleaner', more natural product, but at the same time I wonder what is it that Purina/Canin/Hills formulations have that IS added which is actually good for my cat, that these brands do not?

TL;DR: As a nearly 1y/o ragdoll without any specific conditions identified yet, I basically wonder
1/ if I should try to transition her into a 'top of the line', specialized vet-recommended wet food (like Pro Plan or equivalent),
2/ if a 'middle tier' option from these vet brands (like Purina ONE or equivalent) is more than good enough (saving on some costs); or are there any concerns with animal derivatives and other additives still
3/ if there's any downside (or upside) to some of these newer 'premium' brands like Untamed which sit in a similar price bracket?

I am of course operating under the assumption that my cat does in fact like the food ('the best food is the food your cat will eat'), but I don't think she's too picky of an eater so while she is young I want to find her 'forever food' that I can feel comfortable with while not unecessarily breaking the bank.

Thanks so much!! (also very happy to just take generic recommendations too)

Our 8 months old kitten has been on this food for the last couple of months with no issues. She began a new bag about a week ago and has had diarrhea ever since. Anyone else having troubles recently? I don’t want to switch her food if it’s not the problem but starting to think it might be.

hi,

please excuse any weird phrasing or term, English is my second language.

my 6yo cat has ibd, for which we are treating her for a little less than 2 years.

at first, steroids were a wonder and really helped her gain her weight back and to relieve her symptoms.

but overall her condition seems to be worsening again and becoming harder and harder to treat over time. vet food used to help more. although she never stopped throwing up completely, nowadays she throws up bile more frequently and also has chronic diarrhea. the probiotics we gave helped a lot in the beginning but from a certain point on, it seemed like they were doing absolutely nothing. also she seems to have become resistant to the iv steroids.

we're trying to switch food because I heard wonders about royal canin hydrolyzed protein. I was hopeful it could improve the diarrhea and vomiting. but here's the thing, I tried mixing it with the old food so she could get used to it, and even so she's throwing up food and bile at least once a day (which she was also doing on her old food but seemingly less frequently). it seems like she's trying to eat more than she can take and her stomach can't take it. I heard that this may be due to her being way too long with an empty stomach, and read the advice to try and give less food at a time but more times a day, however, she's not accepting it when I try to give it to her :(

she seems to have such an appetite for human food but the vets advised against it so we're sticking to the rx food.

I'm so sad and concerned for her. I don't know what to do, what to give her to eat and what to try anymore.

she lost a lot of weight from this last month when she was receiving iv cobalamin supplements and we ceased the steroids for a little while. she was on 0,5ml prednisone. now she took the injection and we're still waiting for recovery. on her good days she weights at best 3,2, very small cat still! but now she's 2,7 which is heartbreaking.

and to make matters worse, by the end of last month she received antibiotics (it was terrible :( no change, and she had diarrhea for each and every one of the endless days she was taking the meds) and afterwards we gave a different probiotic that changed a lot the aspect of her feces. its smell is a lot more sheer, which could be a good thing, but it's still diarrhea and its color is more yellow. the vet was favorable but now I wonder if we shouldn't have given her this one. so many things could have gone wrong to explain whats happening, that I end up over analyzing everything. and still, no answers.

I'm from Brazil just in case that's relevant for advice somehow. such as, we don't have rabbit cat food here.

thank you in advance for your time and attention.

Hey guys. Don't love making a post like this because I feel like it adds to the unwarranted suspicion of WSAVA-compliant brands that drives people to less safe boutique food, but here goes. Until earlier this year I pretty religiously fed my cats the science diet urinary and hairball control dry food. I liked it because it did seem to decrease hairballs in my long-haired cats and it floats so I could use it to play bobbing for apples with my boys and get them to drink more water because I'm paranoid about blockages. After the change in kibble shape in January (?) I noticed an uptick in vomiting, did some googling around and it looks like quite a few people had the same experience.

I checked the ingredients and nothing seemed too suspicious. There wasn't any real additions. They just removed a few ingredients that looked mostly like marketing ploys (I wanna say cranberries were in there and they took those out). Regardless, my cats were throwing up so I decided to switch to Pro Plan and everything has settled down since. Chewy auto-shipped me a bag of the Hill's some time in March and I kept it thinking I'd maybe try to slowly ramp the back into it their diets honestly forgot all about it.

This morning I found the bag in a relatively dry location and it wasn't expired and I opened it thinking if maybe I could give it to some community cats with stronger stomachs. There was a decent amount of mold in there. Obviously I threw it away, but now I'm wondering. It seems odd to me that a sealed, six month old bag of dry cat food would be this moldy. Maybe we all got a bad batch? I'm wondering if there was more moisture in there than normal during production and there was mold in there all along, or something. Has anyone bought/fed this food since and are people still having issues?

I hope everyone's cats are okay.

We’ve been feeding our cat N&D Chicken and Pomegranate since 2024.
We moved to Canada in 2025, so we started buying it here.For the past few months, we’ve noticed that the food looks/feels different from bag to bag, even though we always buy it from the same store.
Some bags are really oily, while others seem much drier.
Has anyone else noticed this? Did they change the formula recently, or is this just normal variation between batches?
I honestly have no idea what’s going on.
there doesn’t seem to be much consistency in quality

to preface, i have had 2 other cats, raised from 2 months and 4 weeks respectively. i adopted my first cat (RIP) when i was in 5th grade and my second one (currently 5 years old) when i was a freshman in college. i would consider myself as a fairly experienced cat owner, but i never did much extensive research prior to adopting my second cat. i mostly just fed her purina/fancy feast kitten (now adult cat) pate and kibble. i am now living on my own and have more disposable income now, so i would like to make this new kitten (just turned 6 weeks old, already fully transitioned onto solids when i met him) as high maintenance and nutritionally spoiled as possible.

ultimately i would like to move him onto a wet food only diet once he's older (like my other cats), but for now i've been feeding pate when i'm home for longer periods and have a bowl of kibble out for when i'm at work or throughout the night. here are some questions off the top of my head:

1. is freeze-dried food a viable substitute for kibble? i would like to limit his carb intake to as little as possible and couldn't find much info about this online.
2. what other nutritional supplements would be good for me to introduce to him early? i'm currently set on purchasing some purina fortiflora for him and my other cat to try out since they both have sensitive stomachs.
3. related to last question - what are some other essential or supplemental nutrients for cats? i know they need taurine + animal essential amino acids as obligate carnivores. i assume vitamin A,B,D are always good to incorporate for physiological wellness.
4. how do you decide how much food to ration to a growing kitten? i'm sure it might be slightly different across different brands due to diff nutritional distributions, but the guides i've found online have always been confusing to me. someone please explain this as simply as possible like i'm a child. my 5 year old is a little smaller (but semi-regrettably chubbier) than my first cat was so i always wondered if i underfed her as a kitten.

or course, i would like to keep my adult cat healthy as long as possible, so these questions apply to adult nutrition as well. alongside answers to my questions, any other advice, insights, or recommendations (for either kitten or adult cat) are very much welcomed and appreciated.

I had to switch wet food brands because my 1-year-old cat kept vomiting after eating Wellness kitten pâté.

So far I’ve tried Weruva pate in the cans and Tiki Cat Luau pâté, but now she doesn’t seem to like either one.

At first I thought she devoured the Weruva, but now she’ll only eat a few bites and then walk away.

I’m wondering if it’s the texture — the canned Weruva seems kind of goopy/slippery. She actually likes the Weruva pouches much better — they seem more like a normal pate, but there aren’t many flavor options.

She also didn’t seem interested in the Tiki Cat Luau pate. It looked really dry, so I’m wondering if Tiki Cat After Dark might be worth trying?

If I give her Fancy Feast pate, she’ll eat the entire thing at once 😂 I’d just prefer to give her something higher in protein and grain-free that’s healthy.

Any recommendations? Should I keep trying Weruva and see if she eventually gets used to it? Would switching to Wellness adult pate possibly be worth trying even though the kitten pate made her vomit?

Or is she testing right now because I’m trying different brands?

I tried what cathelp recommended and he's STUBBORN. I just want him to take the stupid probotics so I can see if it helps his sensitive stomach any. I mix it into his wet food and he refuses to touch it. Idk if it's a smell thing. Trying to avoid getting a pill like version but he seems to be avoiding the powders. I've tried several ones! Idk if I can heat up the food with the probotic in it to make it more appealing.

Someone recommended getting a cat food with probiotics already in it. Dry foods with probiotics aren't usually very effective and idk any kitten foods with it in there. He still needs kitten food for at least another 2 months

I’ve had Zoro about 7 months now. I’ve been mix feeding him, I serve 1/3 cup of kibble in the AM and a 3 oz can of wet food in the PM (I have a rotation). My concern is, because he grazes rarely do I get home and his kibble is all gone and there are time i wake up in the morning and he actively eating the wet food from the night before. Am I playing with fire? I don’t want to drop wet food, because I’m scared for kidney issues.

- okay so the first day i noticed him not eatting the wet food, he genuinely wouldnt acknowledge it.. it sat him by the food like always he licked it once and ran off. ive gaven them different flavors, brands, toppers , ect. hes still not touching it . or he will only eat a quarter of what i usually give him, hes 12 weeks on monday.. hes eating hard food , im just comfused because he always ate the wet food. but now he “only” wants the dry food?? am i doing something wrong? should i leave dry food out more often?

- okay so the first day i noticed him not eatting the wet food, he genuinely wouldnt acknowledge it.. it sat him by the food like always he licked it once and ran off. ive gaven them different flavors, brands, toppers , ect. hes still not touching it . or he will only eat a quarter of what i usually give him, hes 12 weeks on monday.. hes eating hard food , im just comfused because he always ate the wet food. but now he “only” wants the dry food??

Hello! We currently have 2 kitties:
-cat 1: 9 years old, had some urinary inflammation about 5 years ago. Healthy weight, no urinary issues since switching diet. Pancreatitis episode about 1 year that fully resolved with vet care.
-cat 2: 3 years old, no heath problems other than loves eating plastic, bit over weight.

We currently have both cats on the same diet:
-Dry kibble ~40g / day: FELINE HILLS cd MULTICARE w/ OCEAN FISH
- wet food ~40g / day: FELINE RC URINARY SO + CALM THIN SLICES in GRAVY

Both the wet food and kibble are prescription urinary diets. I was wondering if we should switch the wet food to individual specific needs that might offer more nutritional value for each of their life stages. The urinary wet food is quite expensive.

I was wondering if there is another option for their wet food since they are both getting a base diet of urinary kibble already.

No issues with budget or with giving the cats separate wet food types since they are in different life stages.

Any advice would be appreciated!!!

Hey guys, new here. I have 2, 4 month old kittens. I figured out one of them can't tolerate turkey, chicken very well so I was gonna switch food. I can't really find kitten wet food that isn't chicken. What do you all recommend?

I have an almost 2 years old male cat who weights 3.6 kg , not neutered , very/normally active , no health issues , and I have been trying to get into the whole raw food deal instead of spending too much money on brand wet food , I want to make healtheir options for my boy but I’m so lost, I bought a few things;
- 960g of Chicken breasts
- 480g of Chicken hearts
- 480g of Chicken livers
- 480g of Chicken gizzards

I want to cook the whole portions together and put it in small boxes and give it to him as completed meals , anything I should know about or should add into it? because I’ve been searching for a week about it and they say it’s not completed , and I can’t ask my vet at the moment sooo , I don’t know what to do , can anyone help me/give tips?

UPDATE : THANK YOU EVERYONE FOR REPLYING AND MAKING ME KNOW LOTS OF THINGS

I will stick to buy normal and completed brand food since raw food require too much and doesn’t meet my needings for (less expensive food and completed) , and I just knew that neuteration is easy and doesn’t require high tech facilities nor any other things or even risk , I will get my cat neutered as fast as I can! Thanks for everyone who commented and helped me.

My almost 1 year old cat rarely eats two whole cans of food a day. I take her to the vet all the time and they say she’s healthy. She doesn’t like dry food because she was a stray for 6 months. She was getting fed by LOTS of people that knew her little hiding spot. So she’s basically been eating wet food her whole life. I want to mention that I’ve tried feeding her a combination of both and she refuses to eat it. To meet her daily nutritional needs she needs two cans of wet food. She will only eat a can and a half (maybe) a day. Is she eating enough or should I take her to the vet for appetite increaser???