Whats the best senior cat food out there thats also affordable?
Something that occurred to me today is that (here at least) a lot of the fancier cat foods, Hills included, have a money back guarantee in case your cat doesn’t like the food for whatever reason. We’ve used it on prescription cat food in the past, including returning half eaten tins and partially used bags when the cat didn’t like it or it disagreed with him, and they really did hold good on their money back promise. Cats can be fickle so changing to new cat food is a bit of a risk anyway, and more so when buying something reasonably expensive, so this is a good thing to look out for or ask about when switching foods. I do agree that having the cats on separate foods is probably the best option and I run two containers of food myself (although I have a senior and a kitten so it’s more clear cut). Generally I feed them separately then don’t stress too much if there’s a bit of swapping going on (they sneak from each other maybe once or twice a week), as long as they get the right thing m
in general, when reading a food’s ingredient list, you want the first thing to be chicken, or fish, or whatever ‘flavor’ the food is advertised as. NOT meal or by-product. Specifically identified meat meals (“herring meal”, “chicken meal”, etc.) are actually the best possible ingredient to see in a dry food. I think in your above statement you’re mixing up generic meals (“fish meal”, “poultry meal”, “meat meal”), which are lower in quality and handling standards (and therefore less desirable to see high on an ingredients list, if at all), with identified meals. Ingredients are listed by weight, whole meats (“chicken meat”) include the water, whereas identified meat meals are dry weight, so you get more nutritional bang for your buck with an identified meal than with a whole meat. I would much rather see an identified meat meal as the first ingredient than anything else (since “chicken meal” is all chicken, whereas “whole chicken” is chicken plus a whole lot of water, so pound for pound
Also take a look at wellness. These guys take their cat food seriously, and have stuff that beats out Hill’s Science Diet and Iam’s (Iam’s was recently reorganized by Proctor and gamble, who is trying to capitalize off their quality name, without using much quality). Wellness has more general stuff than old age, such as urinary care, etc. I have found it works well with many cats, and the store near me has trouble keep their stuff in stock.
Every animal health professional I’ve talked to anywhere (here in New Zealand) has recommended the Hills Science Diet senior food. I buy it for my 13 year old cat and she loves it. It seems expensive when you go buy a big bag but the amount a senior cat needs is very small and it ends up being very reasonable. Plus the pet shop is always having sales or rebates on Hills, and we belong to a cat food club that rewards regular purchases of the same sized bags. My cat is a total pig and even she’s happy with her 3/8ths of a cup helping 2x per day (it’s important to measure it this is good quality food, you don’t want your older cat turning into a fatty). No problems with flatulence or smelly litter box and she passed her most recent senior blood tests with flying colours. One thing to keep in mind, senior cat food is usually lighter in calories as senior cats are generally less active. So if you’re giving it to a younger cat you may need to give them more. It will probably end up cheaper t
