Cat nutrition - again

Later last night, yet another cat turned up … seemingly keen to try this wonderful cat food restaurant he or she has been told about – or so we think. We haven’t gotten close enough to tell whether it’s male or female, but we named it Snowball – for obvious reasons.

 

Although this photo is awfully blurred, it is the only
one which shows the colour of the eyes

Also a bit blurred, I'm afraid

Here you can see why we named this one Snowball - not very original, but it does fit!

This morning I let the cats out early and let them run to their heart’s content, while I did some more research about cat nutrition.

The food I’m currently serving my felines seems to be causing the occasional runs – I think it’s Lady Jane, and I also found the odd bird feather in the … odd dollops I’ve been picking up all over the flat! There are drops and dollops on the bed, in the passage, the bedroom, the worst is in the lounge but I also found a droplet on my kitchen counter!

Since a few bird feathers were mixed in with this … distribution … I suspect it was the mouse-bird Lady Jane ate. Rose told me how one of her cats used to eat those birds, too, and would always throw them up soon after. So the food was probably not the problem – this time.

So, then why am I re-visiting this subject? Quite a few reasons, actually. Firstly, I have the time now to research more thoroughly. I have all the time I need. And then, I sort of settled on Purina One as the best of the supermarket-range cat kibbles – but then, two months ago I couldn’t get the adult anymore (remember how the staff told me smugly about ‘supplier problem’?) Well, when I went back last month, not only was the adult gone, but there was absolutely no Purina One on their shelves whatsoever! Since I was desperate, I took the Whiskas, which was on sale – the other brands on their shelves rated even lower on my last analysis. I haven’t found any Purina in any of the regular stores I shop at.

Thirdly, I’m not all that happy with Ziva’s weight, and I don’t think she is either. When she was underweight, she would sit and sleep on my lap, liked to be picked up – but now she doesn’t like her paws off the ground and she will not get on my lap at all! I sometimes pick her up and settle her there – because I can’t crawl after her on the floor all the time – and she’ll stay for a minute, maybe two, but never longer. So I’d like to get her something with higher nutrition and less filler.

Fourthly, Mewthos is growing so fast and so big, the poor boy is always hungry! He comes mewling for wet food every day – so I think, he, too needs something with higher nutrition levels. I want to look at wet foods as well.

And lastly, Lady Jane doesn’t seem to like the wet food I’m offering her. Quite often, like her mother, she’ll give it a sniff and then mips at me as if to say “Haven’t you got something more palatable?” She’s the skinniest of my felines. She eats well without ever overeating. She’s also the most active of the lot – running around, climbing up any- and everything, exploring new territory.

So, it’s back to the drawing board for cat food.

Again, when I search cat nutrition the leading trend is fresh meat. There’s a lot of babble about going back to their ancestral diet. I say ‘babble’ because whatever cats ate thousands of years ago is now extinct. And I can’t find any research specifically detailing the ancestral life-style or eating habits of what are now domestic cats, so in my personal opinion all talk of their ancestral diet is mostly speculation – at best an educated guess.

Plus, of course, remember when Ziva first moved into my home? She is a first-rate huntress! She lived off birds, as far as I know. I don’t know what else she lived off, since the only evidence we ever found were the feathers. If she caught mice or gecko’s or anything else, we wouldn’t know. And she was HUNGRY when she first showed up! That rainy Saturday when she wolfed down three bowls of food! That tells me that she didn’t do all that well on an all-natural diet of wildlife! Quantity was no issue – there are flocks of pigeons and other birds here and she is an excellent huntress! Remember when she caught, brought and ate four pigeons – one after the other – in a matter of about an hour? So living off a meat-only wild diet left her hungry.

Which is why all these currently fashionable ‘pure meat’ diets must include essential nutrients – which dry foods contain, albeit to varying degrees. Hence the research. And let’s not forget the hordes of feral cat colonies – who depend on human volunteers to supplement their diet! If it wasn’t for TNR (trap-neuter-release) NPO’s (non-profit organisations) like CatCare …

Anyway, I cannot make such meals myself, and they are not available in Port Elizabeth – at least, not for cats.

And then there’s my experience with Mynx. When I first got him, he, too, was still a kitten, though weaned – so I think he was about 3 maybe 4 months old. That’s based on my current knowledge and memory – going back twenty-odd years. At first I tried kibble plus cans, but he didn’t do well on that diet. Then, when I took him to be neutered, the vet suggested Iams – and he ate Iams Chicken exclusively for the rest of his life! Whenever I tried ‘treats’ it upset his tummy, so I gave that up eventually. Of course, when I got him, it was before the internet – and my only source of information was the vet. And one didn’t put quite as much thought into one’s pets’ diets or other needs in those days. These days, I think we may be going overboard – myself included!

I spent a lot of time collecting Ingredient data of locally available dry foods. I found it all very confusing and overall, not particularly helpful – to me, at least. Here’s what I found:

 

The 'Vitamins' column is a summary per kg. The zero one's I couldn't find a specific listing

So, at the end of the day I put up a list on Facebook asking for recommendations. Few people responded, though. Most recommended Purina One, though the CatCare Lady mentioned this might be due to the ‘yummy tasting additives’ (her words) – and I’m thinking she’s hit the nail on the head there. That would explain Ziva’s expansion. J She recommends Royal Canin. I had been considering this new Acana and/or Orijen, since they market it as ‘grain-free’; and although she listed those as good brands, she also mentioned that ‘grain-free’ might still be full of carbs, which cats don’t need. So why not go back to Iams? Like she says, it may be good, but cats don’t seem to like it much anymore – I had bought Iams a while back, and I have to agree with her.

Two more points I need to consider in my selection: Price and availability. Availability as in: will I be able to get it in East London, should I be moving there next? East London is much smaller than Port Elizabeth and has far fewer stores – to give you an idea, they have only one Mall, whereas PE has at least three that I know of.

Price-wise, Iams is just a tad cheaper than Royal Canin when going by cost per kg. However, if I look at daily requirement, Royal Canin’s is lower by enough to work out quite a bit cheaper than Iams.

For Pro Pac, Hill’s, Orijen and Acana (listed by lowest price per kg here) I could not find daily recommended quantities online. But their price per kg’s are substantially higher than Iams and Royal Canin.

So, my choice is therefore Royal Canin – and I know, from experience, that all my Mips eat it. I’ll get the Kitten for the Mippies and the Fit 32 for Ziva – although, knowing Ziva, she’ll munch the Kitten food as well. And Royal Canin is available at all vets, so I should have no problem finding it in East London.

See those pretty curls?

Here they are quite evident!

Oh, and in a funny turn of events: Mewthos showed up today with his eyebrows curled! Just over his left eye, the long whiskers there – all three of them. Curled! I have no clue where he stuck his head to get that right – there’s no heat source here he could have been investigating to curl them!