Wet food, brand names sacrificing quality for cost?

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KKL

KKL

Member Since 2013
Ok, I am at a crossroads. Between wet food (now for all 3 cats), test strips, insulin, needles, vet costs I am running a pretty high tab right now. I have been feeding Wellness Turkey in 12.5oz can at $3.00/can, I require 1.5 cans a day, so about $4.50 a day...and $137 a month just in wet food....that is $1,644/year for JUST their wet food!

So, some have recommended the Friskies Classic Pate Cat Food, Poultry Platter that comes in a 13oz can, which seems to run about $1 per can. Which would bring my cost down by about $1097 a year (at least food wise).

My question is this...I know there are die hard food beliefs as to good, medium, fair and poor quality dry and wet foods. How far down the chain is the Friskies vs Wellness. Is it really a quality of food that I am paying for, and/or brand name?? Is it really going to negatively impact the health of my 18y/o, 13 y/o and 14 y/o cats if I were to make the switch?

I guess growing up we fed both 9 lives and meow mix (cringe) to our cats, but they lived to be 20 years old without any health problems. Now, granted it's been dry food, but I had always fed mine very good food and yet we have had a plethora of health issues.

Thoughts??
 
Re: Wet food, cost vs quality

You do the best you can with what you can afford.

I did Wellness with the juveniles from last summer for about 5 months, then the budget just couldn't take it any more. I figure I got their development caught up from being undernourished strays and now its maintenance on Friskies.
 
Re: Wet food, cost vs quality

I always fed my cats the best quality food we could afford. They got vet food Medi-cal and then wellness. And then Tiggy got cancer anyway and I realized its like anything else. who knows what causes it? And the quality foods are expensive.

So we switched him to fancy feast.
 
Re: Wet food, cost vs quality

That is kind of what I was thinking...they are older at 13, 14 and 18. Would I be better to mix the Wellness with Friskies, try going to just Friskies or Fancy Feast? I am thinking at first of mixing. The vet did recommend Fancy Feast, but how far off is that from Friskies, which is very budget friendly.
 
Take a look at the food chart at Cat Info.

You want to select a low carb, high protein food - If you aim for 40% calories from protein or more and that cuts the list down considerably.

Alternatively, for every 5 oz canned food, add 1 oz cooked poultry/meat to it. This will up the protein and lower the fat (unless you have one that needs to gain, in which case leave it alone, the fat provides more calories per gram!)
 
If I am going to go to the expense and trouble to feed my cats a proper raw food diet then I want to subsidize with a can of something that doesn't have by-products, vegetables, fruit or fish. Fancy Feast pates and Friskies pates all have some fish (even the turkey and chicken) in them so in my circumstances only - the Wellness or higher quality foods fit my attitude toward my cats' nutrition.

It's like this... I am personally not going to wash down a lunch of steamed or raw veggies with a diet soda so I want to be consistant in all my kitties' food sources. However, I do recognize that the FF and Friskies foods are much more cost effective especially at Walmart and in a financial crisis, I would not be against offering these to my feline household.

What I refuse to do is figure out how much per year I am spending on food... Nope, just not gonna do it because I would have to figure in or out of that price the amount of possible vet care for which I paid far too much over the years for severly wrong diagnosis that cost my cats their life.

I am very fortunate that my sugarfoster will eat anything out of a can except fish. Any canned food, expensive or not. He's a good eater!
 
I try not to look too...but with the housing market shifting here I just saw a scary decline in my income again and we are trying to do a budget. We've been hit the last 4 years with unbelievable costs/expenses (vet, medical, auto, household) on top of normal everyday stuff, so we are trying to figure a way to recover. If work resumes it's normal track I'd return to the wellness, but we have to start making concessions somewhere--we already have on our end with what we do and consume and the animals were the last to have to make the change :(
 
Nothing is worse than feed time when you are feeling a little under the weather...gag...
 
BJM said:
Wendy&Tiggy said:
...But I prefer the fancy feast as its lower carb.
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And that line sounds like you're eating it!!!
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Hehe! My brother always says that I feed the cats better than he eats and if we're ever in an emergency situation, I've got enough cat food stored up that we shouldn't go hungry for weeks! :lol:

Michelangelo is allergic to the vast majority of foods (all red meats, including beef, lamb, rabbit, venison, bison, etc...), his BGs go up when it's over 5% carbs, and his BGs also go up when it's less than 50% protein:fat. Because of this, I experimented extensively with foods, trying to find foods that were inexpensive enough yet didn't cause him to vomit or negatively affect his BGs. The Friskies Special Diet Turkey & Giblets meets all of the above criteria. Not sure where you're shopping, but I pay only $0.50 a 5.5oz can (usually even less than that because I buy cases at a time), so I'd think a 13oz can would be even cheaper? (They don't carry any flavors that Mikey can eat in the 13oz can version.)

As for Wellness, there's also only one can that meets Mikey's discerning criteria (the Turkey & Duck variety, which I've never found in a store to date), it is twice as expensive as the Friskies, and both my cats hate the mousse-like texture (I usually end up tossing all of it at the end of the day).

My Henry is a killing machine. He's only 10 months old and has killed 4 birds that I know of (out of at least 8 caught). When he eats them, he eats them ALL up! So, I don't mind "by-products" too much. Besides, if they have too many by-products, Mikey's numbers go up (not enough protein).
 
KPassa said:
When he eats them, he eats them ALL up! So, I don't mind "by-products" too much. Besides, if they have too many by-products, Mikey's numbers go up (not enough protein).
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I think it is great and very natural when a cat will eat every part of their catch - very healthy. However, I do not consider any part of this source to be the same by-product that is put in cat food as filler. Where this stuff is sourced and what tragically strays into your backyard are vastly different. That's just my opinion from what I read about commercial pet food.

My cats won't touch any of the beefs - they are strictly poultry addicts. When I want to entice my 13 year old to eat more pumpkin or Miralax, I get the Friskies pates for 54 cents/5.5 oz can at Walmart - I don't care about the fillers or fish then, because I just want her to stop crying and poop something. I will never get her on raw but I did get her off dry food (well she really didn't have a choice as I just snatched it out from under her nose and got rid of all if it).

Anyway - I just wanted to clarify what I meant about "by-products."
 
RobinCot said:
...However, I do not consider any part of this source to be the same by-product that is put in cat food as filler. Where this stuff is sourced and what tragically strays into your backyard are vastly different. That's just my opinion from what I read about commercial pet food.
Click to expand...

ITA. I have absolutely no faith in what Purina or Iams or any of those other big pet food corporations say about what they put in their food and what those "by-products" might contain. They can claim whatever they want about the quality of their ingredients, but they also claim that dry food is beneficial, so I don't believe them. For me, it's a matter of being low carb, high protein, and poultry-based. Everything else is simply part of the risk I'm taking because I'm not feeding home-made cat food to my cats (yet) and because I can't afford Tiki Cat for every meal.
 
One other thing is to look for is the Friskies Special Diet. They're lower carb, lower in phosphorus, they don't contain fish, and they have a higher protein content than the regular Friskies (usually they just replace carbs with more fat).

Friskies Turkey and Giblets:
Meat by-products, water sufficient for processing, poultry by-products, turkey, poultry giblets, fish, rice, artificial and natural flavors, salt, guar gum, calcium phosphate, added color, potassium chloride, carrageenan, magnesium sulfate, taurine, choline chloride, thiamine mononitrate, Vitamin E supplement, zinc sulfate, ferrous sulfate, niacin, calcium pantothenate, copper sulfate, Vitamin A supplement, manganese sulfate, menadione sodium bisulfite complex (source of Vitamin K activity), pyridoxine hydrochloride, riboflavin supplement, Vitamin B-12 supplement, biotin, folic acid, Vitamin D-3 supplement, potassium iodide.

Friskies Special Diet Turkey and Giblets:
Meat by-products, water sufficient for processing, turkey, poultry by-products, poultry giblets, brewers rice, salt, guar gum, potassium chloride, added color, carrageenan, calcium phosphate, taurine, zinc sulfate, thiamine mononitrate, Vitamin E supplement, ferrous sulfate, niacin, manganese sulfate, calcium pantothenate, Vitamin A supplement, copper sulfate, menadione sodium bisulfite complex (source of Vitamin K activity), pyridoxine hydrochloride, riboflavin supplement, Vitamin B-12 supplement, biotin, folic acid, Vitamin D-3 supplement, potassium iodide.
 
Thanks KPassa. I have not seen the Friskies Special Diet (no fish) - thanks for the info on that. I will have to look for it.
 
We've finally seen some green and blues lately, I am terrified to mix things up now that we are slowly getting him stable. BUT I might add a little Friskies or Fancy Feast to the Wellness to help bring down the cost.

Mine are poultry addicts too...aside from that I don't like to feed seafood on a regular basis either. What Fancy Feast is economical that you guys feed? I love wet food in 12.5+ cans, so you pay less for packaging....so larger cans preferred-if possible.
 
I have only seen the small cans for Fancy Feast. The classics are only 54 cents at Walmart but they do have fish in them. I would look for the the Friskies Special Diet - Turkey & Giblets that KPassa recommends (no fish). I haven't seen these at Walmart but I know they have other Friskies pates there - in the 5.5 oz can for far less than you could find at a grocery store. I can't help you with the 12.5 oz size. I haven't seen that size for any of the LC cat foods I use.
 
Do any food changes gradually - maybe 1-2 teaspoons at a time - to reduce impact on GI tract and to let you see if there's a shift before it becomes too large (up OR down!).
 
Thank you!
Yes, I am the ultimate paranoid food changer...it usually takes me 4 weeks to change foods...so, no worries I'll add very very slowly :)
 
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