I won’t repeat what the other posters have told you about the corn and by-products. It doesn’t matter where you buy your food from – you can get good foods in some grocery stores, and crappy foods can be purchased in pet stores. What you need to do is to read labels, and not be taken in by clever packaging or advertising. Avoid foods with corn and by-products, and you’ll be doing your cat great favor. +

If your grocery store has an organic foods isle, then you can probably find some good foods there. Our one local chain has Pet Promise and Lick Your Chops brands (not the best, but they are very good) in the organic isle. In the regular pet food isle, they carry Newman’s Own (which is a fine brand) and one called Harmony Farms. None of these have by-products, corn, or chemical preservatives or dyes. I usually pick up some Newman’s Own cans when I’m at the store for some variety.

Again, read labels! If more people would actually read the ingredients on the foods they were buying, instead of looking at the colorful packages that show plump chickens and ears of corn, I wonder if they’d actually buy it?

It won’t hurt in short-term but definitely get something higher quality next time. You will only find low quality foods in grocery stores.

Not all pet food is made equally. A lot of it is full of corn, by-products, dyes, unhealthy preservatives, filler grains and all sorts of nasty stuff. A lot of pet food companies are perfectly happy to the dump cheap leftovers and things that aren’t safe for human consumption (from human food processing plants) into their foods. Will it kill your cat? No, it has to be nutritionally complete and safe to even be marketed. Is it healthy? Not by a long shot.

Corn is a low quality ingredient you never want to see in your pet food. Corn and low quality grains are two of the biggest culprits when it comes to food allergies in our pets.

Thankfully, there are some excellent cat foods being made these days that include organic, human grade ingredients rather than trash not fit for human consumption.

Examples of low quality foods to avoid: Anything you can find in a grocery store will be low end, Purina, Iams, Eukanuba, Science Diet, Royal Canin, Whiskas, Fancy Feast, Friskies, Meow Mix.

Examples of high quality foods to look for: Innova, Wellness, Solid Gold, Felidae, Fromm Four Star, Merrick, GO Natural, Nature’s Variety Prairie, Nature’s Logic, Artemis Fresh Mix, Timber Wolf Organics.

Although the high quality foods are more expensive, you’re getting what you’re paying for. Less filler material means more concentrated nutrients… this means you typically need to feed far less of the high quality food than you would of the low quality one. Which also means less ****!

Before following your vet’s food recommendation, keep in mind that vets get /very/ little nutritional training during their schooling. Besides that, what training they /do/ get is usually sponsored or taught by the crappy pet food companies! They also often get paid to sell some of their products at their clinics (Science Diet, Royal Canin etc.)

A great option is to go with an entirely grainless diet. Diets high in grain have been attributed to problems with diabetes in cats. Cats are obligate carnivores, so why should there be grain in their diet? Many of the high quality foods now put out grainless formulas. Some good grainless diets include: Innova EVO, Wellness CORE, Blue Wilderness, Nature’s Variety Instinct, Orijen, Horizon Legacy, Merrick Before Grain, Fromm Surf & Turf, Now!, and Sold Gold Indigo Moon, Taste of the Wild.

Some pretty decent foods can even be found in common pet stores. Petsmart carries Blue Buffalo products (such as the excellent grain free diet Blue Wilderness). Petco carries Wellness, Solid Gold, Natural Balance, Eagle Pack Holistic, Blue Buffalo, Castor & Pollux Organix, Pinnacle, and Halo. If you can’t find a food, most of the high quality food brands have websites with store locators on them.

Another option, if you can’t find anywhere around you that sells good foods, is to order your pet food online. Here’s an excellent place to do so:

Remember that foods should be switched gradually (mixing new slowly in with the old over about a two week period), especially when switching to a higher quality one, so as not to upset tummies.

Another option for feeding cats is to feed raw. This is something that should be thoroughly researched before being attempted:

Now the question is, do you feed wet or dry? Wet is the correct answer. The reason is, in the wild, cats normally get most of their water content directly from their prey items and drink very little. Domestic cats are no different, and because of the fact that they are designed to take in water with their meal, they have a very low thirst drive. Cats often just don’t drink enough. This leads to urinary tract infections and crystals. The bit about dry food being better for teeth is a myth and has not been proven in the least. Canned/wet food is better because it more closely mimics the cat’s natural diet. More on why canned food is best: (Excellent cat nutrition information by a vet)

Another option to get cats to drink more would be a cat fountain. Cats tend to like to drink from running water and cat fountains see to that need, encouraging cats to take in more water.

More: (Dog food reviews. It’s for dogs, but mo

You’re not going to do harm. It’s actually not where you buy from but what you buy that matters. The thing is, the stuff in stores is not really quality. Usually the best you can do is a medium grade cat food like fancy feast. The good thing about it is that the first ingredient is a muscle meat like chicken. it’s the fillers that is the problem.
My regular post gives you some clues and links on what to look for in food

Nutrition since there are so many bad things out there is very important to your cat’s health
Contrary to what you may have heard; dry foods are not a great thing to feed a cat.
Please read the label on what you are feeding? What are the ingredients? Do you know what they mean? Is the first ingrediant a muscle meat like chicken or meal or other things?
Dry foods are the number 1 cause of diabetes in cats as well as being a huge contributing factor to kidney disease, obesity, crystals, u.t.i’s and a host of other problems. Food allergies are very common when feeding dry foods. Rashes, scabs behind the tail and on the chin are all symptoms
The problems associated with Dry food is that they are loaded with grains and carbohydrates which many cats (carnivores) cannot process. Also, Most of the moisture a cat needs is suppose to be in the food but in
Dry, 95% of it is zapped out of dry foods in the processing. Another thing, most use horrible ingredients and don’t use a muscle meat as the primary ingredient and use vegetable based protein versus animal. Not good for an animal that has to eat meat to survive.
You want to pick a canned food w/o gravy (gravy=carbs) that uses a muscle meat as the first ingredient and doesn’t have corn at least in the first 3 ingredients if at all. The best food for cats does not contain any grains at all.
Fancy feast is a middle grade food with 9lives, friskies whiskas lower grade canned and wellness and merrick upper grade human quality foods. I would rather feed a middle grade canned food then the top of the line dry food.
Also, dry food is not proven to be better for teeth. Does a hard pretzel clean your teeth or do pieces of it get stuck?

Please read about cat nutrition.

Vetinarian diets The reason your vet thinks so highly of the pet food they sell probably has more to do with money than nutrition. In vet school, the only classes offered on nutrition usually last a few weeks, and are taught by representatives from the pet food companies. Vet students may also receive free food for their own dogs and cats at home. They could get an Iams notebook, a Purina purse and some free pizza.

in my experience they will love it. its like human fast food: tasty, cheap, and absolutely horrible for you. it wont be bad for them if you give that to them until you run out of it.

when you buy food for your kitties try to buy food that has meat/meat by products as the first 1-2 (the main) ingredients.

for instance, i feed my cats a mixture of felidae and diamond food hairball control. the felidae has chicken meal, brown rice, cracked pearled barley as the first three ingredients. the diamond has chicken, chicken meal, cracked pearled barley as the first three ingredients. they love the felidae, and the diamond is good for them.

science diet is allright food… its like moving up and eating mcalisters or schlotskys every day.

its not bad for them but they may not like it

The reason that people say not to is because grocery store pet foods are very very cheap…..meaning the use the lowest quality ingredients possible which are fillers and by-products, and grains…..and gluten…and wheat…..and preservatives.
Some preservatives are connected to cancers found in people pets, and filler, wheat’s, gluten and wheat are known allergies to dogs and cats, fillers for example corn, have absolutely no nutritional value what so ever, so your cat keeps eating but barely gets full.
and by-products are the left overs from the animals that are not suitable for people to eat….. Eyes, beaks, intestines, etc

She should be ok eating that food for a very short period of time, but it might cause an upset stomach and diarrhea.

it probably won’t hurt just the one or two times, but you need to make sure that your cat is getting the nutrients he needs. i buy my food from wal-mart, but i get iams, which is also carried in pet stores.