I think pet owners reconcile it by doing the best we can with the resources available (money, time, storage space, access to food to purchase, etc.) and what our pets will actually tolerate eating. No one is a perfect pet owner. If you can't do the absolute best thing, that's okay. Just do what you can.

 

To me, the key is to be educated and then do the best you can. For example, we all know wet is better than dry. Some people can't afford to feed 100% wet. But if they have the knowledge, then they can try to feed a can or two here or there. Maybe when they find a $5 bill on the ground, instead of splurging on Starbucks, they treat their cat to a few cans of wet food. It may not be ideal...but it helps.

As for teeth cleaning...yes there are a few cats that have chronic teeth issues and need a cleaning at the vets every year or two. I've never brushed or done anything for my cats teeth and have only done one cleaning per lifetime for each of my cats...usually around age 10. If a cleaning is needed then it's best to do it as the bacteria can cause all kinds of nasty problems, particularly heart issues. Knowing that it's something that will come up later in life, it's something to start saving for...put a dollar or two a week away and in 10 years you'll be covered. Of course there's always preventative maintenance...brushing, feeding chicken wings etc. That might push the cleaning off even further.

 

Over my life I only have had 4 cats but we fed them regular commercial cat food from the grocery store with extra treats of protein like we ate.

That is how my family was with our Himalayan. She lived to be at least 15 (maybe 16-17, not sure how old she was when we got her). We fed her Special Kitty, which was a very low quality brand, but it was cheap. She had health problems toward the end and I can only wonder if feeding her something like Taste of the Wild would have prolonged her life. She wasn't a big fan of wet food until the end...

With that being said, now that I have researched foods and have a cat of my own, I am feeding grain free Wellness (About $2.50 a can) and Innova dry. (although not grain free, it seems to keep her stool solid better than TOTW)

Like it was stated before, as long as you do the best you can, you are giving the cats a better life than they would have on the street. I don't know that a better food would have prolonged her life any more than a year...

 

Doodle bug - can I feed the cat chicken wings? Funny they helped themselves to someone's garbage and I found chicken bones in the back yard. Do I cook the wings? I still don't understand how we can feed raw food without them getting parasites or bacteria?

 

$2.50 a can is my point. I hope you meant a big can but I don't like keeping them in the fridge open long. If my cat lives to 15, I think that is a good life. My mom is very old and the end of life is not go great.

 

Prices can vary a lot depending on where you live. I buy the top of the line stuff, and the most I've paid around here is $1.89 for the huge cans that last for a few days. Prices can be very high in some areas, but $2.50 a can is not something standard. I would suggest you actually price them out locally and check if you could save money buying online before you decide you can't afford it.

I also think it's important to remember that there's a lot of middle ground between EVO and Special Kitty, for example. If you can't afford the foods with the highest quality formulas, no need to give up on the whole thing - there are a lot of mid-range foods at a place like Petco or PetSmart that have good ingredients and a good value for the money.

It's possible to make good nutritional choices for your pet on a budget. No diet is going to make your pet completely healthy for life, but like with people, good nutrition is a solid foundation for good health. Also like people, though, there are options in between a "perfect" diet and a diet entirely composed of junk food. Every little bit helps.

 

I feed dry nature's recipe salmon recipe and 9 lives tuna with sometimes one of the other types. Then I pick a day and give them cooked chicken breast because I have been feeding my 15 year old dog that with natures recipe dry food and he is 15. This is the ingredients of the dry nature's recipe. I see my cats drinking water regularly.

Salmon, salmon meal, brown rice, chicken meal, pearled barley, brewers rice, pea protein, poultry fat (preserved with mixed tocopherols), natural flavor, tetra sodium pyrophosphate, salt, potassium chloride, choline chloride, vitamins (vitamin E supplement, L-ascorbyl-2-polyphosphate (source of vitamin C), niacin supplement, inositol, vitamin A supplement, thiamine mononitrate, d-calcium pantothenate, pyridoxine hydrochloride, riboflavin supplement, menadione sodium bisulfite complex, beta carotene, vitamin D3 supplement, folic acid, biotin, vitamin B12 supplement), minerals (zinc proteinate, ferrous sulfate, zinc oxide, iron proteinate, copper sulfate, manganese proteinate, copper proteinate, manganous oxide, calcium iodate, sodium selenite), citric acid, yucca schidigera extract, rosemary extract.

 

Cat Owner, I don't want to be too repetitive, but the answer I found for a highish-quality food at a good price is Trader Joe's. Do you have a Trader Joe's near you?

Trader Joe's has their own brand of canned food that's only 69 cents a can. When I ran the ingredients past Doodlebug a couple years ago, she gave it a thumbs up for nutrition (and this woman knows her stuff). She said it's not the absolute best for nutrition, but it's good. That was good enough for me, especially considering it was the only canned food Murphy would eat.

 

This is a really good suggestion I always forget about.

Trader Joe's food is a really good value for the cost. It's only a few cents more than what you'd spend at the grocery store, and the quality is significantly higher.

I've never used it for my cats (can't because of Maisie's allergies,) but I've heard good things from almost everyone who uses it.

 

I do go to Trader's Joes and will definitely check it out.

 

I totally understand where you are coming from. I don't feed 100% wet but I do feed it often. I can really see this being a problem in households with more than one cat. I agree with previous posters that having the knowledge is key and then just doing the best you can. I think with feeding dry, portion control becomes all the more important. I still feed a small amount of dry everyday to supplement the canned, but I measure it out to make sure my cat doesn't just gorge on the stuff.

So far, I have not found any places in Canada that sell canned cat food online cheaper than in the stores - because of shipping costs.

 

Even if you feed one of the higher-end canned cat foods, it isn't always super expensive.

I buy EVO canned food, the basic chicken-and-turkey variety. One 13 ounce can of this costs me $1.99. It's about four days' worth of food for my cat, if I fed her nothing but canned food. That's only about 50 cents per day.

I also "pad it out" by giving my cat EVO dry kibble every day as well. Her diet is around 75% canned and 25% dry food... she gets 1.5 to 2 tablespoons of kibble every day with her wet food, and that supplements the 13 ounce cans to last six or seven days instead of four. (I don't like to let it sit in the fridge that long so I have to freeze some of the canned food, but that's a minor inconvenience.)

The 6 pound bag of EVO cat kibble I bought cost $22 and will last about four months at the rate I use it. The EVO dry kibble costs me another 19 cents per day?

So all told, my EVO cat food is under $1 per day. That's at least comparable with a can of generic commercial cat food and I feel better about the quality of the ingredients.

I should add that I had to spend a couple of days price figuring all this out for myself, comparing different brands and prices at several local stores and websites to determine the cheapest possible way for me to feed a high-end cat food. So there's also a time factor involved, but for me it was worth it.

 

I missed the editing window on this, but I could also use cheaper dry kibble. I got that particular bag of EVO on sale, but I'm using the normal $22 shelf price to show it's still reasonable even if you get fancy kibble too.

 

I haven't read the whole thread, but any wet food is better than dry as a rule of thumb.

 

I disagree with that statement although many authorities have made it. I would rather feed a high quality kibble and work extra hard at getting enough water into my cats, than feed a food that sources ingredients from China, uses pet quality ingredients such as moldy corn (a source of aflatoxins), meat meal (the dregs of a rendering pit that includes road kill, expired supermarket meats with the styrofoam and plastic, euthanized animals with all of the drugs that were pumped into them etc.) and a variety of other disgusting stuff.

 

Chicken wings are fine as are chicken necks, as long as they are not cooked.
Do not feed cooked bone. It can splinter.
Cats can handle bacteria much more effectively than we think. I have been feeding my cat raw ever since he was a kitten and so far we have never had any problems. Make sure you freeze the meat first , though.

 

Honestly (and I know this will sound terrible) but I kind of don't think about it. The kittens are being fed Halo Spot's Stew (the Grain Free) version which is dry food and then periodically throughout the week we give them a can of wet food (Lotus and Wellness, both grain free). We also try to give them bits of freeze dried chicken.

That being said, they go through a lot of food (I think they went through a little over 12 pounds of food this month) and while we could go the significantly cheaper route and get a 16 lbs bag of Friskies for cheaper than a 6 lbs bag of Halo, we go with the latter. Because here's the way I see it: if I can waste money on makeup, extra tea, a cup of coffee a day, then I can easily remove these items to get them what they really need. This doesn't work for everyone and I get it. But you do whatever you can for your pet -- if that means that the expensive bag is out of the question, then try an alternative.

 

Honestly (and I know this will sound terrible) but I kind of don't think about it. The kittens are being fed Halo Spot's Stew (the Grain Free) version which is dry food and then periodically throughout the week we give them a can of wet food (Lotus and Wellness, both grain free). We also try to give them bits of freeze dried chicken.

That being said, they go through a lot of food (I think they went through a little over 12 pounds of food this month) and while we could go the significantly cheaper route and get a 16 lbs bag of Friskies for cheaper than a 6 lbs bag of Halo, we go with the latter. Because here's the way I see it: if I can waste money on makeup, extra tea, a cup of coffee a day, then I can easily remove these items to get them what they really need. This doesn't work for everyone and I get it. But you do whatever you can for your pet -- if that means that the expensive bag is out of the question, then try an alternative.

I'm going to echo the post about EVO. It is great quality, 3 out of 5 of my cats love it (the turkey and chicken) and it comes in big cans that last a long time. Very economical.

 

Before the age of the "pets are family" mentality there really wasn't any choices of food beyond what was found in the grocery store. All of the dogs & cats we had when I was a child got different store bought stuff on a regular basis, it all depended on what was on sale. The last cat I had before my crew now lived to the ripe age of 20. She was indoor-outdoor, ate friskies, 9 lives, cat chow, whatever. She was petite and never weighed outside her range.

It's only been since people began seeing their pets as part of their family that companies started making better quality food and it became more "in" (for lack of a better word) to buy the better quality.

As someone mentioned previously, buy what you can afford, watch kitty's weight and provide lots of water. Mine love the pet water fountains and will drink from them before anything else since its moving water.

Don't forget to visit the vet for regular check-ups and shots, too.

I buy locally made food for my critters. They even deliver it! It's not as expensive as a lot of brands out there but I like that the ingredients are all grown/produced locally so there's no moldy shipments or anything. But I can afford the mid-range food.

I'm not sure about cat food but I know that the Kirkland brand of dog food is quite nutritious and gets high ratings, so if you have a Costco there's always that route.


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OP, I've been where you are. A couple of years ago it would have made me ill to think of spending $60 bucks on a bag of dog food or $2.00 on a can of cat food. However, when I took my dogs to a new vet because of chronic itching, the vet thought it was probably a food allergy and told me to switch to a grain free diet and see if that helped. So I took the plunge and bought the ridiculously expensive dog food. Within a week, a life time of itching just stopped. I couldn't believe it. After some serious research on dog food I was completely converted. Now, it doesn't seem so expensive or ridiculous at all. I had to make a few changes in my spending habits but it wasn't hard to do once I felt it was a priority. The thing that makes me really mad about all of this is that for years I fed my dogs expensive food that was suppose to be great and it was crap filled with soy, corn and meat by-products. :fust

My cats were lucky. They came after I learned better about pet food. I'm a tight wad though, so I spent some time on the web looking for the best deals. I'd recommend comparing price per ounce to get a better idea of what something actually costs. On amazon, I can get a 24 pack of fancy feast for $13 or 0.18 per ounce. I can get a better quality food called Merrick (most flavors are grain free) for 0.19 per ounce at doggiefood with 15% off coupon. From Wag, I can get Chicken Soup for the Cat lovers Soul for 0.16 per ounce. If you look around you can probably find higher quality food for the same price or even less than grocery store brands. If you don't live in the US it might be harder to get good deals on line due to shipping costs (sorry, don't know where you live).

I feed half dry and half wet. My cats' favorite dry food is Taste of the Wild. Probably one of the most affordable grain free foods out there.

The best advice I can give you is to arm yourself with knowledge then give your cat the best you can that he will also eat. You have to decide for yourself what your OK with spending on cat food and no matter what you decide, your cat is so much better off now that he's got a home with you! Good luck :wolfie

 

This was great advice! I also make budget choice changes in order to accomodate a better diet for my 5 cats. We use a coupon to eat out with and/or stopped ordering soft drinks with dinner when we do go out. Ate a terrific Mexican restaurant for under $15 a couple nights ago - for TWO of us! I buy paperback books from the thrift store instead of downloading books. I decided the money needed to come from somewhere so it was just a matter of choices. I was not going to repeat the food mistakes of the past with these cats and we are all happier for it!

 

Well I think my cat is getting his own protein. He just brought home another huge grub worm and ate it. Gross. I do appreciate all the hints and I will look into it. I looked up the evo canned and was surprised that the protein % was still only 9%.

 

Well I think my cat is getting his own protein. He just brought home another huge grub worm and ate it. Gross. I do appreciate all the hints and I will look into it. I looked up the evo canned and was surprised that the protein % was still only 9%.

One of mine really enjoys spiders. It grosses me out but she loves them.

 

Over my life I only have had 4 cats but we fed them regular commercial cat food from the grocery store with extra treats of protein like we ate.
They all lived until 16-17 years old and were happy cats. They were all indoor - outdoor cats in developed suburbs where kids played outside. I now adopted an abandoned cat and the one surviving offspring due to their necessity. I am reading about all the nutritional needs which basically translates to expensive cat food. And I am supposed to get their teeth I cleaned? I do read labels and try to do the best I can for the buck but I think of people who can't afford all this still have pets who have good lives. There are people who can't always afford to eat fresh fish because of the cost and they are relatively healthy. How does one reconcile all this with reality of circumstances?

I've always felt that a cat in a safe loving home being fed the cheapest cat food is 1000 times better off than a starving stray or a scared shelter cat with an uncertain future. A forever home is the most important thing any cat needs.

 

I absolutely agree with that.

Those aren't the only choices, though. There are food options that are significantly better than the cheapest stuff that still aren't going to break the bank - so I find it hard to understand why a loving pet owner wouldn't want to be informed and do the best they can. (Please note that by "the best they can" I don't mean "the best on the market." I mean doing the most for the cat with the resources that are available, however much or little that might be.)

So I guess I don't understand why whether cheap food is better than starving on the street is even an issue - the original poster is obviously a concerned pet owner who would never leave the cat to starve on the street. So yeah, I absolutely encourage that sort of responsible owner to think about making the healthiest choices that are available to them.

As another poster said, pet nutrition has definitely evolved in the past couple of decades. Honestly, though, so has human nutrition. We know a lot more about what's good for both people and animals than we did 20 years ago. Since most of us understand that what goes into a human's diet affects our health... it seems only logical that the same would be true of our pets.

 

in a way, i hate the "good food/grocery store food" debate because i was bullied by vet techs for several years--asking me what i feed my cats and then turning their noses up in the air and saying, "OH . . . that's junk food." however, they never really went into why some food was better than others, and that would have been incredibly helpful. (so of course it didn't happen ). almost 100% of the time, what they suggested was science diet or royal canin.

i did go the science diet/iams route for awhile twenty years ago, but my cats never really liked those foods. i always ended up letting them eat a lot of fancy feast, thinking it couldn't be horrible food. it isn't the worst food in the world but it's certainly far from the best--for a lot of reasons. on top of that, it's not all that cheap. i used to find it on sale for .60 a can if i was lucky (that's .20 an oz.) but most of the time it was closer to .80 a can and i have three cats.

when my oldest cat started having digestive issues, i read up on IBD and i also did a lot of reading about the current state of pet food. i would urge you to read "food pets die for" by ann martin. i read "not fit for a dog" by dr. michael fox at the same time. i believe he's in the uk so this is far from just a US/canadian issue. neither book is hysterical or sensational, which had a lot to do with my finishing them. i dislike alarmist caveats designed to make me empty my pockets because i love my cats.

you can get either book at the library. you should read one or both and see how you feel about what you are feeding your cats. if you still feel as though you can't do any better, fair enough, but i think if you actually knew what goes into the grocery store food, you'd probably feel much differently.

the second part of the equation is that if you find the right place to shop, you can save a lot of money buying cat food in bulk. the initial part is probably the hardest, because i bought a lot of food in 3 oz. cans just to find out what my cats would eat. it's a lot more expensive that way, but i discounted it as research necessary for the process. now that i'm fairly sure what my cats like, i get most of my food for .16 - .21 an oz., and don't even pay shipping.

anyway, if you get that far i'm sure more than a few of us have tips and tricks for saving money and getting the best food possible.

 

I don't spend a lot of money on pet food. It seems like a lot but when I actually add up the amount and how long it lasts, I would probably spend more on grocery store brand. My cat is a kibble addict that would rather starve to death than eat wet food. I tried for months to get her to eat wet food and she just refuses no matter how much trickery I attempted. I also have 3 small dogs. I buy a big bag of Petcurean Go! Fit + Free (16lbs) for my cat which is around $51. That might seem like a lot but it lasts nearly 4 months. The doggies get Earthborn Holistic Primitive Natural. I buy the biggest bag (28lbs) which lasts about 3 months for $49.

I've also had a foster kitten for about 6 months. She gets 100% wet food. I've been buying her 2 12 packs of Wellness Chicken and Turkey 12.5oz which lasts about a month. Both are grain-free. I tried her on EVO but it didn't agree with her tummy. I just ordered some Felidae grain-free and a variety pack of BFF for treats so I could get free shipping. The foster kitten is definitely the most expensive because she eats the most.

 

What I have trouble reconciling is the people who are feeding low end foods, say they're providing the best the can but then you see other evidence that suggests that no, the pets are just lower priority than their luxuries. For example; a woman who came into my store who described an obviously very sick cat (hadn't eaten in 4 or 5 days). When I told her she needed to take the cat to the vet she said she couldn't afford it. But then a few minutes later she mentioned that she and the 3 teenagers she came in with were just killing time until the movie started (there's a theater in the same plaza my store is in). And many people are the same way with the food...they drive up in expensive new cars, wearing brand name clothes and accessories then say they can't afford the food I recommend for their itchy dog with scabs all over his body and daily diarrhea.

I'm in no way suggesting that the OP of this thread is one of these people. But many people just don't understand the meaning of "do the best you can".

 

Very true, this lady came into my store that was in a full length fur coat and was talking to me about her puppy that had diarrhea. I suggested a vet visit and showed her what worked for my dog. She looked at the price and wanted a cheaper suggestion *face palm* and that she had a big dog. So do I! I told her and suggested something else. I think she left with beneful (i hate that we carry that food) I felt sorry for the dog.

 

I appreciate all the tips and will pursue them. Do the cats stay leaner on the no grain food? I would think with more protein that they would.

 

Do the cats stay leaner on the no grain food? I would think with more protein that they would.

Generally, yes, although how much exercise your cat gets is also a significant factor.

 

So I guess I don't understand why whether cheap food is better than starving on the street is even an issue - the original poster is obviously a concerned pet owner who would never leave the cat to starve on the street. So yeah, I absolutely encourage that sort of responsible owner to think about making the healthiest choices that are available to them.

it's kind of a stretch but the thought crossed my mind in the context of, "oh i can't afford $400 a month for cat food, but wait, if i gave my cats to a shelter because i can't afford to feed them as they should be fed, they aren't going to get good food anyway because shelters rely on stuff like meow mix and canned is a luxury. and what if someone adopts them, then decides they don't want to put up with the bother and turns them out. then they'd be starving on the street." so looking at it like that, it's better to keep cats with you and feed what you can afford.

i'm far from rich, i'm a retired teacher if that tells you anything . i'm not poverty-stricken but i don't have money to toss out the window. as educated as i am about human nutrition, i honestly never gave much thought to pet food. not because i didn't care, mostly because i had other things on my mind. while i could have afforded better food years ago, it was never impressed upon me by my vet that i needed to change anything.

i think there are people who don't care, period, because people exist who let their kids live on mountain dew, jeno's pizza rolls and cap'n crunch.

i'm sure those same people would say i'm insane for spending $100 a month on cat food. i don't think anyone can feed one cat all canned for less than $30 a month, and i have three so it seems reasonable enough. as far as dry, i have no idea. i think of dry food in terms of potato chips not being potatoes (in nutritional terms). of course cats are going to prefer dry food. there are people who survive on junk/party food, and it isn't even because they can't afford better food, they just want to eat what they like. obviously if a person has a poor diet, they will probably have some health issues. if this weren't true, heart disease would not be one of the top causes of death in the u.s. some of it is probably genetic but a great deal of the deaths could most likely have been prevented by changes in diet and habits like smoking and exercise. so it's completely reasonable that the same reasoning extends to pets. except i hope no one has a cat who smokes.

but if a person is living on ramen noodles, not because of choice but because that's all they can afford, i think it's ridiculous to expect that person to spend $30 a month on cat food.

there are still choices--some inexpensive food is far better than others. lisa pierson points that out on her blog and even has a pretty extensive nutrient chart for those foods.

 

I am not affluent and live in what is generally regarded as one of the most socially deprived areas in the U.K. - the upside is that it is possible to find raw food from farms and real butchers (unpopular cuts) reasonably cheaply. Having said that, none of my animals ever fail to see a vet if they need to and most (thank heavens) live longer than the average.

 

Adding to the above. I belong to a church that provided a night shelter for the homeless during the winter and collects for a food bank fro local people who can't afford basic food. We collect animal food as well for pet owners and, to be honest, we don't care about brand as long as it helps people to keep much loved animals adequately fed.

 

The thing is, if the OP had come here and said, "I'm really in financial straits right now and can't afford to feed my cat anything better than the cheapest foods, should I still keep my cat?"

My answer would have been, "Yeah, of course, keep your cat! A kitty who gets lots of love will be just fine."

But that wasn't the question.

The OP asked about how to meet a cat's nutritional needs while living on a budget. Since almost everyone lives on a budget of some sort, that's not an unusual situation at all, and it's something we've all experienced and can relate to.

If I had come here and asked a question about how to economize, and was met with a comparison between my home and the streets or an animal shelter just because I don't have an unlimited budget, I would honestly be pretty hurt. Maybe the OP doesn't feel that way; I hope not. I just think the OP is obviously a caring individual, because it shows caring to even ask this question and be concerned about it, so there's no point in comparing this cat to one who isn't being cared for.



That's awesome.