Kitten/Cat food-I'm soooo confused!

[peagreen]

I have a 5 month old kitty, named Patrick. When I adopted him, he was on IAMS. I switched him to Nutro-Max for kittens because my cat-lover friend has her cats on this food and she swears by it. After reading all these threads, I am so confused!! Is there really ONE good dry food for kittens/cats? How does one decide? what does one look for?? and what kind of human food can a kitten eat without it being bad for them? I'm so confused now.....

[RolandsMom]

HI. i also have a 5 month old kitten and when i got him he was on natura. i switched him to the neutro max kitten (the one in the pink bag, its supposed to have more in it than the one in the yellow bag) and i tried to intergrate it slowly into his old food. he just picked out all the neutro bits and left the rest. now he eats the neutro and is is very fine form. his coat is wonderful, hes a healthy weight and seems very happy. apparently they should be on kitten food till about a year unless they are getting fat! as it has all the nutrients that they need. i agree with your friend that this is a really great food!
as for human food, we used to give our cats snacks but i have not given my kitten any and he doesnt ask for any. i think you have to be careful cause it can cause bad habits and you have to make sure that its not interfering with his normal eating as he can lack nutrients if he doesnt eat properly. i also googled this information and found lots of useful websites.
hope that helps!

[meb999]

I've only researched dog food, but I imagine the basics are the same :

- stay away from anything 'by-product' -- those are the icky spoiled scrappings off the slaughter room floor that they can't possibly use in anything else.

- Stay away from any unnamed meats (like fish meal, poultry meal, meat, poultry fat, etc)

- Cats are carnivores, so you want a food that has a named meat source as a first ingredient. It's important that the meat source be a '-meal' (for example chicken meal instead of just chicken) because if it's just written 'chicken' then that means it's inclusive of it's water content so once it's cooked, you can expect it to be actually lower down the ingredient list.

- stay away from fillers such as corn (you definetly don't want to see corn in the first five ingredients)

- make sure it doesn't have any Menadione bisulfate (Vitamin K -- it's an artificial vitamin K that has been removed from human consumption because it's linked to cancer.

So that's a little summary.

This is a really good cat food : Felidae -- http://www.canidae.com

[peagreen]

Thanks SO much for your help!!! I also have Chihuahua's...fed them Science Diet- lamb meal...what do you think about Science Diet?

[Prin]

Not good. Canidae has a lamb and rice formula for doggies, too, if you want to take a look at dog side of the link that meb posted. If you don't like that one or can't get it, we can suggest better ones.

[peagreen]

I will definitely check out the web site for this canidae food- I've never heard of it- but will check it out= thanks again for the suggestions and help..I just get so confused with what to feed my pets- way too many choices out there...and I thought Purina One was always a good one....thanks....