Coffee & Cat: Cat Food

Welcome to the very first Coffee & Cat Blog! This category of blog posts will be focusing on all aspects of cat life based upon our experience as professional cat sitters & cat owners! Topics such as food; litter; toys; behavior and beyond will be discussed here in the hope that it will give you some guidance & information to help you with your own furbabies!

Now before we get into this topic, I want to just put up a disclaimer to say that I (Adam) nor any staff at Moggy Daycare are trained nutritionists so anything mentioned in this blog post is based entirely on opinion and what research I have done.

Types of Cat Food, Wet or Dry I don’t know which one to buy!

This question is often asked by many a new cat owner and is a simple answer, it really depends on your cat! Some like wet only, some like dry only and others enjoy a mix during their day!

In my experience people who give their cats both types tend to go for wet food twice a day with dry food offerings to last the rest of the day. Health can also become part of the choice to go wet or dry food, for example if a cat has poor teeth and is unable to crunch on things then it is best to steer clear of dry biscuits in favour of wet food, focusing on wet food that is high in water content such as pate or gravy-based foods.

At Moggy HQ we give our girls (Tifa & Yennefer) dry food throughout the day via an automated dry feeder (Catit Pixi Smart Feeder) and then they get 1 wet feed in the evening, but this is to generally chill them out of a night time so they don’t keep us up at night, this usually fails 95% of the time however! 😂

Food quality & brands, what should I buy?

This entirely depends on your budget and where you stand on quality of food yourself. For us personally here at Moggy Daycare we sacrifice a fairly large chunk of our budget to get our girls wet & dry foods we think are better for them and their life as housecats.

There are so many different brands it can often be very confusing. Not only that but there seems to be only a small handful of companies that advertise so you only get to see theirs, and they are not always the best (e.g. Whiskas, Felix, Sheba). So as a little rundown of my personal top wet & dry cat foods (these are all foods we have used ourselves too!):

• Feringa/Smilla – 70+% real meat content, available in wet & dry format, but only purchasable via ZooPlus
• Lilly’s Kitchen – 50+% real meat content, available in wet & dry format, stocked widely.
• Canagan – 70+% real meat content, available in wet & dry format, stocked in some pet shops & online.
• Fish4Cats – 60+% real fish, available in wet & dry format, purchased online (is also local to Moggy Daycare!).

I could go on with this list but if you would like to have more recommendations then just send us a message/email! We will be more than happy to direct you to brands we know and love!

Now I haven’t given much love to the more widely known brands and it is purely because on a personal level I don’t like them and my cats simply won’t eat it! That being said there is nothing wrong with any of them and of course you must buy what suits your pockets! If you don’t have the budget to get high quality wet and dry food, the absolute best thing you can do is to get the highest quality complete dry food you can and give your cat whatever wet food you like (use the wet food as a treat food!).

Your cats active life, outdoor or indoor?

One thing that can affect what type of food you buy your cats is their activity levels outside or inside the home. If you have a very active outdoor cat then you’ll want to get it food that will keep it not only nourished for the day but also keep it’s energy levels up! For a indoor aka “housecat” it’ll be the complete opposite and you will want to go for “light” foods such as food with lower fat content, a number of brands actually develop foods for the type of cat you own so be sure to take this into consideration when getting food for your furbaby.

My cat won’t stick to one brand! What can I do?

Ah yes the age old complaint by us cat owners, we’ve all been there (unless you’re that lucky owner who doesn’t have a fussy cat!) where you try your cat on one brand of food and they love it, so you go and buy a months worth only for the cat to go off said brand in a couple of weeks, irritating isn’t it! It costs us cat owners more than we care to admit and it is a real pain when you have to keep swapping foods (it’s also not great for their tummies!) but you can try a couple of things to get them to eat one brand, most of these are related to wet food:

• Top their wet food with a small sprinkling of dry food/treats. This is a pretty tried and trusted method, the dry/treat food gets them interested and once they start eating, their drive kicks in and they eat their wet food along with it!
• Mix in a complimentary wet food with their normal food. Brands like Applause make foods called complimentary which don’t meet the “complete food” standard but are designed to be a treat food, often things like shredded chicken, tuna, salmon, etc. Put some of this in with your cats’ wet food and give it a little mix and you may find that works!
• Entice them with cooked meats! This should really only be done occasionally but you can cook off some white fish/chicken and shred it up and top the wet food with it. We have a couple of clients who do this then freeze it into portions, we then put it with/top the wet food with the meat and it all gets eaten!

I hope you find these methods useful, of course it could literally just be that you haven’t found the right brand for your cat yet so my advice there is don’t give up! “The one” brand is out there!

I can and probably will cover the topic of food again in further posts. So if you have any suggestions then let us know via our social media outlets, you can find them on our website.

Until the next post!

Adam