I just read the thread on canned vs. dry food and the vet’s recommendation to feed mostly wet food.

I’ve been very careful to avoid canned food that has meat by-products. As far as I know meat by-products include waste products such as ground up chicken feet. I don’t want to feed this to my cat!

I find that Newman’s own canned food, while more expensive, generally does not include meat by-products.

I can appreciate that cats prefer to get moisture through food instead of drinking water. I think it’s just a challenge to find healthy canned food.

I feed my cat Newman’s Own too; the only kind he seems to like is the Turkey formula. He will eat the Turkey and Veggie but not as well as the regular turkey. The problem I have with feeding him Newmans, like you said, it is hard to get it. our local Walmart stocks it, but half the time they run out of it. It is frustrating because they have two aisles of cheap crap I wouldn’t feed to a rat and only stock four cases of the Newman’s Own, which usually sells out the same day the put it on the shelves. You’d think they would figure it out that maybe they would sell more of it if they kept more of it in stock.

All of the other stores in my area stock worthless cheap food.

Another brand of food that I feed Courage is Evo; it is meat-based and grain-free; they do use turkey meal and salmon meal, which I’m a little skeptical about…but you can read about it at this link:

http://www.evopet.com/products/default.asp?id=1501

Felidae makes a good food too and they claim they use human grade meat. The first case I bought of that was the new one, Felidae Cat and Kitten Formula with Chicken, Turkey, Lamb and Ocean Fish. That one is in a silver can. Courage ate that one ok but the second case I bought was their original flavor, which someone suggested to me because it doesn’t have lamb in it. Courage refused to eat it so I gave it to my Mom’s cats, who will normally eat anything in front of them. All three of them wouldn’t touch it either, though the dog loved it.  Another canned food I have heard good things about is Wellness.  I’m going to try that tomorrow, since I am going through a town that has a real pet food store in it.

If you are looking for a place online to order canned food from, I order from PetfoodDirect.com

http://www.petfooddirect.com/store/brands4dept.asp?dept_id=131

They have a huge assortment of canned cat food to choose from, including Newmans Own and other all-natural foods.  The prices are decent too.

...and the pet food search goes on… *sigh*

I WAS feeding mine mostly Naturallife and supplimenting that with Newman’s, Wellness, Evo and Fancy Feast (all chicken and turkey formulas, not beef/seafood/lamb). But ~two months ago they started refusing the Naturallife all together. And by that I mean they wouldn’t even nibble at it. As far as I could tell, it was the same formula as it ever was, but who knows what changed? Who knows how long it takes the labels to reflect changes in the food mixture inside?

I’ve been having the same problem with Newman’s here, never enough in stock and when it is, it’s alwasy one of the ones with seafood, which I’ve been avoiding since it looks like at least one of my cats is allergic to it (yet LOVES it). Wellness is good but lower in protein than some of the others, and since I was on a weight loss plan for them I didn’t want to feed it exclusively else they get protein deprived. Plus it’s hard for me to get around here, only a couple of stores stock it and they’re not easy to get to. I can find Evo in completely different hard to find stores, and I just started buying it in the large cans (the ones ~dog food size) since it’s less $ that way and I still go thru them fast with my fat, fat kitties. Even so, Evo is high in calories, so I have to watch the quantity and alternate it with less dense foods.

FF I can find everywhere, in theory, but I’m limited to certain formulas which aren’t always there. After reading the labels I stopped using the Chunky Chicken/Chunky Turkey Feasts Dr Gaspar recommended since they both list wheat gluten on the labels. I assume this has been a relatively recent change, since Dr Gaspar has said numerous times to avoid anything with wheat gluten, yet recommended these particluar formulas out of the… how many?... 70+varieties they make. Now I can tell you, out of all those formulas FF makes there are only 3 that do not have wheat gluten AND did not list seafood as a main ingredient: Gourmet Chicken Feast, Turkey & Giblets Feast, and Tender Liver & Chicken Feast… there’s a fourth, Chopped Grill Feast, but a) you can rarely find it, and more importantly b) the #1 ingredient is the name of this thread - meat by-products, so DEFINATELY not going with that! But Dr Gaspar also said to avoid food that has organ meats primary on the list and all three of the gluten-free formulas have liver 2nd or 3rd, not to mention the Gourmet Chx Feast has fish listed 4th on it’s list. And all the other FFs mentioned above have meat &/or poultry b-p in them.

How do I know all these details? I got disgusted one day and spent over an hour in PetSmart reading ALL the labels on EVERY flavour, and even took notes so I’d get it right. And that’s just the time I spent looking at FF! Then I moved on to the other brands they had. I won’t even tell you how long I was in that flippin store! *grrr!* Let’s just say I’d rather use something else… anything else that doesn’t have b-p in it… or wheat gluten… or corn… or seafood…  and now I’ve just knocked off 98-99% of the catfood options out there. *sigh*

But right now I’d settle for my cats to eat anything. They’ve now refused to eat the Naturallife, Evo, FFs and even the Publix version of FF (that meets the same label criteria as above)and were barely eating the Wellness. Since they refused the old stuff I tried new and they weren’t happy there either. They wouldn’t touch Merrick (Terducken, I think), and picked at Natural Balance. And I’d switched to Newman’s kibble on the side and they weren’t eating much of that either. I got really worried since cats will starve themselves, so I caved and literally popped open a can of Starkist and poured tuna water on their wet food. They LOOOOVE tuna even though it’s bad for them, so thankfully it worked… a little. They ate around the edges and licked up the juices. So then I sprinkled a little tuna on their food… and they picked out the tuna pieces and left the rest. *sigh* The next time I literally took a fork to it and blended the tuna into their wet food so they couldn’t pick it out… and it worked!! They ate the whole thing!! HUGE sigh of relief! But I can’t do that all the time, so I did one more blend of Evo + a tiny bit of tuna and this last feeding was back to straight Evo. *walks over to food dishes* There’s just a little bit left around the edges. *Whew!* Hopefully that’s over now.

My two cats are very picky eaters, and I don’t like to give them foods with by-products, which most of them have.  I have been feeding them chicken baby food and adding pro-biotics, Brewer’s Yeast, Fish Oil and a cat vitamin to the baby food.  They love this “formula”, and their coats are shiny and beautiful.  They also eat Pet Promise dry food.  I hope this is giving them the complete nutrition they need.

neko - 14 March 2009 05:33 PM

I feed my cat Newman’s Own too; the only kind he seems to like is the Turkey formula. He will eat the Turkey and Veggie but not as well as the regular turkey. The problem I have with feeding him Newmans, like you said, it is hard to get it. our local Walmart stocks it, but half the time they run out of it. It is frustrating because they have two aisles of cheap crap I wouldn’t feed to a rat and only stock four cases of the Newman’s Own, which usually sells out the same day the put it on the shelves. You’d think they would figure it out that maybe they would sell more of it if they kept more of it in stock.

All of the other stores in my area stock worthless cheap food.

Another brand of food that I feed Courage is Evo; it is meat-based and grain-free; they do use turkey meal and salmon meal, which I’m a little skeptical about…but you can read about it at this link:

http://www.evopet.com/products/default.asp?id=1501

Felidae makes a good food too and they claim they use human grade meat. The first case I bought of that was the new one, Felidae Cat and Kitten Formula with Chicken, Turkey, Lamb and Ocean Fish. That one is in a silver can. Courage ate that one ok but the second case I bought was their original flavor, which someone suggested to me because it doesn’t have lamb in it. Courage refused to eat it so I gave it to my Mom’s cats, who will normally eat anything in front of them. All three of them wouldn’t touch it either, though the dog loved it.  Another canned food I have heard good things about is Wellness.  I’m going to try that tomorrow, since I am going through a town that has a real pet food store in it.

If you are looking for a place online to order canned food from, I order from PetfoodDirect.com

http://www.petfooddirect.com/store/brands4dept.asp?dept_id=131

They have a huge assortment of canned cat food to choose from, including Newmans Own and other all-natural foods.  The prices are decent too.

thanks for the links.. i will try this out if my kitty loves it..