Comment on Daily Discussion Thread: 😎 Friday 29 November

• melbaboutown@aussie.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  It’s really hard to work out what food is good. The high protein grain free ‘paleo’ ones are decent though, as grain fillers can mean they’re hungry again fast and it makes them chunky.

  It’s expensive especially on such a tight budget but I have Melbcat on Taste Of The Wild for her allergies and lucked into a fairly decent homebrand wet food she can eat

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• StudChud@aussie.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Phew okay, so I literally just wrote out and took photos of all the food Mickey gets:

  Dine wet food is the worst: it does not indicate at all what the Crude Ash % NOR Crude Fibre % is, so difficult to determine whether it has all vitamins and minerals, however the ingredient list, while small, does contain Taurine. And the ingredients are easy enough to Google.

  Fancy Feast/Purina wet food is way more transparent, with crude ash, crude fat, crude fibre, and crude protein % listed, as well as having a detailed ingredient list that can be googled as well.

  Fussy Cat Grain Free Dry Food (salmon, whitefish, olive oil flavour, 2.5kg bag) is okay, but also does not list crude ash % either, and while they do have an ingredient list it is quite vague (e.g. it lists Meat Meal but it could be poultry, fish, or beef derived). However, this brand does contain Omega Fatty Acids 3 and 6, which is not recognised as essential nutrients for cats by the AAFCO Cat Food Nutrient Profiles.

  I think the better brands would be Hills Science Diet, however Mickey did not like it.

  Trying to provide a well balance diet for cats is difficult due to each cat being very individual (same with humans, some can eat heaps of junk food and be fine, whereas other humans would get sick). It involves heaps of research to work out the best diet your cat can handle, which can be assisted by vet recommendations.

  Contrary to popular belief, Vets are not paid by the cat food companies to shill food, they get maybe a branded notepad and pen, or merch. So a vet who specialises in cat diets, based on blood work, is almost essential for cats with diet issues (be it over or under weight, emesis, diarrhea, lethargy, etc).

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  • melbaboutown@aussie.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    May I ask where you were able to check the food out? I found resources online for American foods but always struggle finding anything with Aussie brands.

    There’s the option of a vet nutritionist for safe balanced homemade diets if anyone wants to go that route. They have recipes diets for healthy cats without special needs (cheaper) and can make custom medical diet recipes for individual cats (expensive).

    Note: Any homemade cat food recipes online should be avoided like the plague as they won’t be balanced and not getting enough taurine can send your cat blind. Treats for occasional use might be ok but not the main diet. That’s also the reason you can’t feed cats on dog food. Dogs can make their own taurine but cats can’t

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    • StudChud@aussie.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      I gathered most of this data just from the packaging, which is why I’m a tad sus of Dine now. If I Google anything, I tend to stipulate “Aus” in the search, as I don’t trust the US websites (and they use imperial, which CBF converting), though they are prolly fine lol.

      Vetmed documents (PDFs) are also available, though the tend to just state what a cat requires over whether which foods have what in them.

      I used this msdvetmanual.com/…/nutritional-requirements-of-sm…

      And this (and it’s source FEDIAF) vpets.com.au/…/nutrient-requirements-for-cats/#%3….

      To understand what cats require of each mineral, vitamin, macronutrient, and amino acid (Taurine being an amino acid). I then used the manufacturers websites to determine whether it would contain these.

      Avoid friskies if possible, I haven’t looked into them, but it made Mickey very unwell.

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      • melbaboutown@aussie.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Thanks, I’m saving this comment to look through the links

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