Anyone got any recommendations for complete feeds for cats?  I have an 8 yr old lad and an 11 yr old gal whose teeth leave a lot to be desired.  I've always fed them tinned meat and left a bowl of biscuits out as well (which they eat only when starving and when they can't persuade me to give them their meat early)!

I'm thinking of trying to change them over to a complete feed to help with keeping their teeth clean now they've had a good clean up at the vets and although I could pop into our local pet store and ask someone there I'd rather see if anyone here could recommend something.

Thanks,
Helen

my mum uses JWB for her cat having changed over to that from Hills (the vet was selling!) he is a fussy puss and has changed over to this fine, he is also 8-9 years old!!

I did the opposite to you :)  As my cats got older they needed the moisture in tinned food ;)
Their teeth did get 'plaquey' but I bought LOGIC gel and with regular use it did the trick, all calculus just flicked off with a fingernail :D :D

You can buy LOGIC at the vets or cheaper at the Canine Chemist

I ordered it with wormers and it came post free :D :D

Hope this helps
Dill

I have a friend who has a cat that is very prone to tartar and she uses Hills tartar control or whatever it's called and really uses it for him and all the rest of her colony.

Arden Grange do cat food, that I have been told is very good?

You really are best off NOT feeding dried ONLY as that can cause a lot of problems with bladder stones and urinary tract infections -cats just do no drink enough water to be fed dried only. I always feed canned in the morning and dried in the evening so they always have both. My outside (as in cat houses and stud boys) cats get fed dried only during the summer as when it's hot it's impossible to feed meat as blowflies lay eggs in it even after an hour or so if not finished at once, but I've never noticed any difference in teeth at all regardless of what they eat. I've also had the odd cat that would olnly eat dried or only meat, and again there has been no difference in teeth between them.

I feed Denes canned and Royal Canin dried to my lot. I know some people that manage to feed their cats JW but I'd never do it myself as it tends to really upset them. Iams is good as well, as is Techni-Cal but I think really the majority of breeders/exhibitors seemt to feed either RC or Iams. Over the years I've certaunly found RC to be best.

Edited to say: Hills is good too but my cats always hated the shape of the pieces.

My cats have done really well on wafcol,they do however get supplemented with plenty of fresh meat,organs and rmb's.

Helen,raw chicken wing tips and necks should help a great deal in keeping your cats teeth and gums healthy.

my cats are only fed dry food, occassionally i might give them a tin of tuna or a tin of corn beef but otherwise its mainly biscuits, i stopped giving them tinned when the amount of flies was unbearable, (feeding tins in morning and coming home to a cloud of flies just isnt good :( ) both cats hunt so supplement themselves with meat that way, they have to be wormed regularly because of this, i also know that my older cat of 10 yrs though he looks half his age has a second home, they weight gain is a dead give away, he also comes home with a fresh brushed look :) my cats are quite fussy and the only biscuits they will eat is afood called breederpak, the cheapest cat food going, tried other foods but they refuse to eat it

tanya

Breederpak is dented tins of other food that has had the labels removed, the star rating on them shows how high the quality. i.e. the 5 star is Whiskas etc. :)

they only eat the dry food, but if you give the whiskas or any other named brand out of the proper bag they wont eat it, try telling me my cats cant read :)

tanya

Marianne, I've been feeding the kitten a sample of Hill's dried kitten food (perk from work!) which seems to really suit her (happy bowels), and she liked the Denes can I got her. But that's hideously expensive and not easy to get - what would be a good alternative canned food? We used to feed our old cats Whiskas and the cats lived to 18, so it can't be bad! - do they do a kitten food and is it any good? I've got to get her something wet this morning - she's not going for the scraps of cooked chicken I've given her. :rolleyes:

I know what you mean about Denes being hard to get hold of and expensive, we've even had to ask our wholesalers to buy us in 10 trays especially for us as they stopped stocking it, saying nobody bought it. I tend to now rear my kittens on RC Kitten and Whiskas canned Kitten Junior -they do fine on it and it has the added advantage of everyone that buys a kitten are able to easily get hold of Whiskas. :)

Goodo! I'll go and see if I can get Whiskas kitten tins. :)

I'm torn between two people to have the kitten; a difficult dilemma. My friend and her husband would be brilliant - they're lovely people, and petless at the moment. But my mother's saying that she'd take her 'if nobody else will, dear'. But Mother's 83, and with the best will in the world is unlikely to outlive the Kit. But Mother desperately needs company ... :( Difficult.

Get your mum a more sedate elderly cat from the CPL as the oldies are the ones that are overlooked in the pens and give the kitten to your friends.   See easy peasy!

I gave my mum my CPL moggie to look after when I went to dogsit one year and I never got her back!  It gives my mum something to go out shopping for, to cook all manner of concoctions to get Demi to eat etc. but it fills her day - although I'd best add my mum is younger than your's!

Over a year ago I found out that Autarky do a complete (dry) cat food, but have I ever been able to get it anywhere!  I asked about it at their stall at Weston Park, and they said your pet shop should be able to order it, but when I asked, they just said no it's not on their list for ordering.  I just thought I'd like to try the cats on it, as the dogs are on Autarky and do well.

I have this problem with selecting puppy foods. If I rear a litter on some obscure feed, no matter how good it is the new owners aren't going to continue feeding something they have to search high and low for. So it's got to be a reasonably easily-available make.

It is why I mix my puppy foods, one I really like another easily available even in the supermarket brand and something else they can get in the Pet trade that is middle of the road price wise.  that way they can choose which way to go without drastically altering what the pups are used to.

Have you looked in the Co-Op?  Quite the coincidence, I'd just read this thread and replied to it then popped to the co-op for some lunch, and there was Autarky cat food there!  Does look very good, great ingredients compared to a lot I've seen.  The go-cat has now been retired :D

We don't have Co-op here, or Tesco's - we can get Tesco's online shopping, but last time I looked, they weren't selling Autarky on it.  Anyway, ours are on Royal Canin Persian 30 now, and do well on it, they won't eat any 'meaty' food, just turn their noses up.

Tescos sell the cat Autarky.
Tried my two on it and it gave them horrendous runs

My ol boy who lived with my Nan - he was fed go-cat biscuit and felix tinned/pouches...
He lived til he was 18yo!
My Nan still has her 9yo cat and whilst it's entirely possible that cat will outlive Nan my Dad
will have Tiffy (he also lives with my Nan). She absolutely idolises the cat and it's what also
helped her when she went in hospital - she wanted to get better quick to come home for Tiffy.
She does give my Nan company too, my Nan is in her late 80's.

Sadly Tiffy was attacked a week ago (since my ol boy died all neighbourhood cats are terrorizing Tiffy.
My ol' boy was king of the road I think - he was evil and his patch was his patch) and had to undergo
an operation to stitch her rear leg. The vets think she was attacked by another cat.
Thankfully stitches now out and lampshade off = much happier Tiffy (and Nan).
Although Dad not impressed £240 bill!

Good advice Marianne.  My male cat had terrible problems on dried food.  He ended up getting a blockage in his urianary tract.  Luckily I caught it in time and the vets managed to get a cathater in and sort him out.  I will never feed my cats dried food again!!

Sarah.

My girls have always had tinned food, now they are both getting on a bit (9yrs and 20yrs) they get meat with a sprinkle of dry in (go-cat) to get those teeth working.  The older one does have a little trouble, but she's getting better - her teeth are fairly bad but not awful, and I did only start with the dry a couple of months ago.  She needs the wet food though - evey with two meals a day she still drinks a LOT of water (failing kidneys, poor old gal), so just dry would be too much for her.  And the 9yr old doesn't like it much!

When I put both of my cats on tinned food I used Whiskers or Felix, but the smell from the litter trays was unbearable :rolleyes:  It would stink out the whole house (liquid waste stunk as well as solid :( )

Then Aldi opened nearby and I thought to give it a try.  It was brilliant, great smell when the tin was opened, and the litter tray stopped smelling so bad :)  Both cats did really well on it for many years.  Sadly they've both gone to the bridge now (last one was 18 and a half ) but I'd definately feed Aldi tinned cat food again :)

Gosh I'm surprised it has taken 8 and 11 years for yours cats teeth to turn with just tinned cat food. I took my 15 year old who always had fabulous teeth (my vet was extremely happy with her) off her usual mixture of tinned in the morning and dry the rest of the day to just tinned, stupidly thought as she was getting older it would be wiser, well her next vet visit her teeth were almost green YUk! (she's not a sit on the knee cat so had not inspected her teeth myself) my vet wanted to charge a fortune to descale her, no thank you, put dry straight back in with her food, and slowly the teeth have come back, not perfect, but on the way.

I couldn't believe how quickly they had gone bad!

Personally I would recomend a mixture of both types of food, as if your cats have been used to tinned all these years, they will really miss having actual meat to eat, given a choice they will usually go for the meat.

Mine has always had, Sainsbury's, Tesco's or Brekies dry food.

P.S. Not concentrating, you do say you also give biscuits too, so they should help with the teeth a lot.

Good or bad teeth are largely inherited. :) So in that sense the food makes little difference. I've had cats at 8-10 with virtually no teeth left, others as teenagers with a mouth full -all on same food.

It's definitely taken 8 years for our lads teeth to show unhealthy signs, but as for our 11 yo girl I'm not sure as we got her from the CPL a few years ago - her teeth were already poor and I took her to have some removed.

I think what I'll do is give them tinned meat in the evening (when it's cooler) along with their usual biscuits and just biscuits in the morning.  I've ordered some of the gel recommended in this thread, so hopefully we can save Mortimers teeth before they need removing....!

Thanks for all the advice on this thread,
Helen

Good Luck with the gel :)

I found it a godsend as my girl was 16 and I wasn't going to put her thru an op for her teeth - too worried about anaesthetic!   After a week or so I was able to flick the plaque off her teeth :)  her gums then improved and I was able to keep it that way till she died recently.  The trick is to use the nozzle and put the gel right up under the lips at the top of the gums, this way it'll have more time to work :)