Daily Kitten Chat Forum » Cats & Kittens

1. 

   Hello! I just got 2 kittens yesterday. They are about 2 months old and super, super cute and sweet. Their names are Romeo and Juliet. :-)
   I'm American but I live in Chile. I've always been a stickler for proper nutrition and care for animals but so far I can't find the kinds of things I'm looking for here. I've read wet food and raw meat/bone diet is best, but I sort of doubt I'll be able to find high quality foods like that here (I can't even get organic chicken here, and if I did manage to find it it would cost a fortune...a bag of organic lettuce costs $10!!!). I'm unsure what's the best thing to feed my kittens. We bought a big bag of dried food from RoyalCanin called "BabyCat" (http://products.royalcanin.us/products/cat-food/babycat-34.aspx) that seems to be high quality with many vitamins, but contains a lot of grains. My boyfriend bought a small package of Whiskas salmon wet food today--low quality but they ate it right up. I don't feel good about feeding them that regularly however. I've been looking at this website and feeling like I may not be able to right the proper food for my kitties: http://www.catinfo.org/?link=cannedfoods#Commercial_Foods

   Does anyone have any advice on the best diet, that will not cost a fortune in terms of time and money, for such young kittens? Thanks a lot!! :)

   Posted 1 year ago by gatitomama #

2. 

   Dry food is dry food is dry food. I wouldn't place much stock in expensive brands. Just get a bag of Purina Kitten Chow. Break it up with Purina Liver & Chicken, and Purina Turkey & Giblets in the cans. It's best not to change cats foods too often in search of 'better' foods. Best diet healthwise is probably raw food. But it's going to require a lot more time and energy to make sure it is done right; one can't simply leave out raw hamburger or turkey for them. Others are more informed on the specifics of How To do Raw.

   Posted 1 year ago by Mojo #

3. 

   Welcome to TDK, the fluffiest site on the Internet!
   If you want more advice about raw feeding then one of our members is quite the expert in that field. Keep this thread bumped up and Furryfriends50 (or FF50) should be along soon to explain her thoughts on the subject.
   Mojo is right though...don't keep changing their food. Find something they like and stick to it. Personally, I have always fed my cats and dogs Purina brand and never had any problem with it. Everybody has been happy, healthy and lived to ripe old ages.
   BTW, do you have pictures of Romeo and Juliet? We like cute kitty pictures :)

   Posted 1 year ago by roxysmommy #

4. 

   Choose the best ingredients you can and otherwise just love them.

   Posted 1 year ago by JB #

5. 

   Alright, thanks for the advice! I found out Royal Canin has a wet kitten food too, might get that if I can find it. I don't plan to change the food often in the future--I just got them yesterday so I want to make a good choice for the long term. Also, Juliet has discharge from her eyes accumulating at the edge. Other than that there don't seem to be many signs of conjunctivitis. I'm taking them to the vet next week...they also have fleas. We sprayed them with the Frontline spray today but still found live fleas...maybe it hasn't worked yet or maybe I have to spray them more (Romeo is black so I can't find them on him, only on Juliet). Juliet's tail also curls under instead of up, like a opossum tail or something. Is that just her trait or does she have a disease? Anyone seen that before?
   Ah the joys of new kitten parenthood. Juliet is very sensitive and cries a lot (she's the runt of the litter and a real sweety). Romeo is a loverboy!

   I have lots of pictures, but nothing uploaded!

   Posted 1 year ago by gatitomama #

6. 

   I'm not sure how often kittens should be sprayed with Frontline...if you are still finding live fleas, you might just have to give the Frontline time to work and kill them off. I would definitely check with your vet before you spray them again though, just to be on the safe side.
   Can't wait to see pictures :)

   Posted 1 year ago by roxysmommy #

7. 

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diatomaceous_earth

   Diatomaceous Earth--must be food grade is a safe way to treat fleas. You might try in a garden shop--they may have something for you!

   Welcome to TDK may you come and chat often!

   Posted 1 year ago by SoxsMom #

8. 

   The discharge at juliet's eyes may be the cat flu, easy to fix up. Yoda (the gray kitteh in my pic) had it and it was cured with 2 weeks of antibiotics and then he got his shot for it. I feed my fur-babies a mix of the "healthy" dry food and "junky" wet food and they like it. 1/6th a can or wet friskies cat food with 2 tablespoons of Iams kitten. They like the balance and so do I. They think they're eating chocolate bars while I know that they are getting the nutrients they need. Even if it is a dry food.

   Posted 1 year ago by Alex_kitten #

9. 

   Welcome to TDK. I thought I'd chime in that I have sibling kits (I call them my 3 Muskateers). I've had them since I rescued them at about 5 wks. of age. For the first 12-14 months,I fed them Royal Canon kitten kibble with Friskies wet. I gradually switched their kibble over to an adult cat brand. They (& my other 8 cats) are now all on Purina cat chow. They grew up good & healthy on that. In fact Spunky,the biggest of the 3,weighs in at a whopping 20 lbs. of solid muscle. His brother Rusty is 17 lbs. & their baby sister,well,she's tiny but,weighs a solid 10 lbs. I know it was the Royal Canon that helped w/them growing up healthy.
   Good Luck w/your 2 new ones.

   Posted 1 year ago by feral #

10. 

    Wet food, any wet food, is better than dry. I promised Milo, before he lost the battle to CRF, that I would never feed any cat of mine dry food again. His CRF was caused by years of dehydrating, and low quality (Science Diet) dry food. I don't care, how "healthy" the dry food is, it is still going to cause a state of constant dehydration in a cat and leads to so many otherwise preventable diseases. http://www.dailykitten.com/chat/topic/31790 has some of my cats stories with how raw feeding changed their lives.

    I encourage everyone to read through http://catinfo.org/ for info on wet vs dry food.

    I don't feed organic meat, I couldn't afford it either ;) Mine get whatever meat I can find such as chicken, beef, turkey, lamb, heart, kidney, liver, etc. Here is a site that has some info about raw feeding: http://rawfedcats.org/nature.htm

    Posted 1 year ago by furryfriends50 #

11. 

    Thank you, FF, for reminding me of the superiority of canned food over dried. My beloved Cloud (shown in my avatar) died of CRF in 2008 and I always suspected, based on my research, that eating a primarily dried-food diet might have been a causal factor. Subsequent research showed a definite link between a certain feline vaccine (for feline distemper I think) and development of CRF. You will recall I was living in Costa Rica this time last year, and just starting to try to get my cats on a raw food regimen. Since that time my life kind of went through too many changes to pursue that. I never even got the raw-food mixes back from Costa Rica--they were among a number of items stolen from me. Notwithstanding that, I am going to phase out the dried food and just give them Purina canned food for now. I have never yet seen a cat who didn't prefer canned to dry food. I just checked one of my books again too, by a vet, he doesn't recommend a dry-food only diet. Not that I've been doing dried food only--I give them canned food in the a.m. and p.m. twice daily. But now I'm going to phase out the dry entirely. Although I don't know if there is any clinical data to support it causing CRF, I think all dry or having dried food as a mainstay for cats MIGHT in fact predispose them to developing CRF. My book doesn't say that exactly but implies it. I agree that dried food inevitably leads to constant dehydration, because cats don't generally drink a lot of water, and the water content of dry food is quite low.

    Posted 1 year ago by Mojo #

12. 

    Now I feel like a bad mommy for feeding my babies dry food.

    Posted 1 year ago by HuddysMama #

13. 

    Ah, Mojo, you haven't met my cat Dom. She won't touch wet food or people food. She's positively addicted to dry food, and I haven't been quite willing to starve her to the point needed to get her to switch to wet. However, I offer wet food daily to all my kitties, and I restrict the amount of dry food they get.

    Now that I have a big freezer, though, I'm thinking that raw looks more and more do-able. Yay!

    Posted 1 year ago by anncetera2 #

14. 

    Unless, you ship the freezer over here ;) I'm looking for another freezer before next deer season...hopefully I can get something cheap enough off of craigslist. Someone I know is willing to give me all the venison scraps/organs that they don't use and they process a lot of people's deer for them...so that makes for a lot of free meat for me!!!! Just need to find a place to put it eventually.

    A life of constantly being dehydrated is very hard on a cats system - which is unfortunatly why so many cats get diseases like CRF. Milo lost the battle to CRF two years after being diagnosed with it and during those two years he was fed mostly wet food. Though I would guess that the chemicals in the Science Diet didn't help either with his getting CRF :(

    Posted 1 year ago by furryfriends50 #

15. 

    Ann, I have a friend who has a Siamese who only likes dried food too. Obviously we have to make allowances for what our cats are willing to eat. But dried food has only 10% water, far less than any natural diet. And cats by nature do not drink much water at all. A dry-food diet will force cats to drink more water than they normally would. Anyway, I'm no expert. I would encourage people to research in books and online about this. My intuitive assessment so far is that dry food, or a 85% dry food diet (which I've been giving them) is probably going to predispose them to kidney disease, by keeping them chronically dehydrated.

    What we do know is that once a cat gets kidney disease, one of the first symptoms is chronic thirst, and drinking lots of water. So HM, I wouldn't feel bad, but perhaps you can try to introduce different types of canned food, to find one they like, and then gradually wean them from dried.

    Posted 1 year ago by Mojo #

16. 

    Velvet had CRF the last six months of her life and the only thing she would eat was canned food. I suspect she also had a bad tooth, but surgery for a 17 year old cat is not advised. so she ate canned food and was happy...

    Posted 1 year ago by CSBM #

17. 

    Cheri, I'm sorry you lost Velvet to CRF. It is a very harsh disease. My Cloud had it for 29 months but eventually succumbed to it at age 12. Still, he far outlived the vet's prognosis. I still miss Cloud.

    Posted 1 year ago by Mojo #

18. 

    Thanks for the replies, everyone...I intuitively feel wet food to be much better for cats than dry food. My issue is, here in Chile I cannot find any good quality food. I had a little meltdown at the store yesterday because the only brands they had were Whiskas and other by-product, chemical filled brands. Actually there were only 3 brands total, I think. Trust me if I could find it, I'd be feeding them the best wet food. I'm thinking I might be able to order some good stuff online...Royal Canin is a big brand here with vets, and there is a wet version of the dry kitten food I'm currently feeding them. That might be a good option...anyway, I'm off to the vet with my kittens in a box (no carrier yet lol), so maybe I can buy something good there... :-/

    Posted 1 year ago by gatitomama #

19. 

    Gatitomama, I'm thinking non-organic raw food would be fine for your babies and preferable to the alternatives. What does your supermarket carry in the way of people food? Canned sardines, minced beef and beef heart, chicken livers, calves fry, veal, ox heart, steak and kidney, gravy beef? Have a look. Check with your butcher.

    Posted 1 year ago by jcat #

20. 

    What brands can you get and could you find out the ingrediants?

    Posted 1 year ago by furryfriends50 #

21. 

    KM

    Posted 1 year ago by Buttercup #

22. 

    The only kinds of wet food I've seen are Whiskas and some other one that looked mediocre (and they didn't have many in stock, meaning, I could well be stuck without kitten food), as well is Prescription Diet. I think there was another that looked just as awful...mostly by-products. We emailed Royal Canin in Argentina to see if we could order some wet BabyCat, but they haven't replied. Of course there was no shop on the website. -_- Why would anything be convenient. lol

    Posted 1 year ago by gatitomama #

23. 

    Welcome to TDK! I don't know anything about cat food as I have dogs but just wanted to say hello.

    Posted 1 year ago by Shelley #

24. 

    GM, I'm surprised you can't find any kitten food in Chile. Are you out in the boonies or what?

    Posted 1 year ago by Mojo #

25. 

    Do you know anyone in the States who could buy a box of wetfood cans and ship them to you? Granted it would take a while and be expensive, but it maybe your only option. You could then reimburse them.

    Also, I've read that goats milk is good to feed kittens, at least as a supplement.

    Posted 1 year ago by ladysky61 #

26. 

    Nope, I'm in the capital, Santiago, and I was looking in the huge import store. There was one short isle for cat food and it was mostly Purina Cat Chow and Whiskas. Basically if that store doesn't have it, nowhere will. And as for shipping, Chilean customs wouldn't let in something like that. They're super strict about food and animal products. :-/ My best hope is to find something online in South America and get it shipped here. But I can't find anything decent even online. ARGH!! :(

    Posted 1 year ago by gatitomama #

27. 

    On an ex-pat forum, everyone was complaining about how they can't find good quality cat or dog food here. :-( Maybe my best bet is to mix a junky wet food with the Royal Canin dry food. :-/

    Posted 1 year ago by gatitomama #

28. 

    If I were you, Gatitomama, I'd just take the plunge and go raw, and/or slightly cooked home-made cat food. It will probably cost you less in the long run than sending away for expensive canned food, and while it will take longer to prepare, you can freeze quantities of food you make. I am moving toward that option myself, as I don't like what is in the Purina canned food and dry food is no good. www.catinfo.org.

    Posted 1 year ago by Mojo #

29. 

    OK, I bought some semi-ok wet food today (they only had the beef & liver flavor left so I bought the rest they had...hopefully they'll get the chicken one back in soon!) and I'm changing them over to eating mostly the wet food. Boyfriend and I are planning to move to the countryside in a couple of months, and he thinks we can find some good local meats out there...so, I'm going to transition them to the raw food diet later. We are visiting my parents in the US in April-May and so I think we'll stick to the commercial foods until we return, just so whoever is taking care of the kittens doesn't mess it up. :-P
    Furryfriends50: does the e-book on that site say the exact diet instructions for raw feeding? I'm a little hesitant to do it without knowing exactly what I should feed, especially as my kittens are young. Thanks! :-)

    Posted 1 year ago by gatitomama #

30. 

    I never did get the e-book on the rawfedcats.org site.

    Raw feeding isn't much of a science though. If you want, I can email you some links to a few raw feeding forums, but I assume it is against the rules to just post them here. My email is furryfriends50 at rocketmail dot com.

    Posted 1 year ago by furryfriends50 #

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