Innova Evo Canned Cat Food

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Originally Posted by NCarver

Yes, which is why I don't consider it a "gourmet" cat food. However, you should know that the meat by-products are not being used as the main source of meat in Fancy Feast. I just looked at a bunch of flavors, and meat by-products is the fifth or sixth ingredient. The first three are virtually always some kind of broth and two regular meats. In the flavors that include wheat gluten to thicken their "gravy," meat by-products is always listed AFTER the wheat gluten. In one, it is even listed after spinach (there are little bits of spinach in a number of the flavors). From this I conclude that meat by-products makes up a very small fraction, so I am not concerned (even if also not pleased). Fancy Feast is nothing like the cheap brands that have meat by-products or poutry by-products as their primary meat ingredients. How much wheat gluten does it take to thicken the gravy in a 3oz can? Darn little, and yet the meat by-products are even less. So I am not losing any sleep over this. On the other hand, if we could find some "better" foods that our cats genuinely liked, that would be great. Having tried most everything on the market in the US, we have had no luck! If you are dead set against feeding your cat any amount of meat by-products I can certainly understand that. My advice then is to not ever let them have any Fancy Feast or they will no longer be willing to eat any "gourmet" cat foods. That has been our experience. Part of the problem is that most of the gourmet canned foods are these sticky pates that are almost impossible for the cats to eat--they just spread all over the bottom of a dish and cannot be picked up. The only better quality foods we have had any luck with are Natural Balance and Pro Plan Selects.

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Thanks!!! Very helpful :smile:

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Originally Posted by Meredith

Thanks - your MCs only eat 2 cans each per day?? The 3oz cans? :suprised: Enzo eats like 13oz a day........... how old are your kitties?


[EDIT] Oops, I forgot... you feed dry too :) That makes sense! I read the Fancy Feast feeding guidelines and it says to give them one 3oz can per 3 pounds of body weight. So, that would mean that Enzo would currently need 4 cans per day! Eek! Does it work out cheaper to feed wet AND dry? I've never fed Enzo dry food... just not sure how I feel about feeding dry. What is Fancy Feast dry like?

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Right, it is because they eat dry too. When Zephyr (now one) and Remy (now two) were both growing rapidly there certainly were days when we went through (a lot) more cans. Also one of our girls eats mainly dry, so rarely more than half a can per day. The main reason we feed dry is that they love to graze off and on and we just cannot be getting canned food out every hour for somebody. Dry is somewhat cheaper too. Remember that (as came up in another recent thread) the canned food is 75-80% water while dry is more like 10%. So there isn't really that much food value in a $.75 3oz can of food. Even paying $25 for a 7lbs bag of high quality dry I think you get more for your money. Plus all of ours like the dry too. There are times they will eat dry even when there is wet food sitting there. However we also know that they all drink good amounts of water. If I had a cat that drank little water I would avoid dry as much as possible.

I think there is some kind of Fancy Feast dry but it is not that good. One of our dry foods is Pro Plan Selects, which is Purina's "gourmet" dry (Purina also makes Fancy Feast in case this was not clear). The Purina "gourmet" canned is also Pro Plan Selects. There are only about 5 different flavors, and our cats like some OK but will not eat it long term. I am quite sure it does not have any by-products. Costs about 50% more than Fancy Feast "Elegant Medleys" in part because it is available only at Petco here rather than Walmart.

You can even find a few cheap things that are OK if you read labels. The 9 Lives "Tuna Select" is basically just tuna and water, and you get four 5.5oz cans for $1.30 or something like that.

Thanks!

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Originally Posted by candes

Teddies vet ponited out something that really makes sense. A cats "normal diet" is by products. Brains, intestines etc....

Oh and unless you buy "top shelf" premium food, they all will have by products. Even science diet has by products (mid shelf)..

On the wellness, I feel teddies muscle mass has picked up. Unless it is nornal growth.. And his coat is starting to really look nice.

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Thanks! What does Wellness look like? Is it a pate, or?

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Originally Posted by candes

Pate. But I can cut it into nice chunks with a fork, since it ain't overly mushy.

I know you are worried about by products. But I have a concern that is beyond this. I will not feed my family anything from China, and that includes my kitties. Busniess folks in China will poisen babies for a profit. And almost killed my moggie nala. Most cat foods have ingredients from China. That is the main reason I use Wellness.

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Thanks!

I have settled on Felidae... I really like the look of the ingredients - I hope Enzo likes it! If he doesn't... I'll try Wellness! Only a couple of weeks til he arrives :rofl:

What are the disadvantages of grain in cat food?

That's quite an upsetting video. I couldn't work out what the point of the tests were but the dogs were so lack-luster it was heart breaking, and all of them seem to have some sort of wound or sore around their back legs. It's ironic, I've been trying to find biscuits to swap the RC Kitten 36 with and have tried 4 or 5 brands, and the only two they seem to like as much as RC K36 are RC Maine Coon (which encourages runny bum syndrome) or Iams, and I'm certainly not buying THAT again.
Thanks for posting, Candes. It amazes me that these firms get away with it. I realise some stuff needs to be tested on someone or something, but whatever they're doing doesn't seem to agree with those dogs, or the kitten, and I don't feel inclined to fund them in the future. :pissed:

I don't think I will watch that video... I'm too much of a coward and afraid I'll lose sleep over it. :stressed:
I wonder if these horrible things are going on at all the big petfood producers...:sad2:

That video is awful... how sad.

I'll lighten the mood here! I've read some reviews about Fancy Feast and a lot of people state that Fancy Feast is like feeding your cats McDonalds everyday... what are your opinions?

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Originally Posted by Meredith

I'll lighten the mood here! I've read some reviews about Fancy Feast and a lot of people state that Fancy Feast is like feeding your cats McDonalds everyday... what are your opinions?

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My opinion is that you can find virtually any idiotic and ill informed opinion that you could conceive of on the Interwebs, and when it comes to pet food virtually all of what you read on most websites is nothing but rubbish. How is that for lightening the mood? :smile: Of course I actually do mean every word of this!

I cannot think of any sense in which Fancy Feast could be considered equivalent to McDonalds except for its ubiquity. I guess if you are somebody that feels the need to demonstrate your supposed love for your pet by buying overpriced boutique food from overpriced boutique pet shops, then you will have to try to feel superior to other people by denigrating cheaper foods. It seems like I have already posted a good deal of factual information answering questions you have asked about Fancy Feast previously. I know lots of people that feed Fancy Feast--including MC breeders--and they are very happy with it. If you want to waste hundreds of dollars on overpriced boutique cat foods that you will probably end up throwing out because your cats won't eat them, be my guest. Already been there and done that. Learned our lesson.

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Originally Posted by candes

Well, it is inexpensive for those on a limited budget. Wouldn't feed it to my babies though. Mostly due to chinese ingredients.

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Uh, it is the most expensive mainstream canned cat food in the US. 9 Lives and the like are inexpensive. Fancy Feast is only inexpensive when compared to boutique brands at overpriced pet stores. If you feel the need to pay over a buck for 3 oz of 80% water then go to Petco to get your Fancy Feast, as they will oblige you. Medleys are $.80/3oz can at Walmart. We go through at least 8-10 of these per day. So inexpensive??? You must have a heck of a much better paying job than I do, Candes, cause I think that spending $7 or $8 per day for what is 80% water seems not too cheap and definitely not for those on a limited budget. (We also spend a pretty penny on dry foods.)

Purina announced during the Chinese melamine scandal that they would begin testing all wheat gluten and similar ingredients. Since Purina has the resources to do this, I am not concerned. One thing we learned during that incident was that most of the boutique canned pet foods are actually being manufactured by somebody else and so the boutique brands have no control over the source of ingredients in their high priced food. Lots of luck guaranteeing there are absolutely no Chinese-sourced ingredients in food these days.

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Originally Posted by elismom

I agree with you on the Wellness food.

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Wellness has two different "quality" levels: plain Wellness and Wellness Core. None of our four cats will eat the Wellness Core canned or the plain Wellness canned; thrown out $10 or so trying them several times last year again. Wellness Core dry does look to be a good quality food, so we tried it (again) 6mos ago. All four cats went and sniffed it, but then just walked away. Since I had spent $10 on a tiny bag, though, I decided to leave it out. Turns out that while none of the four will eat it as their primary dry food, three of them occasionally eat some of it for a snack. We continue to buy small amounts and leave it out. The plain Wellness dry on the other hand is nothing special ingredient/nutrition wise.

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Originally Posted by candes

(Yes we buy 3 different types of dry food. One for each cat.)

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We also are buying three different dry foods. Hadn't really intended to do this, but when I bought a bag of the Blue Wilderness just to try, Zephyr immediately completely switched to it. Two of the other three occasionally eat some of it (along with the occasional Wellness Core snack), but primarily eat Pro Plan Selects chicken. The fourth cat eats only Pro Plan Selects. What we don't do for these guys. Most people I know buy cheap bags of dry at Walmart, put it down and that is that; the cat eventually has to eat it or starve. We used to also have Pro Plan Selects salmon, but at some point the then two cats decided they much preferred the chicken. Probably need to try the salmon again so that I can be buying four different types of dry. :grin:

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Originally Posted by elismom

My fella likes the Core and it's cat and kitten so we've settled on that for dry as he had no use at all for the Wellness dry kitten. He wouldn't even look at the canned Core but does like the Wellness canned kitten. You're absolutely right that there isn't much that I wouldn't do for him at this point! I just feel so guilty that it took us SO long to figure out what was wrong with him when we first got him, nearly 2 months and $1000 worth of vet bills before we got the bacteria diagnosed and treated properly, that I've tried nearly every food on the market in an effort to find something that he will chow down on and get caught up on his growth. He's a particularly fussy eater which I'm not at all accustomed to (suffice it to say that the barn cats where I board my horse are VERY well fed with his rejects and follow me around like the Pied Piper!). Anyway I'm just wondering if the amount that he's eating is sufficient in relation to what other MC kittens eat.

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Can you remind me what bacterial infection he had, and did you ever determine how he likely got it?

They can catch up very rapidly. Our boy Zephyr had to have emergency surgery for intussusception at 16 weeks, and ate almost nothing for two weeks. Dropped about half a pound of weight. Within two weeks after he was back to eating "normally" his weight was back on its original track, and he is now a very big boy (20 lbs at 18mos). I say eating "normally" because it was hardly normal--he ate like a pig--would have done any dog proud. He was eating canned food probably a dozen times a day; we fed him whenever he came and begged.

Remember that the canned foods are mainly water (typically 70-80%) so they do not provide that much food value compared to dry. On the other hand, you do need to be certain they get enough water in them when eating dry, so if they eat mainly dry try to monitor their water intake (easiest by monitoring their water output :smile:). The Wellness Core is very high protein, so they don't need as much of it as some other foods.

Here is something I posted in the weight chart thread:

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I was just looking at the Zephyr info I posted, and it is interesting that there are two gaps of six weeks. Between 18 and 24 weeks he gained 2.5lbs, so .42lbs/week, while between 24 and 30 weeks (7mos) he gained 3.1lbs, so .52lbs/week. I think that is quite amazing, for a 10lbs cat to be adding half a pound a week! This appears to be his period of peak weight gain in terms of absolute weight. On the other hand, in the five weeks from 11 to 16 weeks, his weight increased by 63%, which seems rather astounding.

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So your guy probably should be in a high growth period.