Please help me find a food brand in Canada for my 3 yr old Tabby which is not all by-products/fillers/gluten etc

Question

My poor kitty started throwing up her dry medium quality, hairball formula (she has extremely long hair - 3 inches). I read online that her body was rejecting 'old familiar' ..in search of the nutrition she now critically needs.

I have tried to feed her real food like meat and fish from the human food stores, only to have her pooh pooh everything but cheap quality crunchy dried cat foods.

Now that she needs real food I tried the vet recommended high (supposedly) quality Royal Canin (really) and despite the whopping price tag it has no superior foods in it: all by-products, grains like corn corn meal, wheat, wheat gluten, corn and foods such as ground up feathers beaks and meat by-products.

My cat does not like the so-called organic, baked, holistic food that Walmart has three types of. She will nibble at the one called Pure Balance. Will have nothing to do with either flavor of Actrium, both of which I approved, also I was so happy with Pure Balance being accepted..although it is just a bite or two a day, so I mixed it with Purina which is what she likes but vomits far too often to be her food.

Imagine my delight when I was live trapping a 'dropped off' cat (yes I live in the country near a village). And in my desperation with my shrinking cat, I was delighted to feed her tuna daily for the past two weeks. She rejects salmon.

I just read the terrible reports on feeding tuna to one's cat, so even if I find it at a good price I should not stock up.

There is a Global Pet foods at the nearby city 100 miles from here where I live.

I need to get some wet food it seems that no matter the taste dry food is not the ideal food for the cat. Locally it is just Whiskas and Fancy Feast, she licks the gravy and leaves the remainder, which makes it very costly. What brand of wet cat food is in Canada and affordable, and contains none of the fillers, and to augment that, what can you recommend by name for a dry food that is affordable, also without grains/glutens/preservatives & colorings. So both wet & dry food.

I need a name of a brand which is inexpensive but not made by a company of criminals, something which has the traditional flavor which I will recognize but will not mislead either my cat nor me in terms of quality and nutritional content.

--- EDIT ---

Thank you for taking the time for my cat, yes I have tried that Vet Brand Royal Canin, and am not impressed. I bought it expecting (did not read ingredients until it was too late, I had paid and taken it home) a higher quality food. It is hardly different from what they have at the human store for cats. I do not want by-products, beaks, feathers, claws and hoofs. I want no grain fillers such as corn and wheat gluten.

I have the theory that cats are having dental problems because of the grain making sugar as it is broken down. I am looking for a different kind of product, call it holistic or natural, more like what the cat might choose for herself if she had that kind of life. She always rejects real food so it took this long for her body to say "enough, something real please." Walmart has 3 kinds of natural grain free organic no by-product brands and she will only eat one type of those 3 if I mix in Purina, which I guess I will do.

So much bad is being said about dry food so I try to find a wet food that she does not just lick the gravy off and stalk off. I have never had such a finicky eater. Thanks again & wish me luck with the 1/2 compromise & 1/2 keeping looking. At least I read enough about tuna at this site that I know now that is not the answer.

Answer 1

I feed my cat a combination of Nature's Instinct dry and wet food because it's the healthiest food that I can afford. The dry food is 83% animal ingredients and the wet food is 95%. I believe that this is much healthier for cats than products containing rice, wheat or other carbohydrate sources as their primary ingredient. If your cat rejects the healthy food, maybe you could slowly adjust her to it by mixing it into the cheap food that she likes and gradually increasing the ratio. She would probably like the Weruva canned foods, which has a consistency that is more similar to tuna. This article has other good recommendations: http://consciouscat.net/2012/03/22/the-best-food-for-your-cat/

Answer 2

For dry food, try Orijen. It is grain and gluten free. Although it does have a pretty high price, it is the best dry cat you can get for your pet. When I had a senior cat, I changed his diet to this and his health improved quite a bit. It uses good quality ingredients with very little filler.

For wet food, try Weruva. It, like Orijen, is the best wet cat food you could find. It is also grain and gluten free, with little to no by-products. It uses real meat, and high quality ingredients.

These are on the pricy side and can't be found in a typical store, but they are worth it as most dry foods like Purina uses sawdust as a filler and other indigestable ingredients.

For the less pricy side, for dry, try Merrick. It is the lowest costing, dry, grain and gluten free cat food I can find. Unfortunately I have never been able to find this in store, so I've ordered it online from Amazon.

As for a lower cost wet food, Sheba is not too bad. I have been able to find this in my local Walmart or even at dollar stores. Most of the ingredients are meat based, but it is not nearly as high quality as other foods, but it is the best one I've found in local stores.

But, if you really can't get your cat to eat anything, keep anything down, or find a good food you agree with, you should try to mix pedialyte with water to help keep her hydrated, and try to feed her chicken, beef, and/or turkey baby food. The only thing in those meat based baby foods is the meat and meat broth. This is what I fed to my cat when he was sick, on a vet recommendation. But this should only be temporary.

Answer 3

Transferring my comments to an answer:

Not to sound like a party pooper, but it's generally either good quality pet food without artificial preservatives, colourings, etc, or affordable. RC is notoriously bad quality tbh, I've had a bad experience with it myself. Also, I don't know about Americas, but in the rest of the world supermarkets usually don't have really good pet food, you have to buy it in specialised pet shops, and many of these shops have online stores and do delivery (usually affordable if not free). As for brands, Acana and Orijen are good dry. I'd also try these if I had a chance (some have canned variety, some don't) : Addiction, Evolve, FirstMate, Fromm, Wysong, ZiwiPeak.

And try malt paste for the hair balls. (NO, GoldNugget8, malt paste is not Evil Incarnate. Read ingredients list first, for goodness' sake) My cats (Siberians) happily lap it up from a spoon. You don't have to feed it to your cat all the time, just give it for 3-5 days when you notice hairball problems incoming. But all of that only after you get your cat to a vet. I know that probably every single person here has already told you to do so, but I don't want to sound like I'm telling you not to.