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Even before I adopted my first cat, I'd been reading reviews about the best canned food out there for cats. Most sites seemed to recommend this brand. The price made me wince a little, but having compared the ingredients to those of brands that are cheaper, I think this product is a good investment. After all, we want what's best for our kitties, right? Those cheaper products might be more affordable, but the possible health problems from those ingredients aren't worth the money saved.
Anyway, my cats LOVE this food. They lick their bowls clean, and they lick the serving spoon too. If even a little bit falls out of their bowls, they will lick it off. I have given them every flavour, and they aren't picky at all (apart from the Indoor Formula flavour-they WILL eat it all but don't beg me for more). I am also comforted by the fact that you can look up each can of food on their website, and they will provide a report, analysing the food.
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I feed the Natural Balance Green Pea & Duck wet and dry food to my cat ever since my friends and vet suggested I do an elimination diet. Granted, my cat will eat anything in a can, I'm glad that Natural Balance has made this limited ingredient food so my cat doesn't have to suffer from his allergies to chicken. It is difficult to find cat food without chicken since it is in everything and the novel protein in Natural Balance's Limited Ingredient Diet is awesome!The dry Natural Balance Limited Ingredient Diet however, does have an ingredient that the canned wet food doesn't have: fish oil. So if you're doing a super stringent elimination diet, just compare labels for both the dry and wet because the ingredients do differ (my cat does fine with both).
It has been several weeks now that my cat has been on the wet and dry NB food and his ear/face itching has almost completely disappeared! Just remember, talk to your vet about elimination diets if you think your cat may have allergies.I have a cat with IBS. While I had him on a food for sensitive stomachs, the vet recommended one that contained limited ingredients and ingredients he had not eaten before. We went with the duck and pea canned food and Natural Balance Dry Cat Food, Limited Ingredient Diet Green Pea and Duck Formula, 10 Pound Bag. The cat likes the dry cat food a great deal but the wet cat food is not his favorite. Still, since this is all he gets now in the wet cat realm, he manages to eat it.
Since putting him on this diet, I am not constantly cleaning up mounds of vomited food or dealing with utterly disgusting litter boxes. He's more active and happy. I attribute part of his new self to this food (as well as the small dose of steroids he receives each day). As long as I feed him the right stuff and give him his medication, he is good to go. If he sneaks into a different batch of cat food though, it is a terrible experience.
I avoided a gradual transition to the food. My cat's condition was getting to be so severe that I just picked a day to introduce him fully to it and he did not have any negative reactions. In terms of consistency, I didn't find the food to be watery or dry. There are no obvious peas or meat chunks. It is well blended and looks like other wet cat foods I have purchased.
I would recommend the Natural Balance line. I would also recommend visiting your local pet food store to try out a few cans or bags of food before committing to a whole 24 cans. Currently, my local Pet Supplies Plus has cans for about 1.38. Petco has them for 1.58. The price on dry cat food can be cheaper as well.
The Natural Balance line is an investment but your cat's health and the time you save cleaning make the cost well worth it.Both of my cats enjoy this, even the picky one who is very hard to please when it comes to food. It's a great choice for cats who have allergies to ingredients in regular cat food. The texture is 'pate' style, which my cats like. I've been feeding this for a while now and both of my cats are healthy and very happy.My cat is almost 10 years old and has thrown up her food (undigested) off and on since we adopted her at 2 from a shelter. I have tried Iams, Natural Choice, Eukanuba, Science Diet, and Purina One, all dry food. She would not eat wet food at all. I finally determined that she just doesn't like most wet food. Anyway, she threw up every single food I fed her. Sometimes we'd have a couple of weeks where she wouldn't throw up, sometimes it was every day. I finally started doing some research on food allergies in cats, and also found some information about raw food diets, which I determined would be too complicated and expensive for us, even though they would likely benefit her health. We have a 9-month-old and we are very busy and kind of broke, so buying expensive raw cat food and having it shipped to us is out of the question. I determined that this food would be the next best thing. We chose a limited ingredient diet because she'd never had a food with duck in it, and I wanted to see if it was a food allergy. Her only symptom is the vomiting.
Through my research I discovered three things:
1. Cats can't "chew" dry food. They don't have flat molars in which to grind food like humans do. Therefore, while some cats do fine with just crunching up their dry food with their pointed teeth, (designed to rip flesh, not grind grains) some cats don't. My cat was likely having trouble digesting her food because she can't chew it up, and it was just sitting there waiting to come up.
2. Cats don't eat grain in the wild. If the cat was eating its natural diet, it would likely eat a field mouse or two, or possibly another small rodent or bird. The feathers/skin would provide all the fiber the cat needs to live, and the rest would be meat. Cats are not omnivores. Therefore, the grains in their dry commercial cat food are impossible for some cats to digest, and at best unhealthy for all. Sure, adding grains makes the food affordable, but for some cats their body seeks to rid their digestive system of the "junk" in favor of making room for the real food. in most cases, and in the case of my cat, that real food never came.
3. Cats don't get enough water if they eat dry food only. I thought my cat drank a fair amount of water, but probably not enough. Most cats walk around in a constant state of dehydration, another reason for illness. Wet food at least provides the added moisture they need in their diet.
All these things together explain why my cat has stopped vomiting her food. It's been a week and a half, and while I have had two hairballs (it's shedding season in Michigan) we have seen no undigested food vomit piles. A real win-win situation, because although this food is pricey, she's not ruining my carpet or her esophagus by regurgitating it all over the house. I feel terrible for feeding her such awful food before and not looking into this. I always chalked it up to her eating too fast and not being able to handle it. We had tried feeding smaller portions at more frequent intervals, to no avail. We also tried free-feeding to make sure it wasn't because she was too hungry at mealtimes, causing her to scarf her food. That didn't work either.
Another interesting thing about this food is that my cat seems less hungry. It may have been because she was vomiting a lot of her meals before, but she used to act famished at mealtimes, so much so that we had purchased an automatic feeder awhile back to distribute her meals at the same times every day. Otherwise she was constantly waking us up in the mornings and begging in the evenings. I even feed her less than what the can recommends (1 can for every 8 lbs. of body weight) because it's all she wants. We give her, at 11.5 lbs., one can per day, half in the morning and half at dinner time, and she seems satisfied. Sometimes she seems hungry in the mornings but she does not cry at the bedroom door.
We tried the chicken flavor and she hated it. For us, the duck and pea was a winner and we stuck with it. I bought one can of each to try. I also decided to supplement with some Natural Balance duck and pea dry food, which I use sparingly and soak in water before feeding. We just started this today and if she vomits it up I will just use the wet food. It runs about thirty-three bucks a case at my local pet store.
So far I'm really impressed and relieved that this food works so well for her. Hopefully we will continue to see results.
Update 5-8-13
My cat NEVER pukes anymore except for the occasional hairball. It's never food. The one time I tried to feed her a can of Iams she did throw up, reinforcing my theory that it's not just wet food that she needs, but this specific formula. She's also looking healthier by the day, shinier fur and a slimmer waistline. She does not seem hungry, ever. What a great brand!
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