What's the best food for my young cat and what ingredients to avoid?

As a general rule of thumb, I find Science Diet, Purina ProPlan and Royal Canin foods to be of a high quality. These companies thoroughly analyze their foods, run controlled clinical feeding studies and carefully source their ingredients. While there are plenty of other good food brands available, I find these three to be quite consistent. As a male cat, I typically recommend feeding a mix of both wet and dry foods. Neutered male cats have a risk of developing urethral obstructions, and increased water content in the wet food can help to slightly decrease this risk. Anytime you make a change in diet, be sure to do so gradually by mixing the old and new foods together over 5-7 days.

The answer is up to you and your cat. Some cats prefer dry only, some wet only, some enjoy both. Kitten food is still needed at six months of age and will be until he is a year old. Cats are carnivores, and canned, pate-type wet food is the closest to what they would get in the wild. Dry food has to have some carbohydrates in the form of grains or vegetable pulp in order to be made into dry nuggets. Cats have a very low carbohydrate requirement and some gain excess weight on dry food. Feed the best food you can afford. My personal favorites are Science Diet and Royal Canin. Both offer excellent quality, specifically formulated diets that are nutritionally complete for your pet's life stage and condition and both offer money-back guarantees if your pet doesn't like them. Just make sure when switching to a new food to introduce it gradually. Transition your pet onto a new food by offering the old food in one bowl and a mix of 1/4 new food and 3/4 old food in another bowl next to it. Do this for a week, then offer 1/2-1/2 new/old food in the second bowl for a week. Change to 3/4 new-1/4 old for a week and gradually stop putting old food in the first bowl. By the end of the month she should be transitioned to the new food with a minimum of digestive upset.

I'm not familiar with this brand of food to be honest. Brands I recommend include Royal Canin, Hill's Science Diet, Purina ProPlan, and Iams. I would feed Ryo one of those brands, and make sure it's a kitten formulated food. He needs kitten food until he is a year old. Best of luck.

Thank you for submitting your question regarding Ron. I recommend feeding a well researched kitten food such Royal Canin, Purina ProPlan or Hill's Science Diet. If you do prefer to home cook his food, then you will need consult with a veterinary nutritionist. The website www.balanceit.com is a great resource. Ron is growing quickly at this stage and it is important to ensure he receives proper nutrition. I hope this information helps!

Hi there! Hunny Cat is very cute! I believe it's better to feed cats canned food. It has more moisture and adds a little bit more hydration to their daily intake. Later in life, cats can commonly develop kidney disease and/or urinary bladder disease. In both cases, cats will benefit greatly from the increased water content of a canned diet. The canned food is a lot better too to help keep an indoor cat's weight in check. All indoor cats have a tendency to become overweight, as they don't exercise as much as feral cats. Since cats usually will ingest the canned food right away, it is easier to portion the food out and also provide cats with meal times. This is very helpful to increase their metabolism, and to help discourage them from gaining weight. Far too often, we see cats being fed a pile of dried food in a bowl where they eat buffet-style on and off all day long. This can easily lead to weight gain and obesity, as well as all sorts of health problems. Nutro is good food, and so is tiki cat, weruva, science diet, royal canin, and iams/eukanuba, Purina is also good. I just like for pets to have a balanced diet. Grain free isn't really a necessity, but thus far in cats, we're not really seeing too many issues. I hope you find this answer helpful! Best of luck!

Azur should have a high quality kitten food, such as Royal Canin or Hill's Science diet. Kittens require higher amounts of calories, protein, and calcium than adults cats, and a kitten food will provide this. I recommend feeing him Royal Canin Ragdoll kitten, it's a high quality kitten food that's specifically formulated for Ragdolls.

Do not combine foods, this causes GI upset. Brands of food I recommend include Royal Canin, Hill's Science Diet, Purina Pro Plan, and Iams. I recommend these foods because they run their own feeding trials, meet AAFCO standards, and have veterinary nutritionists on staff. They are the only four brands to do this. I think an indoor cat formula would be best for Storm. As for water, get a pet water fountain. It provides a constant source of fresh water, and encourages cats to drink. I have one for my cats, and they love it. Don't change litter if he has one he likes. Cats are very picky about litter, and a change in litter can lead to them not using their box.