Question by Samantha: Is Science Diet good cat food?
We adopted a shelter cat and they gave us Science Diet for free. However the lady working at the shelter whispered she wouldn’t keep the cat on it she didn’t think it was good. I thought that was one of the top foods? I am confused. Please shed light on best foods. I lost cats in the past and have every intention of treating this one totally right starting with the food!
Best answer:
Answer by Ocimom
Vets claim it is, the company claims it is, but look at the ingredients. The first few ingredients should be MEAT – not by-products or meal. And its got far too much corn and other grains.
On a scale of 1-10 (10 being top quality) I would put Science Diet at a 4 or 5. Its overpriced for the quality.
If you want a healthy cat in the long run, go with Wellness, Blue Buffalo, Natural Balance, Royal Canin, Max Cat for much better foods.
In fact, cats really should have both dry and canned each day and raw 2-3 times a week. Also male cats can have more UTI problems eating dry food all the time.
Add your own answer in the comments!
no
not particularly!!
I give mine Friskies – he LOVES the chicken!
So did his mom, Smokey.
And her mom, Smiley!
I would TOTALLY go with that!
No, just look at the ingredients. The top two include by products and corn meal. Would you feed a cat corn and chicken beaks and feet? I wouldn’t..lol. I only feed it to my fosters since they come from the shelter and go back to the shelter in a short time period and I don’t want to shock their system with real food. Aside from the crappy ingredients, it’s expensive! Here are some better quality foods –
Wellness
Innova/EVO
Taste of the Wild **
Blue Buffalo/Wilderness
Chicken Soup for the Cat Lover’s Soul **
Natural Balance
California Natural
Felidae **
Orijen
** these are cheaper in my area
Thanks for adopting! Great way to save a life 🙂
yes it is.. depending on your cat and what works for you and or him/her
I feed my cat Oral Care from Hills.. that’s Science diet, I too in the past didn’t think it was a great food to feed, but my vet recommended it, and my cat loves it..
I also feed the feral cats in my neighbourhood the same food.
my cats got really sick and threw up then we changed the food and they were better so
GET THE CAT OF THE FOOD
Hi. Science Diet is pretty poor food. My vet gave me a small bag in a kitten package that I bought when we found our little stray Siamese Tinka, and my cats would not eat it!! I would feed dry & wet as someone else suggested, but do not feed raw, when you are feeding can & kibble, it is too hard on your animals digestive systems, both dogs & cats, cannot digest raw & prepared foods together!! There are a lot of good foods on the market, Nutro is NOT one of them, they have A LOT of recalls.. I feed my cats, Iams adult Hairball formula & Purina Pro Plan kitten food mixed 50/50. I also feed them, Fancy Feast Turkey Kitten food canned mixed with Whiskas cat/kitten milk, three times a day, as my kitten is three months old. They are doing great, and are very healthy! I planned on feeding them a real premium food, but the few that I have tried, they will not eat!!?? As long as they are healthy and happy I’m going to stick with what I’m doing….I hope this helps you~Good Luck !!
Here are a few really good cat foods, they come in both canned & dry.
Most vets will recommend that you feed both, due to water content in the canned, most adult cats do not drink enough water..
Chicken Soup for the cat lovers soul
NutriSource
Innova
Diamond
Royal Canin
Wellness
Pro Plan
i work for a vet hosp……science diet is good food. dont listen to that lady, shes on crack. seriously. science diet is great, also so is eukanuba or iams. i dont know what that lady was thinking. seriously…dumb dumb lady. if thats what you wanna feed your kitty, by all means, go for it.
ps. by nature cats are natural carnivores…so a strict dry diet can cause problems. go more for wet foods than dry (or a combo). you can make a dog a vegetarian…but you CANT make a cat vegetarian. it could cause major problems in the long run.
What the vet tech didn’t tell you is that vets get a kickback from the company for selling it. Of course they’re going to tell you it’s good! Science Diet is the worst food you can give to your cat. Google ‘Science Diet complaints’. Owners complained of sick animals, many vet visits, organ failure, and death. When they got their animals off the food their health improved, like one of the other posters said. SD meat byproducts can consist of euthanized animals from vets. The poisons used to kill them are in the food. No wonder the animals get sick! IAMS does cruel animal testing. Never buy that one either. We like Purina.
Royal Canin is a great product to feed your cat!! All my animals get this.
What a kind-hearted lady! The shelters get these foods for free if they promise to push it on the new owners, and since there’s so little resources at the shelters, they have to go with it.
But she was totally right, Science diet is junk food and so is Royal Canin, Iams, Purina and the other well known brands.
I wouldn‘t really recommend feeding any dry food. Cats are designed to get their water from food. That’s the way nature designed them, they have low thirst drive. When fed dry, they won’t drink enough to compensate for the lack of moisture. They will only consume about 50% of the water they should be having. This can lead to kidney disease, UTI, crystals, blockage, renal failure and more.
Free feeding also contributes to obesity. And the fact that dry food is over-processed means, that most of it’s little nutrition has been already destroyed, leaving almost no nutrients for your cat. It needs to eat more to meet it’s needs, and in the process consumes more calories from the fillers.
Btw wetting the dry food will not help. There’s bacteria on the kibble and the water would just allow it to grow.
The only way to give the cat it’s natural hydration is to feed it wet food only.
But some wet foods are not of a very high quality, either. That goes for most commercial foods. Just like the dry, they are often made with cheap fillers such as corn, wheat, soy, rice etc. These are not a part of cat’s natural diet (it’s an obligate carnivore – it eats meat) and they are not designed to digest it. Grain is carbohydrate which the cats can’t process and it turns into blood sugar and fat, causing diabetes and obesity. In the wild, where cats only hunt for meat, diabetes and obesity are unheard of. It’s us who cause these by feeding a species inappropriate food.
We usually read labels on our food, but rarely on the food for our cats. Learn to read the label and understand the ingredients. The healthiest food to feed apart from raw feeding is grain-free wet food with no by-product. Some good brands are Wellness CORE, EVO, Merrick, Nature’s Variety, Blue Buffalo Wilderness and more. These will give your cat the proper hydration and nutrition it’s designed to get and it will be strong and healthy.
If you switch it’s diet, do it gradually, by mixing the current food with the new one over couple of weeks until there’s only the new. This will prevent diarrhea and upset stomach.
You will probably get a lot of different answers, so google feline nutrition or look at the links below, and do the research for yourself. I personally wasn’t able to find one reliable source (besides the pet food industry) that would say grain is beneficial for cats or that dry is beneficial for them.
More on cat nutrition below,
Good luck!