# Best budget cat food



## auspiciousmind (Sep 2, 2012)

Hi,
I haven't really owned a cat before .. I've been with my partner for about 2 years.. he has a 9yr old cat Button he feeds Whiskas/Felix which from what I've been reading since joining this forum is probably the worst thing you can feed them.

I now have a kitten as you'll see from my previous threads and I want to do the best for him and hopefully Button!

At the moment Romeo is eating 2 x Felix kitten pouches a day and has a dish with some dry food which he grazes on during the day.

The same for button but Adult Felix from the cans.

I am on a budget which I know sounds terrible.. so what I was hoping is someone could help me find a food that is close to the same price as Felix/Whiskas or give me some guidelines on what to look for on the ingredient/content lists on the food?

The kitten Felix pouches at the moment are £3.00 (Usually £3.49) for 12 x 100g pouches

The felix cans are £3.65 (2x £6.50) for 6 x 400g tins

The biscuits are negligible really as they aren't fed as a main meal just something for them to graze on if they need too? :confused1:

Thanks in advance for any help


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## carly87 (Feb 11, 2011)

How many poutches are they eating a day each? Or how much from a can? You may find that raw is a cheaper alternative. I have 2 big cats and 5 kittens that eat raw, and on average, I'm getting through roughly £2.25 of food daily, but that is without any dry biscuits at all. They need to eat hardly any of it, and bearing in mind that I'm feeding 7, 6 of whom are kittens and growing and the 7th who's a suckling mum, that's pretty good going. Ok, 5 of the kittens are only 4 weeks old, so not eating loads, but the sixth is going through a growth spurt, and suckling mums can eat up to 4 times what they would normally. I think someone on the forum averaged out the daily feeding amount at 75P per cat based on an adult. If you're working on feeding them at 3% of their body weight which is the top recommended for an adult, then it's 13.5P per kg of cat per day. Kittens can sometimes eat double that. So you could feed just under 2 KG of cat per day on the amount that you're spending on one Felix ouch. This is without the delivery costs of £6.99 per order though, but as that will vary on how much you order, I haven't factored it in. If you based it on the min order of 5 KG of Natural Instinct, then it would work out at 17.7P per KG of cat per day based on 3% of ideal body weight. If they only eat 2%, then it's 11.8P per KG.

Hope this helps!


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## cookiemom (Jun 23, 2011)

My budget has always been tight but just recently with a lot of vet bills its been almost non existant. If you don't mind chopping up meat you could feed some or all home preprepped raw, very economical, it's currently costing about £1 per cat per week. Check out here if interested in raw:

Raw Fed Cats

Other wise go for some of the oft mentioned brands that are high meat content, they might seem more expensive on the surface but as many threads have discussed recently they are in the end very affordable, with less being consumed and less waste produced so savings with cat litter as well.


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## auspiciousmind (Sep 2, 2012)

Thanks 
I was starting to think nobody was going to reply..

Romeo (5/6 month old kitten) is eating 2 pouches a day so 200g 
and picks at biscuits all day

Button (9yr +) is eating about 300g/ from the tins a day and also has biscuits to pick at all day.

I'm starting to consider going for the raw diet but would like more time to research it and prepare myself for it. Thank you for the links I've bookmarked them along with some others I've found.

I've read on a few threads that the Tesco Supreme? has a higher meat % than Felix/Whiskas.. 

I'm actually a bit annoyed with myself for not realizing that Whiskas /Felix aren't very healthy for them!


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## Dally Banjo (Oct 22, 2009)

If you have a Home Bargins near you they sell Hi Life Essentials £2.99 box of 12 which has quite a high meat content :thumbup:


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## auspiciousmind (Sep 2, 2012)

Dally Banjo said:


> If you have a Home Bargins near you they sell Hi Life Essentials £2.99 box of 12 which has quite a high meat content :thumbup:


Ahh too good to be true.. theres no Home Bargains within a 25 mile range of where I live! Thank you though! Do you have any ideas of what other "budget" brands have a higher meat content?


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## jenfunfur (Jul 7, 2011)

I've just done a zooplus order which came to £79 which will feed my 2 adult cats for 60 days so thats working out about 70p a cat per day. There is a selection of Bozita, Animonda Carny, Smilia (i could'nt resist trying the new rabbit flavour) & Grain free Grau. They also get nibbles of raw throughout the week, sprats, chicken, rabbit, beev mince whatevers going at the market.One of my cats has a sensitive tummy so avoid any food with grain, the food must be doing them some good the vet said my 5yo has amazing white teeth & very healthy


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## Dally Banjo (Oct 22, 2009)

auspiciousmind said:


> Ahh too good to be true.. theres no Home Bargains within a 25 mile range of where I live! Thank you though! Do you have any ideas of what other "budget" brands have a higher meat content?


In a word no :blink: sorry  are fussy lot like the Hi Life


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## Cloudygirl (Jan 9, 2011)

animonda 800g tins from zooplus are cheap


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## catgeoffrey (Jun 28, 2012)

Our kitten came to us eating Whiskas and was ok... He had upset tummies quite often (might have been all the household items he ate that he shouldn't or the food... Never quite sure) but after advice on here he's now on a mix of Bozita, Grau and Animonda. 
Last zooplus order I got some Smila pouches that were on offer but they haven't gone down so well... Too much like Whiskas chunks texture I think for Geoffrey but might be a good transition food between Felix and some higher quality foods? 
I'd recommend buying some trial packs of different foods from zooplus, see what they like and then bulk buy.
Also don't feed the kitten with kitten food... It's a gimmick that they don't need and will be fine on adult food - makes feeding time easier!!! :thumbup:


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## dipper (Oct 31, 2009)

We're on quite a tight budget also - until recent tummy troubles have fed ours a wide range of budget food with varying results. They hated HiLife!
IAMS gravy pouches are quite cheap - around £5 for 12? & ours love them. One way to save money is to buy in bulk off places like Zooplus - if you can stump up the cash in one go you can get pricier brands for the equivalent price of cheaper brands - Bozita and suchlike.
Don't let anyone make you feel bad about the Whiskas - ours were brought up on it, took me a long time to realise there was better stuff out there!


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## DeltaD (Aug 29, 2012)

auspiciousmind said:


> Ahh too good to be true.. theres no Home Bargains within a 25 mile range of where I live! Thank you though! Do you have any ideas of what other "budget" brands have a higher meat content?


Like you i am in a but of a budget too, but i think its definiteky worth investing in better food for my kittens, they eat less of it too because there are less fillers (plus their stool is a lot less smelly!). I've just ordered from zooplus, bozita is good and animonda carni is good value, but I found hilife petit pate at sainsbury's (it's a big one though) and I get toplife from asda (it's like bozita, 50/50 meat and jelly, the meat part is 90%meat).


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## carly87 (Feb 11, 2011)

Toplife is £1 per carton from Asda, but as half of it is jelly, they'd eat more of it. The meaty chunks are 92% meat though. At a real push you could feed Butchers, but only as part of a rotation. It's very, very cheap but the calcium to phospherus ratio isn't balanced, so you can't feed it all the time. Meat content is also good. Pets at Home do Purely but I'm not sure of the price.

Zooplus really is cheap if you can buy in bulk, but I don't like them any more as most of the tins come dented and damaged. I'm such a new convert, but I really do think that raw is the way to go!


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## auspiciousmind (Sep 2, 2012)

Thank you everyone... It's been really really helpful.
I'm on my last pouch at the moment so I need to get out and get some quickly. I don't drive and the closest place to me is Tesco so I'm going to have to go there and read the backs of all the packs!

Introducing new food?
Do i just add a little of the new food to the old food and gradually increase? Or is there another way?


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## Sussexplumber (Oct 5, 2011)

Dally Banjo said:


> If you have a Home Bargins near you they sell Hi Life Essentials £2.99 box of 12 which has quite a high meat content :thumbup:


Don`t they also sell online?


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## Sussexplumber (Oct 5, 2011)

DeltaD said:


> Like you i am in a but of a budget too, but i think its definiteky worth investing in better food for my kittens, they eat less of it too because there are less fillers (plus their stool is a lot less smelly!). I've just ordered from zooplus, bozita is good and animonda carni is good value, but I found hilife petit pate at sainsbury's (it's a big one though) and I get toplife from asda (it's like bozita, 50/50 meat and jelly, the meat part is 90%meat).


What are the sugar and salt levels like?


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## kr00t0n (May 10, 2012)

I find 400g tins of Smilla and Carny are the best price point for Winston.


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## simplysardonic (Sep 1, 2009)

I feed a mix of quality wet from Zooplus (we do a big shop every 1 or 2 months) & raw, though with a bit more research I'm hoping to put them on a majority raw diet in the future.



carly87 said:


> At a real push you could feed Butchers, but only as part of a rotation. It's very, very cheap but the calcium to phospherus ratio isn't balanced, so you can't feed it all the time. Meat content is also good. Pets at Home do Purely but I'm not sure of the price.


Is that the Butcher's Classic? I use that very occasionally, as it's the only marginally decent brand my local shop stocks


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## carly87 (Feb 11, 2011)

It is indeed.


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