Last year my cat started developing a bunch of itchy scabs all over his body. It was recommended to start him on a completely different protein he’s never had (I picked rabbit) and after forever via trial and error I figured out the culprit is poultry.

If you didn’t know, chicken and turkey is in like everything ever. Even if the flavor says “beef” or “tuna” or whatever there’s like a 95% chance it also contains chicken or turkey. It’s also really hard to figure out exactly what is a good pet food, because a lot of them contain things that cat’s don’t need or are harmful for them because they are obligate carnivores.

I also didn’t find many helpful resources despite chicken being one of the most common allergens for cats. I wasted so many hours finding cat food he could eat.

Finally I have compiled a list of foods I can feed him that aren’t trash, with 0 poultry:

  • Vital Essentials freeze dried patties - pork and rabbit

  • Stella and Chewy freeze dried morsels - rabbit

  • Rawz - beef and rabbit

  • Fromm - beef and venison

  • I and love and you - beef and rabbit

  • Ziwi Peak air dried - venison and lamb

And since I have invested a ridiculous amount of my life reading about cat food at this point, if your cat isn’t allergic to poultry I recommend Nulo Freestyle or Tiki cat. Rawz is also reasonably priced when you don’t have to buy the weird flavors.

  • Dandroid@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    Your cat is so lucky to have such an amazing human to go above and beyond to make sure he has something that’s safe for him to eat. Keep being awesome. And thanks for sharing this info!

  • Sunforged@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    Hey I have a cat who is big dumb and also allergic to poultry. It’s a real pain in the butt.

    We order whole ground rabbit from wholefoods4pets.com, buy pork shoulder from a restaurant supplier do a slight roast to disinfect the outside leaving the majority raw in the middle and grind that up.

    • 3lb rabbit
    • 3lb pork shoulder
    • 4g taurine
    • 5.4g Fish oil
    • .9g Vitamin E
    • .9g B complex

    We used to do 4 egg yolks and a bit of pork liver and heart, but eggs got expensive and the organs were just too much on top of grinding the shoulder.

    She was around 11 years old when we started the diet switch and we didn’t think she had many years left in her. Today she is honestly the healthiest she has been since we got her 8 years ago.