by Brenda Nelson

Created on: August 01, 2009   Last Updated: August 02, 2009

Feeding your feline should not drain your pocket book. Some simple suggestions will leave your kitty well fed and your cash intact.

1. Quality Ingredients

While all foods meet the minimum standards for pet nutrition, very few exceed them. Low quality ingredients mean your cat simply must eat more food to get nutrition. Many foods use cheap filler such as corn and by-products. Cats are obligate carnivores, corn has no place in their diet. By-products are beaks, feet, feathers, and other bits that are not recognized as actual meat. To some extent they are non-digestible and offer little value, again this is a filler, of no real nutritional value. A cat who is eating a food containing a lot of corn or by-products simply must eat more food to get any nutrition. They will also poop more too as a result.

Most of these foods spend a lot of money on advertising, therefore the consumer should note that the cost of the food also reflects this, not a nutritional value.

People who feed these foods often think that because they are cheaper per bag, they are saving money. In fact they may be feeding more food than if they bought a better quality food. Sadly too, these lower priced foods are often preserved with cheap preservatives linked to health problems.

By selecting a food that uses only top ingredients, a person can save money. Look for the first ingredient to be chicken meal, turkey meal, or lamb meal, never corn or by-products.

2. Buy in Bulk

Buying a large bag of food is always cheaper than buying the equivalent in smaller bags. As long as the open bag can be kept in a sealed container it will remain fresh. A bag of food can be purchased to last as long as 30 to 60 days, which makes far more sense than buying a box of food to last only a week or two.

3. Look for Programs

Many of the better foods offer programs where after you buy 10 bags you get a free one, this represents a 10% savings over time. Sticking with the same kind of food may sound boring to us, but to pets it is easier on their stomach to remain consistent with a brand of food.

4. Where to Shop

The foods commonly sold in grocery stores and department type stores are generally the lower quality foods. The chain big box stores do not always sell quality foods either. Instead look for the better foods at independent stores or even groomers. You may find lower prices on pet food by shopping at livestock feed stores.

5. Canned Foods

The quality variations that exist in dry foods are far greater

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>