The Best Kitten Foods for Your Cat in 2022

Best Kitten Foods: Buyer’s Guide & FAQs

If you’ve been wondering what kind of food to buy for the kitten in your home, then you’ve come to the right place. In this section, we’ll be looking at the things you have to keep in mind when buying kitten food. We’ll also attempt to explore your options when it comes to choosing between wet and dry kitten food. And since this is all about your kitten’s nutrition, we might as well take a look at the kinds of food that you should never give to your juvenile feline friend.

What to Consider When Buying Kitten Food?

It is worth remembering that kitten food has a very different formula to adult cat food owing to their difference in dietary requirements. Most kitten food brands will focus on ingredients that will best support a healthy immune system and proper development during the early stages of their life. So providing the best kitten food for your growing kitten is the best way to ensure they are developing as they should. The following elements should always be considered why looking for the best kitten food brand for your feline friend:

Caloric Content

Kittens generally need a higher caloric content than older cats. This is because kittens are highly energetic creatures that burn a lot of energy throughout the day, running, jumping, and tumbling to their hearts’ content. It takes a lot of calories to fuel such an active life and have enough energy left over to grow properly. Typically a kitten will need 50% of the calories it consumes to fuel its daily activities, with the remaining 50% being used just to grow.

So when shopping for dry kitten food or even wet kitten food, you should always look at the caloric content per serving. If you’re unsure how many calories your kitten should be consuming, be sure to ask your vet for advice to ensure they’re getting the right amount.

Protein Content

Protein is used to help your kitten’s muscles recover and strengthen after a busy day. It also helps to boost their metabolism and burn fat more quickly, as well as promoting healthy blood pressure, stronger bones, even blood pressure, and more constant energy levels. Protein can be found in meat, meat by-products, and meat meals, as well as in plant-based ingredients such as peas. However, plant-based proteins generally lack essential amino acids needed for the physiological function of a kitten and should be avoided as the primary source of protein.

High-quality protein and high protein food is an absolute must for complete and balanced nutrition for kittens, especially as very young kittens transition into much more active little felines. It also caters to kittens’ natural food instincts as a predator species. A good way to know whether a food has prioritized protein is to check the first five ingredients and see how many of them are protein-based. Ideally, as least three of these ingredients should be proteins.

Low Carbohydrates

Carbohydrates can serve as excellent sources for certain vitamins and minerals essential in your kitten’s food. The best kitten food will have a delicate balance of high-quality protein sources and carefully selected carbohydrates. However, some carbs are simply fillers that don’t provide much nutritional value for your feline friend, such as potatoes.

The protein aspect of any kitten food will not provide all the nutrients needed for your kitten’s healthy growth, and so certain carbohydrates derived from fruits and vegetables can be an excellent addition. Introducing vitamins such as magnesium, zinc, phosphorus, calcium, iron, vitamin B, vitamin C, vitamin E, and vitamin A along with many more. A good way to estimate whether a food has low carbohydrates is to go for one with a high percentage of protein. Furthermore, be sure to look for good carbs high in the formula.

Anything Else?

Generally speaking, these three elements cover the key points you should look for when shopping for kitten food. However, as time goes by you will see if your kitten has any allergies or sensitivities you may need to avoid. In which case a grain-free kitten food may be your better option in order to minimize the risk of a reaction and ease digestion. Furthermore, you may find their allergy lies with a specific protein or carbohydrate. It can be difficult to pinpoint a food allergy, but once you know, it makes life far easy for both you and your kitten.

What Type of Food Does My Kitten Need: Wet or Dry?

There are benefits to both wet and dry food when it comes to kitten development. Some kitten parents even choose to mix and match the two kitten foods. But which is better? Understanding the pros and cons of each type of food helps you to figure out what will suit your kitty best.

Wet Kitten Food

Canned food for kittens is not only delicious but does have many beneficial properties worth noting. First and foremost, wet foods insert additional moisture in your kitten’s diet owing to the high water content, making it especially easy to digest, something that a young developing digestive system will thank you for when making the switch from their mother’s milk to solid foods. Not only that but wet kitten foods are specifically designed to suit young kittens whose teeth are still growing in – meaning it is easy to chew.

The downside to wet kitten foods, however, is that wet cat food is lower on nutrients per kilogram than dry foods. The use of gravy to provide the high moisture content means nutritional elements such as vegetables and proteins are more spaced out. So generally speaking it takes a significant amount more of wet kitten food to provide the same amount of nutritional value as dry food. The best wet kitten food will have a good balance of nutrition to moisture. This can be worked out by going for wet kitten food with a lower moisture percentage, meaning more room has been left to be filled with nutritional ingredients.

Dry Kitten Food

Dry kitten foods have the opposite benefits to wet kitten food in that dry food provides a plethora of nutrition in the form of protein, vitamins, and minerals, but it had a very low moisture content. Typically dry food will have around 10% in comparison to the 75+% moisture content of wet food. So as you can imagine, that leaves around 90% of the content to be filled with protein, carbohydrates, vitamins, and minerals. This means your developing kitty is getting everything they need to support healthy brain development, muscle recovery, and growth as well as strengthen their immune system. Especially seeing as they will be getting a much denser supply of protein, which for meat-eating animals is an essential element of any diet.

But even as a rich source of nutrition, dry kitten food has its downsides. The low moisture content means your kitten will likely drink more in order to keep hydrated. This also means you need to ensure their water bowl is full at all times so that they can properly digest their food. Even with high-quality ingredients, a young kitten needs as much support as possible when it comes to digestion. Transitioning to solid food can be tricky at the best of times, so it may even be worth adding toppers to your cat’s diet to help make it more palatable (if your kitten is fussy) and digestible. The best dry kitten food will have protein as the first 3 ingredients on the list to prove they mean business.

So Which is Better?

The decision to go with wet or dry food lies entirely with you. You will know your kitten better than anyone, as well as having your own opinions on what you would like to choose. If you’re working with a budget it’s worth noting that wet food is more expensive than dry food as it is the preferred choice for both texture and taste. But where wet kitten food provides moisture but not as many nutrients, dry kitten food is stuffed full of nutrients but lacks moisture. It’s your call.

Check out our reviews of Cat Water Fountains and Water Bowls for Cats.

Can I Feed My Kitten Adult Cat Food?

Experts agree that kittens should only be given a diet that is specifically designed to meet their calorie and protein requirements. As we have already mentioned in the preceding sections, kittens require a lot of these macronutrients to help build tissues so that these will reach mature levels. Once they reach maturity, there really is no need to build additional tissues. What is needed, however, are nutrients that will help maintain the integrity of these tissues as well as repair any damage or injury to such tissues. In effect:

• Kitten food is geared for building tissues
• Adult cat food is focused on maintaining body tissues and repairing them if damaged

Given these differences, it is pretty obvious that you cannot feed your kitten with adult food, and you may use a feeder for this. Well, technically you can, but it doesn’t mean that you should. The calorie and nutrient requirements for both life stages are simply different.

What to Avoid Feeding Your Kitten

There are quite a few human foods that are not suitable for kitten consumption. As a result, you should do everything you can to keep this food out of your kitten’s reach – especially when they become little explorers and start going in search of things they shouldn’t have. These foods include:

Vegetables

With vegetables, there are several that are considered highly toxic for both cats and dogs. And for that reason they must be kept out of reach at all times:

• Onions: Onions contain Allium, a highly toxic substance that can cause red blood cells to rupture resulting in diarrhea, cramps, vomiting, and loss of consciousness.
• Leek & Chive: Leeks and chives also contain Allium and should not be eaten by your kitten.
• Garlic: Garlic is another member of the Allium family and can cause serious sickness in unsuspecting kittens if consumed.

Fruit

Fruit is not only high in natural sugars but there are certain fruits that contain toxins and acids that can cause an upset stomach or worse. Knowing what to look out for could potentially save your cat’s life:

• Grapes and Raisins: Grapes are immensely toxic to cats and can cause grape toxicity which results in death in severe cases.
• Cherries: Cherries are a severe choking hazard and should be avoided.
• Unripe Tomatoes: Unripe tomatoes as well as the green parts of tomatoes can cause severe sickness and digestive distress.
• Avocados: The pit and skin both contains persin which can result in cramps, sickness, and diarrhea. Additionally, the flesh is excessively and needlessly fatty for a kitten.
• Lemons and Limes: These are both extremely acidic fruits that are a common cause of gastrointestinal complications.

Proteins

With proteins, it is not so much a problem of whether your cat can digest them, but rather the concern regarding bacteria that can be found in certain proteins. Some have harmful bacteria build in, whereas others can develop harmful bacteria extremely quickly:

• Raw Fish: Raw fish is known to go bad extremely quickly and can carry some extremely harmful bacteria. If you give your cat raw fish they should eat it immediately. If it is left, throw it away.
• Raw Eggs: Raw eggs carry the risk of salmonella which can cause serious gastrointestinal issues.

Other

As well as the typical foodstuffs such as fruits, vegetables, and proteins you might expect a cat to eat, there are also human foods you should be careful to keep out of the way. Cats will eat anything they can get their paws on, so watch out for these:

• Chewing Gum: Contains xylitol, which can cause liver failure, vomiting, and lethargy.
• Dairy: Dairy can be difficult for cats to process and cause digestive problems.
• Coffee: Caffeine is extremely dangerous to cats, potentially causing diarrhea, tremors, vomiting, seizures, even death.
• Chocolate: Chocolate often contains caffeine as well as containing cocoa powder which can be highly toxic to cats.
• Nuts: Including; almonds, macadamia, walnuts, and pecans. All are highly toxic and will cause major digestive upset.
• Salt: Like caffeine, salt is potentially lethal to cats in large amounts and should generally be avoided.

Sources:

1. Feeding Your Cat, Best Friends Animal Society
2. Dr. Ernie Ward, DVM, 7 Tips and Tricks to Keep Your Growing Kitten Eating Right, Pet Health Network