Cat Food and Feeding: What the Chart Says Cats Actually Eat

When the gods raised the wolf Fenrir among them, only Týr was brave enough to walk up and feed him. The rest kept their distance. Feeding is the whole relationship with a creature that has teeth, and the cat chart agrees.

Take the litter out and it is a feeding chart

Amazon’s cat supplies chart, read this morning: twenty products. Five are litter, one is a stain remover, one is a security camera. The other thirteen are food or treats.

We covered the litter in the first cat article on this door. What is left is a picture of how people actually feed cats, and it splits cleanly:

• Five treats. Churu at number four with the highest rating on the chart, three different Temptations packs, and Delectables, which is another purée in a tube.
• Four wet foods. Fancy Feast twice, Sheba twice. All of them in small portions.
• Four dry foods. Meow Mix, two Friskies, and IAMS.

Treats outnumber wet food. Treats outnumber dry food. If you did not know what these products were, you would conclude that the chart describes an animal that lives on snacks and has a bag of kibble somewhere as a backup.

Treats outsell food, and that is not a compliment

There are two ways to read five treats in the top twenty.

The kind reading is that treats are how you get a pill into a cat, how you get a hiding cat out from under the bed, and how you get thirty seconds of affection from an animal that otherwise regards you as staff. All true. Churu at 4.9 stars is the best-reviewed product on the chart because it does exactly that job.

The honest reading is that treats are the easiest thing to give and the easiest thing to give too much of. Temptations prints “under two calories per treat” on the bag, and the number is true, and the failure is never the treat. It is the hand that gives forty of them because the cat asked.

Wet, dry, or both

The chart says people buy both, and the chart is right.

Wet food is mostly water, and cats are bad at drinking. A cat on wet food gets its water with dinner; a cat on dry food has to remember the bowl, and many do not. That is the case for wet, and it is why Fancy Feast sits at number two on a chart that includes everything a cat could need.

Dry food stays fresh in a bowl all day, costs less per meal, and can be left out for a cat that grazes. That is the case for dry, and it is why four bags made the top twenty.

The thing the chart adds, that the debate usually misses, is the portion. Sheba’s whole reason for being on the list is that a can of wet food is more than one cat eats at once, and the half-can in the fridge is what puts people off wet food. Small sealed portions cost more per meal and waste nothing. Buy by the serving, not by the bag.

Where these picks came from, honestly

Read off Amazon’s own cat chart today, rank and rating and review count together, best-sellers first. Research picks. Nobody here is going to claim a personal relationship with a can of Fancy Feast, and we would rather say so than dress a chart reading up as experience.

The one honest warning

The camera at number twenty is the most interesting thing on a chart about feeding cats. An indoor security camera, sitting among the kibble and the litter, because the thing people actually worry about is the cat alone in the house.

That is the warning. The chart is full of ways to feed a cat you are not with. Automatic feeders, sealed portions, dry food that keeps, a camera to check it ate. All of that works, and none of it replaces the ten seconds of Churu from your own hand, which is the only part the cat would put on the chart.