Sometimes we get sent food to review in the post. When this is from the Honey Monster it's all good. When it's cat food it's a little odd. Purina set up some scheme for 'insiders' to get free cat food on the condition that they answer four online surveys. We have three cats so this seemed like a very good thing, and also due to the set up a way to test some of the science claims that they use and get a review out of it.
This is Part 1 of 4 as it's a three week trial. The rest will probably be posted as mini things alongside real human food reviews. The Google analytical stats suggest that humans spend more time looking at cats on the internet than cats do looking at humans so this really is only for a minority audience...
Deedle cat is shown here with the food in question (it sings and dances and annoys). We got two of these large bags - so 1,600 g of food. The recommended amount to feed is 65g (ish) per cat per day. For three weeks that makes 1365g needed which is fine, but on the survey we said we have three cats which needs 4,095g of food. The survey stuff says to ramp up to the new food over 7 to 10 days as cats sometimes need a gradual change, if we did this that would add another 1,365g. We decided to start from day 1 with the new food in the recommended amounts and see how far we got - they might not even eat the stuff yet!
Also we noted that all our cats are considered senior. They are all rehomed (pre-loved) cats and were originally living with other people. We got sent the adult cat food which their own literature says isn't ideal. I think that during week 2 I might try to get the senior version to see us through to the end. Trying to feed one cat different food to the others in the interest of science is unlikely to work.
Introducing the participants!
This is Duchess. She sometimes gets fed on the windowsill for reasons that will become obvious later. She is about 7 and is a Burmese pedigree and used to be a registered breeding cat. Her loving owners wanted her to go somewhere where she would be treated with care and respect once she was too old to breed from so we adopted her. She prefers dry food, but has got really into the little luxury foil tins that they do with other pedigree cats on the top. In her retirement she likes tummy rubs and attacking my hands. She likes it when I play on the Xbox as it's the only time I stay in one place long enough to give decent lap time.
The Purina One is in the bowl and looks similar to other dry foods like Iams that we currently buy.
This is Mabel. She's the largest of all the cats and is fond of three things, her food, your food, and anything that rustles that may be food. She likes to sleep in the spare room all day. She's not actually as fat as this picture suggests as she is very fluffy. We are starting to try to restrict the amount of the other two cats' food she eats which is why there are biscuits on the windowsill for Duchess. When I pluck up the courage I will log her as a pet on WiiFit Plus and see how her weight changes over the three weeks. Mabel is a big fan of the wet food, but I suspect that she's been eating more of the Iams biscuits than we previously thought.
Mabel & Ollie used to live with friends of ours until they got two children and had to move to a bigger place that didn't accommodate pets. They are settling in well although the three of them don't really get on.
This is Ollie. He's an outdoors cat and the reason there are dirty paw prints down the side of my 6 foot 6 big fridge. If it can be climbed then Ollie will try it. He's pretty slim but does wolf down the food. He prefers the dry food and would spend all day outside and all night on the spare bed if he had his way.
Popping the food out on Day One resulted in them eating the portions down easily. Ollie and Mabel had little left after this, but Duchess still has about half a bowl. She doesn't tend to eat it all in one go so can miss out if the food is not protected. I think they all enjoyed the novelty of the new food. I left the Iams out too as it wasn't empty and it hasn't gone down that fast so will still be there tomorrow.
I will keep a log of what they get up to and do a brief update next weekend.
By NLi10