Best Cat Food Guide For Cat Parents

March 26, 2025 | by meows-woofs.com

Cat Food Guide for First Time Cat Parents

Are you bringing a new cat home or upgrading your pet feeding routine? Are you wondering what is the best cat food? As cat parents, it’s our responsibility to keep our felines happy, comfortable, and healthy. Therefore, ensuring they eat the right nutrients is one of them. In this guide, you will find all the cat food types you need to know about to ensure your cat gains all the nutrients.

While certain food types are pricier than others, with the right balance, you can provide your cats with the healthiest food and all the essential nutrients they need to live a healthy life.

Which Cat Food is the Best Option for Your Cats?

There are 4 types of cat food available that you should look into, to see what best fits your cat’s needs and your budget. First, there is raw food, wet food, dry food, freeze-dried food, and air-dried food. Pricing varies between these food types. While raw food, wet food, freeze-dried food, and air-dried food are priced higher than dry food, they’re also better. Let’s explain this further.

Can You Feed Your Cat Raw Food?

The answer is Yes! When it comes to feeding your cat raw food, it’s 100% safe, as cats are carnivores. Since they eat meat by nature, their bodies are designed to digest animal-based protein and absorb nutrients. A raw diet mimics what cats eat in the wild, including muscle meat, organs, and bones. While raw meat is considered the best diet you can provide your cat, it’s also the most expensive option. Viva Raw Pets is a great option to provide raw food to your cats.

What is Air Dried Cat Food?

Next, air-dried cat food is the second best alternative to raw cat food. But what is it? Think about air-dried cat food as the middle ground between raw and dry food. Air-dried food is literally what it sounds like. It’s raw cuts of meat that have been air dried or cooked at low temperatures to retain nutrients and some moisture. In addition, cooking at low temperatures also kills bacteria to reduce the likelihood of getting sick. Learn more about air-dried food and the best four brands in the United States. Air-dried food is typically considered a premium food option, so it’s priced slightly higher than other food types. Air-dried food is a great addition to your cat’s diet.

Why You Shouldn't Feed Your Cat Only Freeze Dried Food!

Freeze-dried cat food is an excellent choice for cat owners who want to provide a high-protein, nutrient-dense diet. Similarly to air-dried food, its protein content is higher than other types of food. Therefore, it’s packed with nutrients and it’s minimally processed, a great combination for cat food. Since freeze-dried cat food is dried without heat, it preserves essential nutrients and flavors that cats naturally crave. The cons to freeze-dried food are that all moisture is removed. However, it’s extremely easy for you to rehydrate the food. Simply add water and you’re done!

Don’t forget to Add Water!

While freeze-dried cat food is a great option, it shouldn’t replace wet food, or at the very least, it shouldn’t replace water. Rehydrating the freeze-dried cat food ensures that the food provides a balanced meal with all the nutrients they need. Brands like Instinct Freeze Dried Raw Meals are a great example of balanced meals. They also offer meal toppers, which will be covered later.

Why is Wet Food Considered Better for Your Cats?

Wet food is the best option for cats, known for its convenience and nutrition. Cats who live on a strict dry food diet usually face issues with dehydration, urinary tract issues, and kidney disease. Since cats don’t drink much water naturally and rely on their food for water, wet food provides them with the hydration they need. But why is water so important for cats? Providing sufficient hydration for your cats helps support their kidney health. Wet cat food has 70-85% water, providing hydration for their overall well-being.

Why Water is Important for Cats

To break it down further, cats face issues with the urinary tract because when cats have low moisture intake, their urine becomes concentrated. As a result, it leads to the development of crystals, bladder stones, and infections. Protect your cat’s health by providing water (moisture) in their food.

Dry Cat Food

While dry food is one of the most affordable options for cat food, there are some brands that are best to steer clear from. I know sometimes the most affordable brands are necessary, which is okay. But if you can afford better quality food, then I definitely recommend it! Our personal favorite dry food is Nulo MedalSeries. We switched our cats from Purina Cat Chow to Nulo MedalSeries, and even our most pickiest cat ate it even better. Feeding our pickiest cat dry food was a nightmare, however, after introducing her with Nulo MedalSeries dry food, it’s all she wants now.

Cat Food Meal Toppers

Meal toppers are an excellent way to cut costs if wet food, air-dried food, or raw food is too expensive for you. No shame! Strictly feeding them these types of food will quickly become expensive. In fact, we use meal toppers to make their food more enticing. Meal toppers are food designed to complement their main source of food. Thus, meal toppers aren’t meant to be the main food source. Our cats eat a healthy balance of wet food, dry food, and meal toppers to provide them with a completely balanced diet and a tasty one too! Some of our personal favorites for meal toppers are Tiki Cat Functions.

While Tiki Cat Functions is our personal favorite, there are many other brands, too! Keep in mind that treats, such as from the brand Vital Essentials, can also be used as meal toppers. Bonkers Purr Pops is a great example of this. These Purr Pops can be given as a treat, but can be added as a meal topper to make their food tastier!

What Ingredients Should You Stay Away From?

While it’s not impossible to stay away from all bad ingredients, pricing unfortunately does get in between. Finding a healthy balance between harmful or unnecessary ingredients and price is key here.

Harmful Ingredients in Cat Food to Avoid

Artificial Additives & Preservatives

BHA – Butylated Hydroxyanisole
BHT – Butylated Hydroxytoluene
Ethoxyquin
Propylene Glycol
Artificial Coloring

Low Quality Fillers & Carbohydrates

Corn, wheat, and soy.
Meat by-products.
Rice and other grains (Cats don’t need grains).
Plant based protein.

Low Quality Animal Ingredients

Meat meal, poultry meal, and animal digest.

Carrageenan

A thickener that may cause digestive issues.

Excessive Salt & Sugar

May lead to obesity, diabetes, and kidney issues.

When selecting a food brand for your cats, checking the ingredients list is a must. Ideally, the list should always start with the protein type (fish, chicken, lamb, etc.).

Our Food Mix for Healthy Cats

Since all the premium cat foods sound like the perfect way to feed our cats, it does come at a higher cost to do so. We found a balance to provide them with a mix of different food types. Typically, we feed them their main source of protein (Nulo dry food) in the mornings with water and add a meal topper, usually Bonker’s Purr Pops. In the evening, they eat wet food only. This is where we feed them different types of brands. Admittedly, some do have by-products, while sometimes we’re able to feed them premium brands such as Weruva, Tiki Cat, Cats in the Kitchen (a Weruva brand), and Nulo.

We feed them what feels right, working with our budget. We work as best as we can to find wet food with the least amount of ingredients to avoid. Our general rule of thumb for this is to avoid food coloring, artificial flavoring, and carrageenan.

How Much Food Should I Feed My Cat?

While there’s no set rule of how much you should feed your cat, it does depend on their age, weight, and activity level. The more active cats are, they’ll need more food to keep up with their energy. The following feeding guidelines should provide you with a rough estimate of how to feed your cat.

We feed our cats based on kcal (kilocalories). Kilocalories determine how much energy they receive from food and help control portions. Therefore, it’s important to feed your cats based on kilocalories to avoid overfeeding or underfeeding.

Kilocalories Varies per Food Type

Keep in mind that each food type and each can of food contains different kilocalories. If you’re feeding a mix of wet food, dry food, air-dried, freeze-dried, or raw food, you’ll have to calculate roughly how many kilocalories will be in each serving. For example, we feed our cats based on ounces. We feed our adult cats 1.5 oz. of dry food, which provides them with 165 kilocalories. In the evening, we feed them roughly 35 kilocalories from their wet food. Since we feed them with different brands and add meal toppers, we simply ensure that they get enough kilocalories a day, about 200 kcal per day.

Our kitten is fed more kilocalories to keep up with her activity level.

Does Calculations Stress You Out?

If math and calculations aren’t your thing and stress you out. AI can help you.

Use the following Chat GPT prompt:

“Help me calculate how much my cat should eat daily with a mix of mostly dry food and 1 can wet food using the following details: my cat is [enter age], weighs [enter weight], and has an activity level of [sedentary/active]. I feed [Wet Food Brand] which has [enter kcal per can] kcal per can, and I feed [enter dry food brand], which has [enter kcal per cup] kcal per cup. I prefer measurements in [enter preferred measurement metric: ounces, pounds, grams, kilograms]. My cat should eat 200 kcal of food. **Only add this sentence if measuring in ounces: [Since each cup has 4.5 dry ounces, use this method for calculations.]“

You may adjust the prompt based on your unique needs, but it should look something like this:

“Calculate how much my cats should eat daily using the following details: my cats are 7 & 10 years old, weigh 10 pounds each, and have an activity level of mostly sedentary. I feed Weruva Classics, which has 57 kcal per can, and I feed Nulo MedalSeries dry food, which has 496 kcal per cup. I prefer measurements in ounces. To maximize affordability, I want to feed mostly dry food, and wet food should be split into two. My bag of Nulo MedalSeries All Life stages Dry Cat Food – Grain Free, Turkey & Cod (net wt 12 lbs (5.44 kg) has 496 kcal per cup.”

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