Best Dry Cat Food

While some small brands still traditionally bake their dry food products, the majority of today’s dry food is made by extrusion cooking. Extrusion begins with a dough mixture of raw ingredients, including wet stuff, which is fed into a cooker that pressurizes and heats the food.

The high heat and pressure helps force the mixture through die cutters (which create the fish shapes seen in some kibbles) and maintains their form as they dry. After extrusion, food pieces are further dried and sprayed with additive formulas, containing fats, flavors, and other substances like vitamins that are too vulnerable to heat to be included in the initial process.

Note: Because additive spraying is mostly standard across manufacturers, it’s not really recommended nor practical to shop for ‘zero additive’ dry food.

Animal food processing plants usually extrude and bag cat food according to the bespoke recipes developed by pet food brands. (Though, the larger brands may have their own production plants). So it’s possible that two products may share production processes, and even source ingredients, while looking completely different. This is especially the case for different dry food recipes sharing one brand name.

All dried foods should meet state and federal regulations informed by the Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO). Because they may be used as the sole element of a cat’s diet, this helps to make sure that dry products meet minimum standards for a complete diet and safe production.

AAFCO standards require that dry foods are made from ingredients Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) for their intended use with legally defined parameters—which is a great start. But owners looking to upscale their cat’s diet can definitely go a lot further…

Even for humans, getting clear on what counts as quality meat is not a straightforward matter. We’re used to having buzzwords thrown at us, whether it’s free-range, organic, or grass fed. Add vague science about antibiotics and artificial additives on top, and your head can start to spin.

So, by the time that meat products have been sourced, mixed, and extruded into dried food, questions about quality can be pretty difficult to answer. In general, though, meat products used to make pet dry food can be sorted into two categories: whole meat and meat meal.

Whole meat is, as it sounds, meat derived from a single part of a single animal. It’s processed in USDA facilities and should be safe for both human and animal consumption.

Meat meal is a meat concentrate made from the offcuts and other trace substances produced by slaughterhouses and animal processing plants. Meal is not intended for human consumption, and contains elements of many animals in a single portion.

There’s no doubt that whole meat is the superior of the two dry food options. Meal tends to be low in actual meat (muscle) and high in more gruesome elements like organs, bones, blood, and even feathers. This contributes to a higher ash content. Because it’s pre-dried, it’s also lower in moisture, and all in all less digestible.

But don’t discount meat meal completely. Some meals are much higher quality than others, and the large difference in cost means that many dry foods contain at least some meal in their recipes. It all depends how transparent brands are about if and where they source their ingredients.

While your cat might be a choosy eater, they’re also unlikely to be too picky about which part of an animal they have for their dinner. And because meal is concentrated, it can have a very high protein ratio, which is why you’ll often find it added to dry foods made primarily from whole meat.

The key is establishing both what kind of meat your cat likes to eat, and what’s best for their everyday wellbeing. Then, select a product where whole meat is the primary ingredient, and if meal appears further down the ingredients list, don’t see it as necessarily a bad sign.

A dry food filler is an ingredient that has no real nutritional benefit for your cat. Instead, it’s probably included in a recipe to bulk out product weight and thereby bring down production costs.

Fillers are common in the pet food industry, meaning that you’ll find them all the way up to luxury dry food options. Common fillers include corn, gluten, and soy.

These ingredients aren’t always directly bad for your cat, in the sense that they’re not toxic or poisonous—and they may actually be necessary to hold kibbles together. However, if it’s a filler, your cat doesn’t need it, by definition. Over time, high consumption of carbohydrate filler ingredients can raise your cat’s risk of developing chronic conditions and diseases such as diabetes and cancer.

‘Ash’ or ‘crude ash’ in cat food is the amount of inorganic material contained in the ingredients. If you burned your bag of dry food, removing all the proteins, fats, carbohydrates, ash is the other stuff, including minerals like potassium, zinc, and iron, that would be left over. (In fact, this isn’t too far away from the process by which nutritional profiles are actually determined.)

When it comes to cat food, ash is a more complicated element. In one sense, you want your cat’s diet to contain all those necessary essential minerals that can come under the ash label, but on the other, the presence of ash may signal that food contains unwanted, indigestible ingredients such as bones and rendered by-products.

The biggest source of ash in dry food is meat meal. Whole meat dry foods and those using low-ash meal contain mostly real meat and minimal bones, feathers, or other parts on animals. (Meats like chicken and fish will also have a naturally lower ash content than red meats.) High-ash meal suggests that presence of more non-meat content, which you should try to steer clear of.

Not all dry cats foods list their ash content, but looking at those that do, a few products stand out for their high percentages. Remember, ash is a golf-score style category: a low number suggests a better quality of source ingredients. The five products with the highest (worst) ash levels are:

Product Ash Content

9.8% Ash Content

• Horizon Legacy Cat & Kitten Grain-Free Dry Cat Food

9% Ash Content

• Go! Solutions Carnivore Grain-Free Chicken, Turkey + Duck Recipe Dry Cat Food
• Go! Solutions Carnivore Grain-Free Lamb + Wild Boar Recipe Dry Cat Food
• FirstMate Grain Friendly Cat & Kitten Formula Cat Food
• FirstMate Grain Friendly Indoor Cat Formula Cat Food

Why Steer clear? A low ash content in dry found suggests the presence of inorganic minerals such as zinc and iron. A high content may mean the presence of unwanted by-products such as bones and feathers.

This is the big one. While there are many dry food ingredients worth avoiding, the one thing you should ensure your cats diet is full of is protein. Cats source the majority of their nutrition from protein, and a considerable portion of their metabolism is devoted to processing it, hence the extent to which sleep plays a role in their daily routine. Because of this, protein is essential to keep their bodies functioning.

Cats without a regular source of protein become lethargic and more prone to sickness, even when hydrated and otherwise fed. Importantly, not all protein sources are equal in terms of nutrition. The best quality proteins have the highest levels of essential amino acids, and are almost always found in whole meat rather than meal or plant products.

We ran the numbers on the top 500 dry cat foods on the market. Here are the top five products for protein percentage:

Product Protein content

63% Protein content

• Wysong Epigen 90 Starch-Free Formula Grain-Free Dry Dog & Cat Food, 5-lb bag

60% Protein content

• Wysong Epigen Starch-Free Chicken Formula Grain-Free Dry Dog & Cat Food, 5-lb bag

59% Protein content

• Dr. Elsey’s cleanprotein Chicken Formula Grain-Free Dry Cat Food, 6.6-lb bag

56% Protein content

• Dr. Elsey’s cleanprotein Salmon Formula Grain-Free Dry Cat Food, 6.6-lb bag

52% Protein content

• Wysong Optimal Nurture Dry Cat Food, 5-lb bag

Why are these a good option?High quality protein is the most important factor in your cat’s diet, so always look for products with a high ratio of protein versus other ingredients.

After protein, fat is the next essential component of your cat’s diet. Fats provide cats with a fundamental energy source and support the absorption of vitamins A, D, E, and K. Good fats also work in harmony with the body to insulate and protect essential organs.

As carnivores, cats don’t store up energy to the extent of some other animals, meaning that the fat content of their food can be relatively high. Most sources estimate that fats should make up 10-20 percent of a cat’s diet, so a good amount of fat (though not super high amounts without a specific need) is desirable in any dry food.

Here are the top five dry cat foods for crude fat content:

Product Crude Fat Content

37.4% Fat Content

• Lafeber EmerAid Sustain HDN Senior Cat Food, 14-oz bag

23.5% Fat Content

• Instinct Raw Boost Grain-Free Recipe with Real Duck & Freeze-Dried Raw Coated Pieces Dry Cat Food, 4.5-lb bag

23% Fat Content

• Instinct Original Grain-Free Recipe with Real Duck Freeze-Dried Raw Coated Dry Cat Food, 10-lb bag
• Royal Canin Mother & Babycat Dry Cat Food for Newborn Kittens, Pregnant & Nursing Cats, 7-lb bag
• Hill’s Prescription Diet s/d Urinary Care Chicken Flavor Dry Cat Food, 4-lb bag

Why are these a good option? Fat is your cat’s main energy source, and is especially valued by growing and senior cats for the way it supports essential functions and vitamin absorption.

Essential fatty acids are a crucial dietary component for both humans and dogs, because they’re difficult or impossible for the body to make by itself.

Among the most important of these are Omega-6 and Omega-3 fatty acids. Not only do they contribute to cats’ skin and coat maintenance, but they play a vital role in healing inflammation. Omega oils help the body respond to internal imbalances, combat joint pains, and ease skin irritations.

And here are the top five products in terms of omega content:

Product Omega Content

25.75% Omega Content

• Blue Buffalo Basics Limited Ingredient Grain-Free Formula Turkey & Potato Recipe Indoor Adult Dry Cat Food, 11-lb bag

7.35% Omega Content

• Nutro Wholesome Essentials Hairball Control Chicken & Brown Rice Recipe Adult Dry Cat Food, 14-lb bag

7% Omega Content

• Wellness CORE Grain-Free Turkey, Turkey Meal & Duck Formula Dry Cat Food, 11-lb bag

6.7% Omega Content

• Authority Hairball Control Chicken & Rice Formula Adult Dry Cat Food, 16-lb bag

6.5% Omega Content

• Purina Pro Plan Prime Plus Adult 7+ Salmon & Rice Formula Dry Cat Food, 3.2-lb bag

5.25% Omega Content

• Wellness CORE Grain-Free Turkey, Turkey Meal & Duck Formula Dry Cat Food, 11-lb bag

4.75% Omega Content

• Wellness CORE Grain-Free Original Formula Dry Cat Food, 11-lb bag
• Wellness CORE RawRev Grain-Free Original Recipe with Freeze-Dried Turkey Liver Dry Cat Food, 10-lb bag

4.5% Omega Content

• Tuscan Natural Harvest Turkey & Chicken Dry Cat Food, 15-lb bag

4.3% Omega Content

• Wellness Complete Health Natural Grain Free Deboned Chicken & Chicken Meal Dry Kitten Food, 5.5-lb bag

Why are these a good option? Omega fatty acids are essential for helping reduce internal inflammation, and cats cannot make them on their own.

Healthy cats don’t require carbohydrates in their diet, so they’re not an essential component of dry cat food. In fact, high levels of carbs such as corn or soy can indicate a low quality product that’s been bulked-out with cheap ingredients.

However, just because they don’t need carbs, it doesn’t mean that cats don’t like to eat them, as many owners will already know. According to one study, when given the choice, cats may on average prefer to get most of their calories from carbohydrates rather than protein, even though it’s not traditionally associated with carnivores.

Likewise, fibre that’s not from meat sources isn’t naturally needed by cats, but many dry foods contain it, as it may be helpful for house cats who aren’t accessing a typical diet of whole-animal prey. Here are the top five products in terms of crude fiber content:

Product Fiber Content

16.1% Fiber Content

• Royal Canin Veterinary Diet Satiety Support Dry Cat Food, 7.7-lb bag

16% Fiber Content

• Hill’s Prescription Diet c/d Multicare + Metabolic Chicken Flavor Dry Cat Food, 12-lb bag
• Hill’s Prescription Diet r/d Weight Reduction Chicken Flavor Dry Cat Food, 8.5-lb bag

13.2% Fiber Content

• Hill’s Prescription Diet c/d Multicare Stress + Metabolic, Urinary + Weight Care Chicken Flavor Dry Cat Food, 6.35-lb bag

13% Fiber Content

• Blue Buffalo Natural Veterinary Diet W+U Weight Management + Urinary Care Grain-Free Dry Cat Food, 6.5-lb bag

Why’s this a good option? House cats may need more fibre in their diets compared to those who roam free, as they don’t hunt and eat whole animals.

Cats are obligate carnivores, which means that unlike humans or dogs, cats can only survive on meat, and have lost the ability to process non-meat protein. In other words, there are no vegetarian or vegan cats.

This is the same for all members of the feline family, from tigers through tabbies. They don’t source vitamins from vegetables or fiber from good carbs. While they still need most of the nutrients and chemical compounds as we do, cats can’t make them from plants—they can only digest them in forms already found in other animal bodies. So, although your cat might occasionally enjoy a non-meat food product (my cat loves tangy chips), meat is the beginning and end of their diet.

Because of this, your cat shouldn’t be eating anything where meat isn’t the primary ingredient, dry food included.

Because they naturally look to hydrate from eating, as much or more than drinking, cats must have water in their food. Typical cat prey such as mice tend to work out to about 65 to 75 percent moisture when consumed. With the best dry cat foods coming in below 15 percent, it’s obvious that any cat on a pure dry food diet needs a continual source of extra hydration in their diet.

The simplest way to provide this is through a bowl of fresh water, cleaned and refilled at least once per day. But because many cats can be reluctant to drink from still-water sources, you might want to try adding water directly to their food, or investing in more cat-friendly water containers that use fountain elements.

A look at the moisture content of dry foods on the market right now reveals the difficulty of retaining moisture after extrusion or backing. It’s obvious, but dried food production and water just don’t mix, meaning that the best options out there struggle to get past 12 percent moisture content.

That doesn’t mean that some dry foods are more moisture-full (trying not to write ‘moist’ because it’s a gross word) than others, though. Here are the five of the best dry foods in terms of moisture retention.

Product Moisture Content

12% Moisture Content

• Meow Mix
• Purina (ONE, Pro Plan)
• Friskies
• I and Love and You
• Kit & Kaboodle

Why’s this a good option? More moisture means cats can derive their hydration in the way that’s most natural to them—in their food.

Like us, cats have their own personal metabolisms, and what works well for one moggie might count as a weight-gaining diet for another. Often, correct portion size is tied to a cat’s weight and breed. Traditionally larger and more active breeds like Savannahs and Main Coons will need to eat far more than a Singapura and the Munchkin, despite what your cat might have to say.

When it comes to dried food, remember that it’s a concentrate product. This means that it’s hard to judge quantity and nutritional need by the size of pellets, which have a fraction of the moisture weight found in whole foods. Instead, use a kitchen scale to measure out an exact portion, then mark that amount on a cup of scooper for easy feeding.

Age in relation to cat food is often a proxy for lifestyle. Younger cats, who are more active and may still be growing, have a different set of dietary needs to older moggies who are likely to be more sedentary.

While all cats, regardless of age, should be eating the best food available, those nearer the kitten stage of life benefit more from products high in fatty and folic acids to help eye, brain and cell development, as well as more balanced fats and proteins to support growth.

As cats grow into adulthood they tend to require less fat, and less food in general. This makes it even more important that the products they do eat aren’t bulked out with non-nutritious ingredients. Older cats often benefit dry food with high calcium and vitamin E content, as well as increased fatty acids, to support bone and immune strength.

Food allergies are rare in cats, with sensitivities to pollen, dust, or fur being far more likely. Sensitivities to certain ingredients are far more likely, often manifesting in diarrhea, lethargy, and sometimes itching—particularly around the face and ears.

That hasn’t stopped many pet food brands from marketing themselves with the so-called benefits of restricted diets. Here are some of the most commonly advertised special dietary claims in dry food, and whether we consider them genuine dietary options, or just marketing talk:

• Grain free. This is marketing spiel, as cats shouldn’t really be eating grain in the first place. While it’s good to know that your brand of dry food doesn’t contain grains, this can’t be considered a dietary benefit. In fact, a study on grain versus grain-free cat diets by Tufts university found that a grain-free cat is unlikely to mean less carbohydrate content in the ingredients list.
• Gluten free. Marketing talk. This claim just means that a non-gluten binding agent other than grain is being used to hold the dry food together. There’s limited evidence that other agents are more beneficial for cats.
• Sensitive digestion / veterinary diet. Depending on the brand, food marked ‘sensitive digestion’ should genuinely differ from other dried products. Recipes are tailored to cats who have experienced frequent stomach upset, often due to issues in the lower digestional tract. These kibbles may be supplemented with prebiotics and are sometimes only sold through clinics.
• High protein. This one’s a little of both. Of course, all cats should be consuming a diet consisting mainly of protein, but older cats do generally require less fat in their food, making high-protein kibble a good choice. The best brands will go further with the claims, citing high or total amounts of animal-sourced proteins.

How and when you feed your cat likely has a lot to do with work schedules and daily commitments. But if you’re primarily using dry products, we’re willing to bet that you tend to leave out food for your cat to graze on.

There’s no firm veterinary opinion on whether it’s better to leave food out or keep your cat on a mealtime schedule. Again, a lot comes down to the personal characteristics of your cat, and whether they benefit from having a continually source of food.

However, we lean in the direction of scheduled meal times as the better feeding option for most cats, for a couple reasons:

• Mealtime feeding helps add a sense of structure to your cat’s day, which is helpful if they regularly spend any prolonged period alone.
• For younger or new cats, a mealtime also helps them more quickly associate you with food and (therefore) authority.
• Set meal times allow you to introduce treats into a cat’s diet, which is a great way to bond and boost playtimes. Try hiding treats in their favorite toys or making them chase after a nibble of something tasty.

Almost all cats are picky eaters in one way or another, which can make switching brands no easy task. A sudden transition to new food can result in a cold shoulder and moggie hunger strike until you eventually relent (because cats always win.)

Almost all sources on diet transition recommend an incremental change, beginning by mixing small amounts of the new food product with the old. Start by feeding your cat a 1:3 mixture of new and old food for three days, then increase the ratio to 1:1, and if everything’s going well, a majority new to old food.

Most cats should happily accept a bowl of solely new product by around day ten, but you might need to draw the process out even longer if you’re the servant, sorry, owner, of a particularly fussy cat.