Food review and competition time!

Hi there, folks. Well, it seems that you'll be hearing from me sooner than I thought you would! It's for something very exciting though.

Last month, we ran a competition for attending the Supreme Cat Show, and our winner had a fantastic day out. This time, I'm running another competition, and this time it benefits both you and your cats.

A few months ago, I was contacted by a representative of NutriCat,
a new dry cat food recently released in the UK. They had been following the blog, and were interested to see what I, and more importantly the cats, thought of their new pet food. I agreed to review the food for them. Let me make it very clear that I was not paid in any way for the review, except, of course, for the provision of a bag of cat food to be reviewed. Nor has the review been censored by them in any way.

NutriCat, as I've said, is a new dry cat food, marketted as being vet approved. Indeed, their vet features very heavily on Their Website
which is quite informative and has a lot of information on there. As those of you who know me can attest, I am very, very particular almost to the point of being OCD about what I feed my cats as I don't want to compromise their nutrition in any way. I am a big advocate of feeding wet, but I do also feed dry alongside it to supplement the wet food that I give, and also to make sure that if any new owners choose to feed dry, the kittens are used to and accepting of it. That said, the dry food that I feed isn't the most nutritionally super on the market.

"But you're OCD about their nutrition", I hear you say. Yes I am, but unfortunately the cats don't share my slightly crazy tendancies. Tia came to me on Royal Canin Persian, and no matter how many times I've tried to change her onto something that has a higher meat content, she rebels, usually by way of frequent piles of sick or hair balls on the only carpet in the house which isn't stain proof. Eventually I gave in, and I now feed RC exclusively as my dry choice.

In order for me to try this new food, I examined its nutritional profile very closely, and found it to be not far off that of the Royal Canin I was feeding. "ok," I thought, "I'll review it, but feed it in small portions to avoid any bouts of sickness and rebelling from Tia... My carpet doesn't need any more abuse!"

And that's exactly what I did. NutriCat comes in 400G, 1KG and 2.5KG bags, but no bigger. I'd see this as a potential problem if breeders wanted to feed this exclusively, as 2.5 KG just isn't large enough to sustain a big cat population for more than a few weeks. However, the fact that it's easily available in trial sized bags is excellent as it gives new owners the chance to sample the food without having to throw loads away if the cat decides they don't like it. Storage is easier if it's bought in smaller bags, and you won't break your back trying to lug 10 KG of food into your house!

When I opened the bag, the first thing I noticed was that it didn't have a terribly good reseal mechanism, but this isn't a huge issue for me as I normally put bags of dry straight into air-tight containers. However, this is something you need to be aware of if you're planning to keep it in the original bags, as I doubt they would be air tight. Again though, because the biggest bag is only 2.5 KG, the chances of food perrishing due to exposure before it's eaten are minimal.

The kibbles themselves are small and round, and would be just as easily picked up by kittens as adults. They don't even smell too bad, something I normally hate with dry food as it does tend to pong a lot. I found that my cats were dropping a lot of the kibble when they picked it up, but to be perfectly honest, they do this with every dry food except for the RC Persian, and this isn't surprising as the RC kibble has been specifically designed to accommodate the Persian's sublingual method of bringing food to the mouth (something which is unique to that breed). Because of this, I don't count the kibble dropping as a negative point. It's just worth noting if you have Persians. My lot didn't mind though, because they had fun picking the bits up off the floor to eat.

Now, as for its palatability, well, I haven't one bad thing to say! The cats ate it as though it was the best treat in the universe! In fact, in the end, I just filled a treat ball up with it and they were as enthusiastic about it in the ball as they are when it's filled with Dreamies or some other treat like Temptations etc. In fact, it was so much of a treat that it was actually this particular food that convinced one of my kittens that hand feeding was a good idea. I try to encourage them all to hand feed so that their owners can feed them treats, but one little boy simply wasn't interested until the NutriCat was offered. As I was coming close to the end of the bag, I filled a jar with the remaining food, and had to physically keep my hand over the top of it to stop them shoving their heads inside it during feeding time. they absolutely loved this food!

I gave small samples of this to a few friends to make sure that my cats' reactions were fairly typical, and every one of them reported that their cats wolfed down the food and asked for more. None of mine were sick on NutriCat, although I was careful how I fed it.

NutriCat is very easily available, being stocked and sold by Tesco nationwide. Its price is around the same as Royal Canin charge for breeders, but significantly cheaper than RC can be bought for by non-breeders. A 2.5 KG bag of NutriCat retails at £12.80, whereas a 2 KG bag of RC Persian is £16 plus. However, RC does include hairball control, and the kibbles are specially shaped for a Persian's mouth, and NutriCat doesn't possess either of those traits.

In summary, NutriCat is an incredibly good supermarket food, miles ahead of Whiskas and Felix, its two main competitors as I see it. If someone insists on only buying from the supermarket, I'd recommend NutriCat without hesitation. I won't change to feeding it exclusively myself, but this is only because of its lack of hairball control and its not having kibbles shaped specifically for the Persian's mouth. For any other breed though, it is a food to consider if you insist on feeding dry. Ask the cats and I'm sure they'd plump for this every time... It says a lot when you can use a dry food as treats! I'll continue to buy the small bags of it just to treat them with, as this is a far healthier option than Dreamies or their alternatives. Over all, both me and cats are very pleased with NutriCat.

And now, what about this exciting thing that I mentioned? Well, thanks to the generosity of NutriCat, you too will have the chance to try it out! NutriCat have agreed that I can run a competition to give one lucky winner the chance to sample the food themselves.

So, what's on offer? NutriCat have agreed to provide the winner of the competition with one month's supply of NutriCat in a flavour of their choice. The competition is very easy to enter.

All you have to do is visit the NutriCat Website
and have a look around. Then come back here and tell us which flavour of NutriCat you'd like by leaving a comment on this post. And that's it! The competition will run until 12 midnight GMT till next Monday the 5th of December. Entries will then be allocated a number, and a random number generator will be used to choose the winner. Then all that remains is for you to crack open the bag, and watch your cats enjoy! Remember, folks, even if you don't want to change your cats over totally to NutriCat (I know a lot of you are set on what you like to feed), they like it so much that it can be used as a very healthy, complete Treat Food too! So this competition is really worth entering. I'm sorry, but it's limited to those who live in the UK only.

I'd like to say a big thank you to the folks at Nutricat on behalf of the cats who absolutely loved the food. Good luck to all those who enter the competition too!