Tag Archives: Saving Money

Don’t Buy Expensive Cat Food: Consumer Reports

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In their latest (March 2009) issue, Consumer Reports has a very readable article , including quotes from a Cornell University vet, about whether it’s worth spending lots of money on fancy cat food (for those who don’t like clicking on links, here’s the answer: no). Unless your cat(s) have specific health or age issues, any decent generic food should do if their little cat tummies tolerate it.

And since wet food is 75% water, it costs a lot more per ounce of real nutrition, so the same rationale goes here: unless they need wet food for a specific reason, dry will do fine. What with the recession and all, it makes sense to save money on regular purchases (like food) to serve as a cushion in case of unexpected medical bills, or whatever.

Of course, none of this means you shouldn’t buy cans of salmon or fancy treats for your dear cats. Just use them as treats, not everyday meals!

Buying and Safely Storing Pet Food

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With 8 cats to feed, plus the strays that other people discard in my area, I buy our high quality cat food in 20 lb. bags where possible to save money. Then we transfer it to special air tight food safe containers. I also check the expiration date before buying. Eight cats go through a 20 lb. sack in about one and a half months. Overall, buying high quality cat food such as Royal Canin, Eukanuba, Hills, Purina Pro Plan, Nutro, Blue Buffalo, Wysong, etc. can save you money — your cats will eat less and be healthier (thus saving on vet bills).

We are also supplementing with more canned food, especially for our diabetic cat Panther. The canned foods we chose are higher protein, fewer carbohydrates, thus straining his metabolism less.
When you are shopping be sure to check the expiration dates before you buy any pet food or treats.

To read the ingredients on some canned food bring your magnifying glasses (only half joking) — until someone pointed it out — I did not see that Wellness brand foods contains small amounts of garlic which damage the red blood cells of cats and dogs. The label print is tiny!

Be sure that taurine is in the cat food you buy, until it was intentionally added to cat foods, cats were having heart problems from a lack of taurine. The Canadian Journal of Veterinary Research’s article explains this better than I can.

The article “Cats Are Different“by T. J. Dunn, Jr. DVM subtitled “Find Out How A Cat’s Nutritional Needs Are Different From A Dog” is a terrific layman’s level explanation of our pet’s nutritional needs. Read and learn!

Lastly, I found this article and thought you might find it interesting, too: Pet Food Storage Tips, Part One: Dry Food

Online Places To Shop for Cats (and Other Pets, Too!)

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We not only have cats, we have reptiles and fish at our home. Since I work full time, time for shopping and especially for browsing is limited. My solution, like so many others is to surf the Internet. A lot of these places have email newsletters that I have signed up for, so I know about sales and special offers.

Some of my favorite commercial web sites for pet products are:

Amazon.com this is a direct link to Home and Garden, keyword cats

California Veterinary Supply over the counter remedies, treats, can also order with a prescription

Drs Foster and Smith

Collections inexpensive, but of varying quality, too. Worth looking at.

Improvements

Petsmart

Only Natural Pet Store A lot of good information and products. Warning: they carry Wellness which has GARLIC that is unsafe for cats and dogs. Garlic adversely affects red blood cell production.

Steps for Pets they donate money to shelters for each item your buy

See my previous post about Shopping While Helping Cats.

Free Cat Health Brochures and Information

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I can cruise the net with the best of them :-) Anecdotal stories are often interesting. However, when it comes to caring for our precious family members — that includes my sons as well as our cats :-) I prefer to get my medical advice and information from those whose jobs involve staying at the forefront of medical knowledge.

Cornell University Veterinary School’s Feline Health Center has quite a few free online brochures related to various health and behavioral concerns. You can read them as an article or download as a .pdf file. Where appropriate they cross reference their own videos. From the link above, you can also access a glossary of feline medical terms, articles from their newsletter CatWatch.

At this writing there are 8 articles about general health issues ranging from what to do if your cat is “going outside the box” to dealing with aggression. There are four brochures about feline infectious diseases including zoonotic (transferable to humans) disease. And there are six about specific feline health diseases.

The American Veterinary Medical Association has lots of feline health brochures in English and Spanish; printable .pdf files and online readable files. Veterinary clinics can order mix and match packages of 50 brochures to give to clients. They also have a huge number of .pdf files concerned with disaster preparedness, mostly for veterinary practices and state organizations, however there are a few that are of use to pet owners such as Saving the Family (including pets!).

Go and see for yourself!

More Places to Find Pet Related Freebies and Coupons

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Free Stuff Channel’s Pet Page

Cool Freebie Links Pet Page

There is a lot of information overlap between each of these sites, so I try to keep a record of the offers I have already taken advantage of. :-)

Cool Savings requires you to “become a member”. Personally, I don’t often do this as it has led to spam in the past. If you try them out, let me know.