The Best Cheap Cat Food

Feed Those Cats Healthy, Bruvs and Sistahs

Cheap cat food – especially if you care for your cat – is a tricky game to balance. And of course it’s dependent in some part on your cat’s particular needs. The cheapest cat foods are terrible, and the healthiest cat foods are ridiculously overpriced. We don’t see a lot of products in the middle, because clearly manufacturers are either shooting for inexpensive or trying to shill overmarketed quality cat food at a massive markup. Unlike human food, these consumers have very little say in the quality, composition, and flavor of the product, which the human manufacturers have frankly abused to their benefit.

Still, this is a solvable problem in our opinion, and one we’ve thought a lot about. We all have seen good, inexpensive HUMAN food from time to time. Quality, cheap cat foods can’t be all that tricky, right? For all you feline lovers out there, and we know there are many, here’re our Best Cheap Cat Food Recommendations and the reasons behind them.

What’s Best: Dry or Wet Cat Food?

It’s pretty well-known that cats rely on their diet to provide a lot of their moisture. Dry cat food isn’t as sensitive to spoilage, and easier to serve and dispense, especially via automated feeders. And dry is the most inexpensive cat food. But it’s generally not very fresh, full of weird fillers and meat by-products, and not ideal for cats that, in the wild, don’t have much need to drink water because they get moisture from their food. (Did you know that a mouse is 74% water?)

In our calculations, we think a combination of dry and wet is the ideal value compromise, so we’re recommending both a cheap dry cat food and an inexpensive wet cat food. What’s the best wet-dry food balance for cats? We’ll leave the mix up to you, depending on your budget.

Is your cat refusing to drink water? Have you considered that maybe it’s an ergonomics issue? Here are our thoughts on getting your cat to drink.

And we also have thoughts on how to trim cat nails. If you’re not trimming your cat’s nails, you are hurting your pet.

Cheap Cat Foods Precepts

1. In surveying the many cat food review sites, we believe it’s important to weigh all of the following when looking for the best cat food: ingredient quality, ingredient types, balance of nutrients, and manufacturer quality.
2. We’re disappointed that so few information sources, like review sites and Youtube, focus on either exorbitantly-priced gourmet foods or cheap foods. Many sites have articles on the best cheap cat foods, but pack the list with foods that cost more than what we eat. So… I guess we’re cheaper than they are. I’m okay with that.
3. As you probably know, the most prominent brands, like Friskies and Purina, have spotty histories and a tendency to pack pet food with cost-saving trash.
4. We do think it’s more important to have a cat food with a good nutrient balance (a known good) than it is to choose a cat food 100% free of controversial ingredients that may or may not be harmful (a possible good). Some of these controversial ingredients are hype to drive you toward the most expensive products, like the rage about grain-free cat food. For some review sites, it seems they have the opposite priority, which leads to some high-carb, low-protein cat foods puzzlingly receiving the best marks.
5. We want to avoid Amazon (Jeff Bezos is an exploiter of most of his employees) and PetSmart property Chewy (veterinarians hate them for their manipulative pet prescription practices).
6. We agree that dry cat food is trash compared to wet cat food. Cats eat mice; they don’t eat jerky. And cats are often chronically dehydrated anyhow. However, we think dry food often can’t be avoided especially if the owner has a tight schedule or travels on occasion. It’s just so much easier to dispense. We do advise eschewing dry cat food entirely if you can.
7. We’re shooting for balance of 30-45% protein, 10-30% fat, and less than 10% carbohydrates dry weight balance per a veterinarian who does some of the best in-depth nutrition videos we’ve seen:

The Best Budget Wet Food for Cats

Our wet cat food pick must be a doozy, right? You got it: Triumph wet cat food in the 13.2 ounce can, which rings in at an astounding $.18/oz when you order it directly from Sunshine Mills (free shipping after a reasonable $49 minimum; message me for a referral link that will save you 20% on your first order). This is $10/month per cat for my household. Triumph scores a resounding five stars at Cat Food Advisor.

Triumph is 46% protein, 36% fat, and 10% carbs, and comes in three to four different flavors. We do get it in the 13.2 ounce cans, which do spoil if you don’t have a lot of hungry mouths to feed. We recommend having a reusable container to freeze half of the contents of a can when you open it up. Serve the unfrozen half, and thaw the frozen half when you get near the bottom of the first half.

The debatable drawback: all of these products contain the ingredient carrageenan, a texture enhancer that is a possible carcinogen. (A popular emulsifier, it does appear in a lot of human food, such as Dairy Queen Blizzards, icing, salad dressings, tofu, chicken, and beer.) So… a soft recommendation.

Alternate Cheap Wet Cat Food

Fortunately there’s another wet cat food on our radar now: Costco’s Kirkland Chunks in 3 oz cans. If the 13.2 oz Triumph cans are a bother, Costco’s offering is a fantastic alternative, running at $.19/oz and 44% protein, 22% fat, and 8.33% carbs. It’s made by Diamond, which is an okay brand.

The Best Cheap Dry Food for Cats

Our current (if ambivalent) pick for the best dry food is… Diamond Naturals Active Cat. Cats.com gives them a lukewarm review but the caloric weight numbers are pretty decent (35% protein, 42% fat, 23% carbs), and it has a lot less carbs than most. The manufacturer itself says it’s 40% protein minimum, 20% fat minimum, and 17.8% carbs. No artificial additives, probiotics, and yes, ground white rice is the second biggest ingredient. Still, after scouring multiple sources, including many “best budget cat food” features, this is the best dry food that doesn’t cost more than our wet food pick, coming in at around $.12/oz.

Alternate Budget Dry Cat Foods

We do find it strange that Diamond Naturals AND our best wet cat food pick (below) didn’t make Cats.com’s best cheap cat food list, but our runner-up dry food, Kirkland Maintenance dry food, did. Kirkland’s top two ingredients are chicken and chicken meal, but their third and fourth ingredients are whole grain brown rice and yes, ground white rice. How about caloric weight? Definitely inferior to Diamond Naturals at 26% protein, 42% fat, and 32% carbs.

Best Cheap Cat Food: Wrapup

We’re honestly still looking for better cheap cat foods that will knock our socks off. And we’d love to see a manufacturer with a spotless recall history step in with some inexpensive cat foods. It seems all the best companies want to make the best possible EXPENSIVE cat food, and that leaves the big unethical manufacturers free reign to pump out budget crap for everyone else.

We do find it weird that manufacturers don’t post caloric weight numbers AND that the cat food review sites are sometimes wildly inconsistent on these numbers (especially catster.com). Keep an eye on that.

We wish your cats all the best health… and bon appetit!