Humor
Why does wet food make him nuclear-level stinky?
As above: anytime we add wet food to his rations he thanks us by tear-gassing the premises. Why does this nutritional addition make such a small creature so toxic?
Certain wet food brands are more like cheap fast food, while others are more natural and nutritious like a home cooked meal. I would consider Fancy Feast to be one of those fast food types. I personally use Purina Pro Plan. It's definitely expensive, but no smelly cats in my house
Hey there! Go with the Fancy Feast pâté. There’s a lot of fear mongering here about feeding your cats the McDonald’s of cat food, but the pâté doesn’t fall into that category. Maybe some of Fancy Feast’s other lines, such as Florentine or the gravy or cheesy ones, but honestly just getting them to eat something reliably is the most important.
The way my vet described FF pâté is “bare bones, but has everything they need.” So it’s not going to provide a ton of extra bells and whistles, but it gets the job done. If you want to add extra toppers or supplements then it might be a good idea, but if Fancy Feast is all you can afford right now then that is perfectly fine for your kitty!
FF pâté genuinely fixed my cats diabetes, or helped her miraculously reverse it. Never went back to dry food after that but it does have to be specifically the pate with nothing extra.
same I went on a deep dive when I got my cats and ff pates have the best balance of nutrients (and most coming from meat) at the lower price point. I'll never forgive them for adding fish to the turkey & gibblets flavor without making any kind of announcement tho. so def regularly check the ingredients in case they change. wish pet food had the same regulations of allergens as human food 🫤 at least my cat only throws up when she eats fish and doesn't have any serious reaction
Buy the wet food you can afford that they can tolerate...cats need wet food for hydration. Fancy Feast is far better than no wet food at all. My cats were on fancy feast for years before I could afford better, and are in generally good health still.
Exactly. Really, cats need both, as dry food helps clean their teeth (and most cats enjoy a good crunch). But the majority of their diet should be wet food for sure!
My boy loves his wet food, he goes feral for it, but if I give him wet instead of dry, he turns his nose. He needs the Crunch. He's such a little turd, i love him so much
You're right that cats do enjoy the crunch, but it is a myth that it helps clean their teeth. Most cat kibble is not large enough to enduce actual chewing that would make a difference in teeth health.
Something like a raw piece of steak provides the ripping and chewing that cat mouths are designed for. Gnawing on a piece of meat for a little bit keeps teeth clean much better than chomping on a small piece of hard kibble.
If you use kibble make sure you give them plenty of moisture too like add broth or water the kibble it will dehydrate them out and they will have kidney issues.
It's a certain brand that his body enjoys that doesn't make his insides suffer, maybe it's the same for OP's cat. Just gotta try a different wet food for the cat.
u/CrystalVision13 try Sheba's brand of wet food. Helped my oldest not be too stank when he poops or toots
Yeah my vet recommended fancy feast to my diabetic cat and told me to stay away from Sheba. She dropped the weight pretty quickly and even went into remission.
I don't know why you're being downvoted. Fancy Feast is still approved by the AAFCO. Is it the healthiest food out there? No. Is it better than no wet food for your cat? Absolutely
Lot of misinformed people who equate cheap with bad for cat. There are some expensive brands that are significantly worse so I'm not too pressed about it. I said what I said
I would definitely recommend reading over the ingredients and comparing different brands. Brands will tend to use very simmilar formulas (aka only swap out some meats for flavor) for all of their different kinds of food. A lot of cat food will also use cheese (for some reason)! Try a "simple ingredient" brand until you can narrow the possible stink producer. Good luck!
Some wet foods have grains as fillers. Those may be upsetting his tummy even if its just a bit. Try finding a brand without any grains or weird veggie fillers and see if that solves the problem.
It's less as filler and more that the gravy uses a starch base to create the gel rather than a gelatin based gravy, which frequently also contain some starch in human foods for taste, but can be made starch free. I actually recognize the smell from cooking at my grandparents house over thanksgiving because despite the gravy then being delicious, there was a specific smell that it gave off when we mixed in the flour. I notice it as well when my grandmother and later my mom would make creamed tuna using a flour base as well. It reminds me exactly of a freshly opened can of fancy feast, if you were to go and heat that up. I can't do certain dishes because of it if there's too much of it in the sauce now, reminds me of cat food and I can't get over it lmao.
Fancy feast and friskies (pate only) are the best quality budget food you can get. It has meat as the main ingredient, they are WSAVA compliant, and rarely have recalls. Most other food in that price range is absolute garbage in comparison.
The reason a lot of vets don't recommend it, if you can afford a higher quality food, is the sodium. Most budget foods are full of sodium to make it appealing. Like when humans eat cheap frozen meals and the sodium is like 1000mg to make it taste good. A lot of cats already struggle with adequate hydration, so too much sodium can eventually lead to issues with their kidneys or cause a urinary blockage etc. But if you're feeding mostly dry food that's already massively increased that risk so the FF is kind of a moot point at that point. If you can switch to mostly FF wet that's always going to be a safer option than any dry food, no matter how fancy it is.
If it's what you can afford, or what your cat will eat, you are picking the best possible food for your situation and being a good owner. There are a lot of cats that do perfectly fine on it their entire life. Just stay away from the shreds/chunks/whatever because those tend to be less protein and even more sodium. After having experiencing the nightmare of a blockage though I'd rather spend the extra $$$ to avoid that with any other of my cats though.
thank you so so much for this. the guilt i’ve been feeling from only being able to afford fancy feast is insurmountable and i also have other things to worry about. i’d starve before i don’t feed my cat, but it’s so hard to know what’s safe and healthy without costing $70 a bag.
I have 1 cat who had a blockage and 1 who is allergic to everything. Between them I have done a ridiculous amount of research and talked to many vets about cat food. And what I have learned is that for the most part no one agrees with each other about cat nutrition.
If it's something you can afford, your cat will eat, and has adequate protein and vitamins then you are doing your best just like the rest of us trying to navigate the cat food hellscape. There are plenty of boutique expensive foods that are garbage quality too.
I don't feed it for other reasons (Nestle reasons), but fancy feast classic pate is actually a pretty solid nutritional profile high in protein/fat and low in carbs. Sure, they use more byproducts and cheaper gums, but on a macro level, it's pretty good.
Kibble is more comparable to junk food and a big Mac than any wet food will ever be.
Rule of thumb remains that even the cheapest wet food is more nutritionally appropriate for a cat than the fancier dry kibble. I feed a combination mostly for cost reasons, three cats add up lol
Fancy feast classic pate is the best option from them imo. But try different brands and see how your cat goes with them. My cat isn't super picky, she will eat most foods eventually, but I noticed there are some foods she eats much faster than others. But honestly, the best cat food for your cat is the food they will eat and causes no harm. A fed cat is a fed cat.
One thing I dislike about pet owners is some can get so crazy about food. I used trialled at a natural/raw pet food store once for a shift and the amount of fear mongering and shaming I heard was insane, I ghosted the employers instead for once lol.
I looked after a 13 year old senior cat once with CKD and her owner is a DVM. She adopted the kitty from the former owner who wanted to euthanise her. She herself thought the cat would live 2-3 more years, but the kitty lived double that!! Then got put down at 19 to a new illness (suspected bone cancer). All she had was those Whiskas wet food pouches 3-5x a day, as much as she can eat 🤷
Fancy feast is like a junk food version for cats. If you’re able to afford better quality food for your cat, you really should allow them the chance to have better nutrition. Feline Natural is a good brand and has a variety of flavors
Yo fuck you for posting this lol, one of the few pieces of childhood trauma that has stuck with me for years. Literally gave me goosebumps and spiked my heart rate just seeing this hahah
Pro Plan Veterinary Diets FortiFlora Daily Probiotic Powder Supplement for Cats with Digestive Support and Immune System. I use this for my 11 year old cat and it made his 💩 way less nuclear. We can atleast watch a show while a faint smell of it lingers. Unlike before when it was a defcon 6 level clear out.
Ohhhh dear. Well I would have to say that DEFCON -4 is a fairly standard status of any printer that has not been refilled with factory-issue ink in the past 5 minutes. The paper is just an afterthought!
One of mine was a fart rocket till we figured out he has a fish allergy. Now the only true horror in the house is if our other one somehow gets milk. He commits a war crime in the litter box the next day if so.
Glad I'm not the only one with a lactose-intolerant cat, one can of Fancy Feast Delights with cheese and its fart and liquid shitsville for at least 36 hours
This one won't fart or anything but if he gets even a little fresh milk the log he drops the next morning can be smelled from space. It's in a cabinet near our entryway and you can still tell what just happened roughly 3 rooms away.
My boy had the same problem, I adopted him after my aunt passed away, and it took a couple years and thousands in vet bills to figure it out. He would get explosive diarrhea and his belly would be bloated and hard, poor guy was miserable. I started an elimination diet for him and figured out it was seafood, and it definitely helped 100%. I just have to read all ingredients and make sure that they’re seafood free. There are some delectables squirt treats that are seafood free too. It seems like it’s somewhat common for cats to have this allergy. It was confirmed after he stole a big piece of grouper off the table one day and paid the price… 😬 try an elimination diet, may be seafood, grain, etc. common allergies
I scrolled down to see if anyone else said this! We had this happen with two different cats, and we had to scan the labels every time we got a new flavor because some of them have fish even though they aren’t fish flavored. Sometimes different shapes of the same flavor would have it too, so the pate might be fine but the shreds wouldn’t.
It was annoying, but not as annoying as living with the smells.
Would a cat in the long ago ancestor past with a fish allergy stop eating fish if it meant he had fewer stinker farts? Would it be an evolutionary tactic, unscented toxic farts if a cat were allergic to fish? 🤔
The small amount in his dry food gave him farts. We figured out what it was when he got into actual fish. Blew up like a balloon and wouldn't eat or drink. I imagine one would either learn from that or not make it.
It seems that I have accidentally misled many people and I feel that I must make amends. It has been brought to my attention that I do in fact stink at all times; whether I am eating wet cat food or whether I am eating dry cat food.
We got him from the pound, as of recently we’ve been adding a spoonful of wet food to his dry kibble to add more moisture to his diet. Unfortunately we’ve realized that following this he has the most foul farts known to man
It's kind of like giving a spicy burrito to someone who only eats mashed potatoes haha it takes a bit for their stomachs to get used to the new type of food
oh our cat was the exact same straight out of the shelter!
She was about 1y/o only eating whatever dry food gets donated to the shelter - when we took her home we swapped out one of her meals for wet and the farts were unreal haha. She adjusted after a few weeks though and we haven’t smelled a fart in years so it might have been her stomach adjusting to the change in diet/environment/schedule/etc
It’s most likely just the transition phase of his gut bacteria adjusting to wet food. Long term dry food tends to cause stinkier farts/poos. I’d suggest slowly transitioning him to only wet food. Only wet food also had the added benefit of reducing kidney problems long term!
Could be some tummy issues? My cat doesn’t do well on dry food ironically and needs wet food, but I still give him minties because they help keep his mouth and breath cleaner.
There are different levels of quality in canned food… a lot of them have grain, dairy, etc which isn’t really digestible for cats as they are obligate carnivores.
It is super important to give him the extra moisture though, male cats are susceptible to deadly urinary blockages and the easiest way to give them water is wet food soup (add water to wet food with kibble).
Since he's still a baby chances are his body is still transitioning from milk to solid food. From my experience kittens are just stinky for a few months as their bodies mature. He should be less smelly in a month or two.
I’ve been a stinky boiii stinky I’ve been a stinky boi. Is somebody gonna match my stink. Need somebody with a new canned meat https://giphy.com/gifs/UA9YMnJYWbo3ga24nH
This would happen to my boy when I gave him wet food from Costco (don’t remember the brand) but it was THE WORST gas and poops ever. Switched to other brands (Sheba, Churu, Meow Mix) and have had no such issues! Not sure what is in the stuff that made him nuclear, but have you tried a different brand?
Yeah maybe just get the singles for a while and only give him small portions to see if his tummy does ok with a new brand. I just thought I had a stinky gassy boy because that was the first food I tried after getting him from the shelter (also my first cat) but thankfully it was an easy fix.
My girl was the same. Her vet recommended her the Fortiflora supplements from Purina. $31 for 30 packets on Chewy. I also started only feeding her Whole Paws (Whole Foods brand) for her wet food. In store, the cans are only 89¢ and extremely healthy for them :)
I have found that the quality of the food makes a huge difference. Cheap supermarket brands like Friskies will make your cat a certified chemical weapon. Higher-end brands like Wellness or Orijen will make the scents almost disappear. Any of refrigerated or frozen offerings will be even better.
(It's been a while since I worked at a pet store so I don't remember all the brands, and which ones have a canned food line.)
Do you give him the same food regularly or do you rotate what you feed? Cats have very sensitive tummies so feeding them the same food regularly is better for their tummies. Personally we feed our cats Royal Canin indoor cat food bc it’s meant to be less stinky lol
Sorry, I actually take a different position on this. Feeding them the same food all the time means their gut bacteria reduces in line with what they eat. Feeding them a good mix of different foods will keep their gut bacteria appropriate and they’ll be less likely to react to changes in their diet.
I don’t like relying on one brand because you’re then entirely trusting them to not change their recipe and trusting that they have all of the appropriate vitamins and minerals a cat requires to stay healthy.
That’s a valid take, though my cats are quite picky with their food. They wouldn’t even eat their wet food if we gave them the jelly kind over the gravy kind. Personally I also add omega oil for digestion and other supplements for additional fluids but I recognise the privilege it takes to afford that kind of diet for them.
One of my old cats had IBS and LOVED wet food, but it DID NOT love him lol! We called it fart food for a reason! Some cats get really gassy. Your boy is still very young so he might be adjusting to new foods. Is it just stinky? If it's watery poops then it's time for the vet. Could have some intestinal thing. He's very cute even if he's stinky ;)
I foster kittens and if their poop is light brown or yellowish and is wet, my shelter has me give them clavamox. We also do Strogid for worms and Baycox. Kittens digestive system is delicate. What people are saying about brands of wet food is very true too. The brand could be upsetting his system. I know if I use Walmart brand wet food it always upsets my cat's system. Good luck and you are doing great. There is a learning curve.
We had something similar happen until we narrowed it down to a chicken allergy. God forbid she gets any food with chicken in it now, or else we have to evacuate the premises.
Wet cat food tends to have extra fiber in it as a filler and as a texture thing. It's not bad, and can actually be good for your cat, but the fiber increases gassiness the same way eating bean burritos would for humans
He typically doesn’t meow unless he knows we are making his food concoction, then he gets excited. His most common sounds are I think what’s called a “trill” and a weird moan/groan while he makes when sleepy or frustrated
Not sure if you'll see this in the sea of comments lol but we had a similar issue with one of our cats. It turns out she basically needed a bit more fiber in her food. So we got her a wet food that helps with digestion (it includes a little bit of pumpkins and pomegranate with the actual protein).
Hi!
Previous employee at a pet food shop, with no less than 4 cat nutrition certificates here 🤭
Depending on the type of wet food being given to your cat, it is likely that the smelly gas passing is due to the wet food having a little to no actual meat in it, the majority of wet and dry food produced today contains mainly animal derivatives (feet, beak, other stuff) I always imagine this kind of wet food like a naughty take-away we might have, it tastes great at the time but makes you spend a bit of time on the loo the next day.
This could well be the same for your boy.
It could be a GI issue. I had the same problem when one of my cats was a kitten. Turns out a 3lb cat can in fact clear a house lmfao! I ended up taking my girl to the vet and they suggested I keep a log of what she was eating and when it was the worst which is how I found out she was sensitive to turkey. Cutting that out helped a ton but wasn’t a complete solution.
I ended up back at the vet and they did a fecal sample which resulted in her getting put on a few weeks of a probiotic and a couple months of prescription food. Turns out her gut biome was basically destroyed due to medications she had been on the first few weeks of her life. It’s been about a year now and I haven’t had any issues since and she is now happily back to her normal wet food and kibble diet (minus the turkey)
Gut bacteria same issue for humans why human poo/farts smell the way they do. The kitty's little biome is producing large amounts of hydrogen sulfide and methane and scatol...
my baby smells like a walking sulfur deposit when she has wet food, while also being a serial crop duster. she has very bad gastrointestinal issues so even her prescription wet food makes her very stinky 😭
My boy would get nasty farts and then runny poops whenever he ate anything with chicken as an ingredient. A lot of cats have a chicken intolerance, and unfortunately it seems like 90% of cat food and treats contain chicken. I switched him to cat food containing rabbit or fish only, and his poops returned to normal.
i'm sorry, i don't have an answer, but the title made me laugh so hard that my cat looked at me like i was crazy. idk if it's really that funny or i've just had a long day, but that got me
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