About Friskies Pates..Gizmo and Dottie

Ok I have put Dottie on PurinaOneSmartblend, and FF classics. But my Gizmo loooves Friskies canned. And Dottie, being a cat, thinks the grass is greener on the other side of the fence, and every once in a while I'll turn my back for a second and she's into his dish. I caught her tonite just as she took a first bite of his food before I could snatch it up.

So from what I'm reading, Friskies is ok, but I might have to give Dottie a wee bit more insulin if I let her eat Friskies, rather than FF? Am I overtired, or going in the right direction?

One of the reasons I've been feeding her FF is not because the ash content is lower...when her mouth was so inflamed, I noticed that every once in a while she'd dig at her mouth. I felt through the Friskies with my thumb and found about 15 really sharp fragments of bone. I removed them and went over to FF to keep her little mouth, which was already sore, from getting cut by the bones.

Yes, I know these cats need bones in their diet. But raw food means raw, soft bones. The bones in Friskies are cooked...and I've actually cut my thumb on a sharp bone. Anyone else out there run into this problem?

 

Oh wow , I have never even considered this. Friskies is what I use and my baby already has red inflamed areas in his mouth. He will get a cleaning as soon as I can afford it . I did notice that he licks his food up instead of chewing but I only get the pate style and it's not much to really chew .
Now I will check his food.

 

Yes..put the food on his plate, and press gently with your thumb throughout the food. I keep finding tiny really sharp bones. Some are ok, but some are not. I had gotten a bit obsessive about it in the few weeks prior to having Dottie's teeth out. Just squish around in the pate. Rock your thumb gently back and forth so you don't get cut. I don't feed the gravy flavor Friskies anyway, neither of my cats like the chunks or shreds.

 

I will have to start checking his food. I only fed pate since it seems to be on the safe list of 10 carbs or less.
Oh the things I do for all my fur babies! I posted not to long ago in the prozinc forum about my cat and my dog. Hoping someone comes along soon and gives me so advice. I'm worried that Skittles might be coming out of remission

 

Friskies pates are also under 10% carbs, so they're fine for both sugarcats and civvies

As for the bones, I've never found them, but canned foods are NOT raw foods....they are cooked

 

Yup I know. Raw bones are soft, so cats on a raw food diet don't have to worry about little bone shreds. But cooked bones are hard and brittle, and sharp, and it's cooked bones in the Friskies cans. Hm..I did Friskies on my cat carb calculator and they came up as NO feed. I'll go run the calculator again. I've noticed that the calculator kicks them out if they have higher than 1.5% ash. The Friskies Chicken & Tuna classic pate is at 3.5%

 

Ok this cat carb calculator lists the Friskies Chicken&Tuna at 11.4% And depending on the can I've found up to 30 or so little sharp shards. Might not be a problem for cats without inflamed mouths but for a cat whose mouth is already swollen and sore it might cause issues. I know it did with Dottie. Once I took the pieces out she could eat the pate.

 

My stomach dropped when I saw what you said about Friskies not being safe. I have a list of all the ones at or under 10 carbs and only buy them . I am only doing carbs, not ash etc.
Skittles got DX in Oct and so much has been going on in my life ( bad stuff ) He has only been in remission since Dec 5th so I'm to iffy about changing anything ... Yet

 

The carb calculators are only as good as the numbers the manufacturers give us....Most of them only contain "Guaranteed Analysis" which can make the numbers really vary....they're only saying it's "guaranteed" to be over X% or under X%.....that doesn't mean there's not more or less

Dr. Lisa spent many hours on the phone and emailing companies to get "As Fed" numbers to do her calculations

The carb calculator can give you a general idea, but they're far from exact

 

I think that somehow the ash has to do with the carbs, Sherri. I noticed that on the cans, the only thing that really fluctuated was the ash content. The cat carb calculator app is on Google Play. It has slots to enter Protein, Fat, Fiber, Ash, and moisture..then you hit the button and it spits out the verdict. Every time the ash content rises...the percentage of carbs goes up. I haven't checked all the Friskies pates..just the ones that my cats eat. I have one or two here that they don't normally eat. I just grabbed them to see if later on their tastes might change.

My kitties won't touch the Liver and Chicken..looking now...Hmmm that gives a count of 13.6% carbs. I wonder if Friskies recently changed their recipes? The FF foods and PurinaOne Smartblend check out ok.

 

Ok just saw your post, Chris. Thanks for clarifying. I hated to have to give up Friskies for Dottie..she loves it after I sift through it. But now that her gums aren't inflamed, perhaps the bone thing won't be a problem for her. Her gums were horrific from the stomatitis.

 

When % carbs is talked about here it is the % of calories from carbs. I'm wondering if your app is calculating that or the % of dry mater carbs. Since fat has more calories/gm than protein or carbs, if a food is higher fat then the %of calories from carbs will decrease. Anyway if a food has fat, the % of cal from carbs will be less than the % of dry matter from carbs. The difference is more pronounced in higher fat foods. Hope that makes sense :/.

 

It is doing dry matter carbs, yes. Ok, gotcha! I'll just go by the vet's link and ditch the calculator.

Oh, and in the Friskies pate..the bones I've found are usually in the bottom third of the can. I guess they settle when the food is being processed. So I skim the top two thirds off and use it. As I mentioned, Gizmo doesn't seem to have the problem with it that Dottie did..but then her mouth was a mess..so raw.

 

The app is likely good for getting a rough estimate. Like if you find a food you want to try but don't have data for. If you get something on the high end it might be good to pass. It looks like a lot of the Friskys pates are up in the top of the acceptable range. If you want to do the calculations, I think in cats protein and carbs are 4 cal/gm and fat is 8.5 cal/gm (9 for us beans). But then there's the min/max thing.

 

Yes. It unnerves me that quite frequently companies change their forumlas, but the labels don't catch up with the new formulation for a while. The FDA is woefully tardy in keeping track of it all. And if they aren't forced, too many companies don't change things until they're cited for dragging their heels.

 

This is interesting... http://m.petmd.com/blogs/nutritionn...july/figuring-out-carb-levels-cat-foods-31869

 

Yes, by giving min and max values the formula may change from batch to batch. One would hope that it would only be the percent of fat and protein (and maybe moisture) that would vary since not all cuts of meat have the same levels. But they could also vary by adding more fiber, etc. Or purposely adding more fat because it's cheaper :/.

 

That link was informative, BillysMom. Thanks for posting it. I think the advice is good..run your own trial and see if your cat thrives or doesn't. It's ultimately up to the consumer as to what works and what doesn't.

 

You get a feeling over time what works for your cat.

 

There's even more truth to this than one might initially realise. The way in which a cat's blood glucose levels respond to a particular carb load can be surprising: some do well on very low carb levels (e.g. less than 2%); others get better BG levels with slightly higher carbs (e.g. between 6% and 8%).


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