Wet cat food reviews

Confused by cat food? Read our independent wet cat food reviews. Seven wet cat foods tried and tested by the Bombadillo kittens.

We keep up to date with the latest research into cat nutrition in wet cat food and dry cat food. And, like human nutrition, it is very confusing! We do not believe that we have all the answers - far from it! Our current approach to cat nutrition revolves around a few main considerations: we want our cats on a good quality diet that lets them thrive, a diet that is safe and not introducing potentially harmful bacteria to the environment, and a diet that is easy for our new kitten parents to continue. This is what we currently look for in a cat food:

High meat content
Meat from a recognisable, whole food source is preferable to ‘meat meal’
High protein content
Low, or no, allergen content
Appropriate added taurine: an essential amino acid that cats are not able to produce for themselves.
- Suggested amounts of taurine are around 50-100mg per day
- With 1,000mg/kg in dry food and up to 2,000mg/kg needed in wet food because more taurine is lost during the production process.
- Discover more about taurine and taurine supplementation in our article: taurine in cats.
Variety - we believe that, as with humans, maintaining good gut bacteria requires a variety of different food sources. So we use multiple foods for our cats, from multiple protein sources to try and nourish their gut bacteria and make sure they get a balanced diet. Always introduce new foods carefully, and very gradually to avoid upsetting your cat's tummy
Wet and dry: we feed a mix of wet and dry food. It is said that dry food is good for removing tartar from the teeth. We are not sure if this is true or not, but what we do know is that dry food has much more taurine in it, which is essential. It is also very useful for cats to be willing to eat dry food in case you are out all day and not able to feed them regularly enough. Wet food helps cats stay hydrated. We like to give our cats the benefits of both
Omega oils: reduce inflammation and keep cats healthy
Yucca extract: reduces the odour of your cats litter box, provides vitamins and aids absorption

We try different foods and base our ultimate decision about the benefits of a food on the results that we see. Here, we have tried to condense the basics of a few food brands so that you can benefit from our experience.

Read our dry cat food reviews.

Raw feeding

If you are considering raw feeding, read this first.

Seven wet cat foods of various brands, styles and varieties tried and tested for you by the Bombadillo Kittens!

Our favourite wet food is: Thrive Chicken

Buy Thirive Chicken Complete Wet food on Amazon here (#affiliatelink)

Price: £13/kg
Complete or supplementary: complete, so this can be your staple cat food
Taurine: 05g/kg = sufficient
Protein: 16%
Meat content 75% plus stock
Meat source: chicken breast
Yucca extract: no, but it is such good quality food it doesn't need it.
Results:
- This wet cat food is loved by all of our cats, even the fussiest eaters. It is a convenient way of adding meat and protein to their diet. It is essentially shredded chicken in a tin, like the Applaws below, but this one has all of the added nutrients and is a complete food.
- Because it is so loved by our cats, it is a great food to have in for fussy eaters, or post-surgery/illness.
- We would like it to come in larger tins, but for a normal cat household one tin per day as a top up to dry food would be ideal.
- It also comes in a variety of flavours - we like these three most - try a combination of them:
  - Buy Thrive Chicken on Amazon now
  - Buy Thrive Chicken with Liver on Amazon now (liver is full of vitamins)
  - Buy Thrive Chicken with Turkey on Amazon now (turkey has the highest concentration of certain amino acids of any meat) (#affiliatelinks)

Applaws wet cat food tins chicken collection

Applaws wet cat food review

Price: £10.12/kg
Complete or supplementary: supplementary, so this cannot be your staple cat food
Taurine: 0 = not sufficient
Protein: not specified
Meat content 74%:
Meat source: depends on flavour, but all whole meat sources
Yucca extract: no
Results:
- This wet cat food is liked by all of our cats. It is a convenient way of adding meat and protein to their diet. It is essentially shredded chicken in a tin. Quite pricey, and given that it has no added minerals and is a supplementary food, you could arguably just feed your cats shredded cooked chicken which would achieve the same results at a lower cost. Overall a useful addition in the cupboard, but not a complete food. Do not use this wet cat food for more than about 10% of your cats caloric intake each day. Applaws also do a complete wet food, but we haven’t tried that yet.
Buy it on Amazon here (#affiliatelink)

Bozita chunks in jelly

Bozita wet cat food review

Price: £2.48/kg
Complete or supplementary: complete
Taurine: 700mg/kg = on the low side: suggested amounts are 2,000mg/kg in wet food.
Protein: 8.5%
Meat content: 92%
Meat source: chicken chunks
Moisture: 83%
Yucca extract: no
around 70% offal and 30% muscle meat
Results: all of our cats like this wet cat food. We love the high meat content. We love the huge variety of meat sources available in the range, so we can alternate the food our cats get easily. The lower taurine content is a drawback. We currently use this to give our cats some wet food, but they also get good quality dry kitten food as well. We found that, when introducing a new adult cat to this food, if given in large quantities it can give them a bit of a funny tummy, possibly due to the high fat and offal content. Overall a reasonable wet food, at a great price, but definitely supplement it with something high in taurine.

Feringa menu kitten

Feringa menu kitten wet cat food review

Two varieties: Chicken and veal with dandelions and carrots, or turkey with pumpkin and catnip
Price: £3.75/kg
Complete or supplementary: complete
Taurine: 1,500 mg/kg
Protein: 11.1%
Meat content: 72%
Meat source: chicken heart, meat, liver, stomach, neck and veal heart
Moisture: 79%
Yucca extract: no
50% offal and 50% muscle meat
Results: our kittens didn’t take to this wet cat food at first, so we mushed it up for them a bit, and now they eat it readily. Would prefer a little more taurine, but this is a very good food and seems to be more gentle on their tummies than Bozita, probably because it has a better offal:muscle meat ratio. We use this for our kittens. They seem to slightly prefer the Turkey with Pumpkin and Catnip, but will eat both varieties with enthusiasm now! They are growing very well on this food, and it is now one of our staple foods for kittens. It is a little more pricey than some of the alternatives, but does have a high meat content without seeming to be too rich for little tummies. This food is of high enough quality that you can feed kittens the adult variety, which you can buy for around £2.70/kg and then it comes in more varieties as well.

James Wellbeloved kitten pouches lamb or turkey

James Wellbeloved kitten wet food review

Price: £6.12/kg
Complete or supplementary: complete
Taurine: not mentioned
Protein: 9.5%
Meat content: 35%
Meat source: lamb as a single source protein
Moisture: 82%
Yucca extract: yes
Results: this wet cat food is loved by our cats and kittens alike - they devour it! We love the fact that it is from a single source protein. If you ever suspect your cat has IBD/IBS a single source protein food is essential. We also appreciate that this food is hypoallergenic, although this is not essential for most cats. The big downside with this is that the packaging simply does not mention taurine. A popular food with our cats, and useful if you ever need to treat IBD. We use this as a treat and to keep variety in our cats' diets. Unfortunately, it only comes in small pouches, which is not really enough for a litter of kittens! Would love to see bigger, better value tins available.
Buy it on Amazon here (#affiliatelink)

Smilla kitten tins

Smilla kitten tins wet cat food reviews

Price: £2.70/kg
Complete or supplementary: complete
Taurine: 1,500mg/kg
Protein: 11.5%
Meat content: 40% (20% and 20% meat by-products)
Meat source: 20% poultry, 20% chicken, including meat by-products
Moisture: 79%
Yucca extract: not mentioned
Results: we are currently trialling this wet cat food. On first sight, it appears to be very similar to the Feringa Menu Kitten, but the meat content is actually much lower. As with most wet food, taurine levels are lower than we would like. We will continue to test this for a while before publishing any conclusions. This food could present a good, economical option for people.

Smilla chunks in jelly

Smilla chunks in jelly wet cat food review

Price: £2.48/kg
Complete or supplementary: complete
Taurine: 500mg/kg, which is too low really
Protein: 7.5%
Meat content: 30% but this is not entirely clear
Meat source: various
Moisture: 83%
Yucca extract: not mentioned
Results: similar to Bozita, but comes in less varieties. Also, this food does not have a lot of information provided, but it does state that it is grain and sugar free. This food is liked by all of our cats, but too much of it can be a bit rich for them. Also, if you are going to use this as your sole or main food for your cat, we would suggest supplementing additional taurine.

Wainwrights kitten tuna

Wainwrights wet cat food review

Price: £5.50/kg
Complete or supplementary: complete
Taurine: not mentioned
Protein: 9.5%
Meat content: 45%
Meat source: tuna
Moisture: 84%
Yucca extract: yes
Results: We actually use the chicken variety of this food (tuna is not good for cats because of the heavy metal content) The chicken variety is reasonably well liked by our cats, and hypoallergenic, which we like. No mention of taurine, which is concerning. We use this to add some variety to our cats’ diets. We tend to use the chicken one but there is no information available for that version. We prefer not to give our cats too much fish, as there is some evidence that it isn’t very good for them - it can cause joint problems. That being said, once or twice a week some good oliy fish is good to add omega oils to their diet. Please avoid Tuna for cats.

Wet Cat Food: Conclusions

Wet cat food is excellent for cats because it gets so much water into them without them even realising it. This keeps your cat hydrated which is great for his liver and kidneys. Cats evolved from desert dwelling animals and therefore evolved to obtain most of their water from the food they eat. Wet cat food is therefore an important element of our cats' diets.

There is currently a very strong movement in favour of wet cat food and also raw feeding, and against dry cat food. The main argument against dry cat food is that it dehydrates cats and leads to problems with the kidneys. We give our cats wet cat food every day, but they also have a good quality dry kibble with plenty of taurine in it, because taurine is absolutely vital to heart health. We currently feed our cats a variety of high quality dry foods. We then add in a range of different wet foods each day, to ensure that they get as varied and balanced a diet as possible.

Our kittens are fed on high quality wet food and we have developed a bit of a secret formula over the years, which we change for each litter depending on what suits them and what suits their parents. Nutrition is a very personal and subjective thing so we are only able to advise on foods for our own kittens, as we have no knowledge of what might suit a cat or kitten that we have not raised.

A note to our kitten parents: this page may not be the most up to date, so please follow the advice we give you for your kitten! We are constantly researching and refining our approach to nutrition.