Wellness Kitten Chicken & Salmon Pate, 3oz (Pack of 12)

My kitten wasn’t eating well until I purchased these for him. He loves the taste and smell and can’t seem to get enough. He seems to digest it well, without any bowel movement issues. I love the water content and smooth creamy texture as it makes it easy for him to eat it. I purchased it based on the ingredients, being grain free to provide my kitten with a healthy option. He has already gained 4.6 ounces in a week. I have already placed an order for more. I do wish it came at a lower price, for the amount of kitten food received, but the positive qualities make it worth it.

Wellness Core Kitten Wet Food: Turkey and Chicken Liver

This is the best quality kitten food I could find. I did a lot of research and from the available foods I found, this is the best diet I could find without going ‘raw’ or making my own. While ‘raw’ diets are supposed to be more nutritionally natural for a cat, there is the possibility of salmonella as well as a lot more work involved with refrigerating it, portioning it, and heating it. For the convenience of having portioned and fully cooked cans of food, I’ll deal with the potential ‘lesser’ quality of this food. I can also order it from amazon and have it delivered to my door.

This food does have ‘chicken meal’ which isn’t something you necessarily want, but it’s pretty far down the list of ingredients, so I’m not too worried about it. It also has cranberries, which are supposedly included for urinary tract health. I read that this isn’t necessary for cats. I don’t know for sure, so I’ll mention it and not comment.

This is fairly expensive food. It’s currently $21.48 for 12 cans (3oz.). That’s 1.79/can or 0.60c/oz. or 9.55/lb. Take that into consideration when buying. Around here, that’s more per pound than about any good meat I could get for myself from a grocery store.

The Wellness complete line is almost as good and is a decent amount cheaper, though still more expensive than something similar wet foods you might be more familiar with. In the end, I’m just buying it because it’s the best I could find and I can afford it with my one kitten. I feed her (1) can in the mornings and supplement with the recommended amount of the complementary dry food of the same line. We had a cat growing up who subsisted on low end dry food, then was on Royal Canin S/O for urinary tract issues for the rest of his life. He only got the occasional pack of wet food or snack in the kitchen and he was healthy and trim till he died of old age at 16yrs. It’ll be up to you to decide if the price is worth it, but I believe the quality is definitely there if you decide it is.

Just as an extra note, my kitten was found abandoned at 2 weeks. I got her at 5 weeks and she’d been fed adult wet food. I switched her to wellness complete kitten pate and was feeding her two cans a day. I wanted to supplement with dry food because they said you’re supposed to free feed till they’re 1yrs old for growth. She didn’t even realize it was edible at first and I’d sprinkle some over her wet food. She started eating it, (Royal Canin Kitten at the time) and developed a preference for it. She’d eat it all and have wet food going bad in the bowl. Then when I realized the Royal Canin wasn’t that quality, I switched her over to Wellness Core Kitten Dry, along with the wet. She didn’t like it nearly as good. I assume there is some kind of flavor sprayed on the Royal Canin to make it taste good to them and Wellness doesn’t do that. She now eats all of her wet and won’t touch her dry till I sprinkle just a little of the royal canin on top and mix it in. Kitten will develop preferences and like stuff that isn’t good for them. Their diet will change based on those preferences. Just something else to keep in mind while planning what to get them. I can afford to buy the more expensive stuff, because instead of feeding multiple cans of wet per day, I feed one can and supplement with dry. They have feeding instructions based on this as well.

Pretty good quality food. I have been really interested in cat nutrition for about a year now so I have done lots of research into different foods. First of all I only feed wet/canned food for various reasons. Google can tell you more because I am not sure this is the right place for me to go on and on about cat nutrition. I also look for high protein and low carb foods. Ideally I am looking for food that is less than 5% carbohydrates as a percentage of calories and kitten food is typically a better bet for protein and carbs than adult foods. This kitten recipe is about 6% carbs which is only very slightly higher than my goal and is 36% protein and 58% fat which is honestly a pretty good ratio. Of the 6 Wellness CORE varieties kitten is definitely number one for what I am looking for.

I like to mix up what foods I feed to my cats because I don’t want them to become really dependent on one food because sometimes foods get discontinued or they might have to go on a specialty food, etc. and I don’t want them to be completely lost because they have eaten the same food all of their lives. I also worry about recalls and nutritional deficiencies so I figure if I mix it up then if there is a recall then at least I know they haven’t been eating that food exclusively before it was recalled. Also there was a recent case where a food (I am 99% sure it was not Wellness) was accidentally too low in taurine which is an essential amino acid for kitties. If my cats had been eating that particular food 100% of the time then it might be a concern but since I mix it up a potential taurine deficiency in one food should be corrected by feeding another food the next time around. Anyway..

So I have four cats so feeding high-quality canned food gets mighty expensive so I try to track good foods and their prices so especially if I see a sale I can take advantage of it knowing I am not sacrificing quality for price. Wellness CORE kitten is definitely in the rotation because it fits my particular nutritional values and the first ingredients are things like “turkey”, “chicken liver” “chicken” “herring” and so it’s not a lot of weirdness high up in the list and my cats like it. Which honestly despite the changing of foods they do get a bit stuck on certain ones. Calorie-wise it is 195 kcal/5.5 oz of food. So total cost per can through Amazon is $ 2.65, per ounce is $0.48 and per kcal it is 1.4 cents/kcal. This is significantly more expensive than something like Friskies which would be .3 cents/kcal but similar to something like Avoderm or Cats in the Kitchen.

So especially since I got it on “Prime Day” on sale it was a really good deal for a good-quality food.

To sum up this mess I recommend Wellness CORE Grain Free Kitten Formula for several different reasons although it is not my #1 choice for cat food. When it is not on sale I would probably skip it but when it is less than $2.65/can I will definitely get a case.

This is one of my TOP wet foods for my kitten. Excellent quality and decent price worth paying for his health. I have only received greta orders of this, no issues with bad cans. I will definitely be feeding him this the duration of his kitten hood along with some other great wet and dry foods to keep up a variety of tastes and textures. He eats this UP! It’s his favorite, probably. He didn’t tell me that but I assume it is.