# Authority Brand Cat Food...



## gritscwgrl22 (Feb 28, 2005)

Does anyone have any experiance with Authority cat food either canned or dry (or both)? What are your thoughts? I'm always careful to read the ingredients before buying any food or treats for my pets and no by-products are mentioned in most of the Authority canned foods except for egg-product (what is that?) which is way down the list of ingredients. Also, I've read many post saying that Purina is crap. I feed my cat Purina kitten chow and Authority canned because I've heard that it's often better to feed a mix of low and high quality foods. The way it was told makes a lot of sense to me...feeding your cat a diet of all premium food is like you going to a high dollar restaraunt for every meal and filling up on really rich, fatty foods. All that you would gain from that is an empty pocket and a big gut. Is this correct or was someone pulling my leg?


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## coaster (Dec 1, 2004)

Authority (for those who don't know) is the Petsmart store-brand food. I've tried the dry food myself, and I personally don't think it's all that great. (Actually one of my cats gets diarrhea on it, but he's one of those "sensitive stomach" cats). Seemed to me to be about on a par with Purina One. I haven't tried the canned food, but I remember one member here said they thought it was better than the dry.


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## Celeste_Eden (Jan 18, 2005)

top 10 ingredients:

Chicken Meal
Brewers Rice
Corn Gluten Meal
Ground Corn
Chicken
Dried Egg Products
Dried Beet Pulp
Natural Flavors
Dried Cellulose
Animal Fat Preserved with Vitamin E


i try to avoid anything with corn in it. this is better than say, meowmix, with two different types of corn as the first two ingredients, but you can do better for the price


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## Gudewife (Jun 27, 2004)

Personally, I'm of the opinion that if you choose to feed dry food, get the absolute best that you can possibly afford, with the best-quality carbohydrate sources possible...cats (as a rule) don't deal well with carbs, so if you're going to feed them, make sure that you're feeding the best you can. I personally like seeing whole grains in dry food (brown rice, whole oats/barley, etc), but then again, I also like seeing them in my own food.

If you feed a mix, throw the big bucks at the dry food (for the reasons mentioned above) and compromise a bit on the canned quality, if needed...the moisture in canned food is well worth having, even if it's not a super-premium brand. Besides, you usually end up feeding far less of a high-quality food because its caloric content is higher, so the price difference isn't always as big as you'd think.

I prefer to feed a good-quality canned food on a regular basis, with an occasional can-o'-byproducts thrown in occasionally because cats DO eat "byproducts" as part of their natural diet (however, no cat food that I am aware of contains byproducts in a _reasonable proportion _to muscle meat, so it's easier to limit food containing byproducts to holiday treats (unless they come out with "whole mousie in a can"). Cats don't have a lot of the food taboos that we do (you would think that non-vegan people had never seen chicken heads and feet to listen to them squawk about it), so what seems totally disgusting to us isn't necessarily a big deal to cats. The bigger concern for me is the quality of the animals the byproducts are harvested from (ie: 4D animals). There's a bit of hyperbole these days about animal byproducts that I think would be better aimed at rendered animal products, digests, and plasmas, but that's beyond my control.

IIRC, Authority canned has been mentioned as being pretty good here, but the dry hasn't been so well-endorsed. I've never been in a PetsMart, so I've never actually read the labels, though.



> I've heard that it's often better to feed a mix of low and high quality foods. The way it was told makes a lot of sense to me...feeding your cat a diet of all premium food is like you going to a high dollar restaraunt for every meal and filling up on really rich, fatty foods. All that you would gain from that is an empty pocket and a big gut. Is this correct or was someone pulling my leg?


I think (sorta) that your leg's been pulled a bit.

I think a better analogy is to look at low-quality cat foods as, say, McDonald's, and the premium foods as, say, dinner at a solid, mid-range restaurant. The latter tastes better, is better-prepared, and is almost certainly more balanced (but not as good as the best homemade). McD's is fine for an occasional treat, but if you eat it on a really regular basis, it'll catch up with you. Heck, even *I* eat at McDonald's once every month or two, 8O and I enjoy it. But if I ate it every day, or every other day, it would really be murder on my health. Some low-quality food won't kill you, but the damage it can do is minimized by eating a regular diet of high-quality foods.

I think the idea that premium food makes cats fat comes from people feeding the same amount of premium food as they did grocery-store food, without realizing that it might have 40% more calories. They could have saved money and kept the cat from getting fat by adjusting their feeding habits, but instead they blame the food. Besides, cats metabolize fats well, so a rich fatty meal is just right for a classy kitty! :lol:


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## Celeste_Eden (Jan 18, 2005)

when i first got Squee, i didn't know better and fed him Meow Mix (bad me) and he ate at least 2 cups a day, and he's only a 5 pound kitten. now i feed him a much higher quality food and he eats half as much a day. the food i feed him is called "Chicken Soup for the Pet Lovers Soul" and it's a little more than $1 a pound, which is on par with many of the very low-quality brands. 

http://www.chickensoupforthepetloverssoul.com/

the ingredients:

Chicken, Salmon, chicken meal, whole grain brown rice, chicken fat (preserved with mixed tocopherols), oatmeal, whole grain white rice, potatoes, cracked pearled barley, millet, turkey, duck, flaxseed, egg product, natural chicken flavor, carrots, peas, apples, dried skim milk, kelp, cranberry powder, rosemary extract, parsley flake, salt, choline chloride, dried chicory root, methionine, potassium chloride, taurine, zinc sulfate, vitamin E supplement, niacin, manganese sulfate, copper sulfate, thiamine mononitrate, vitamin A supplement, biotin, potassium iodide, calcium pantothenate, riboflavin, pyridoxine hydrochloride (vitamin B6), vitamin B12 supplement, manganous oxide, sodium selenite, vitamin D supplement, folic acid.

there is no corn, no by-product, and the first three ingredients are real meat.


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## KittyGal (Sep 23, 2004)

I feed my kitties authority canned, and they really love it! They get california natural dry food, which is high quality.
The canned food ingredients seem really good. There's no by-products or miscellaneous animal parts. I buy the 6oz cans for about $.50 and even cheaper when they're on sale. Not a bad price at all. One can gets split between 3 cats.
So, I say, go ahead and try it. If your cats like it then feed it!


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## Celeste_Eden (Jan 18, 2005)

yeah, their canned food is good, but their dry food is seriously lacking. i agree with Gudewife (as usual). even the highest qauality dry food isn't as good for your cat as a middle-of-the-road canned food, so if you want to feed both, go for really high quality dry food, and then if you want, you can skimp on canned food and go for something cheaper, as it will still be pretty good for them.


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## Celebsilmare (Aug 9, 2004)

I recently started feeding my cats the Natural Balance food from Petco. The dry food price is about the same as Iams but the ingredients are better IMO. I posted a thread about the food with an ingredient list. I can't afford the best, but for a low budget household, this is pretty good stuff.

http://www.catforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=15994


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## Lynda J (Sep 8, 2004)

I use Authroity Lamb for my cats and have been very very happy with it.
I have two cats that have allergies. One to chicken one to fish. It is the only locally available food that is truly lamb. No chicken or fish by products. My one cat had lost almost all her hair and her skin was all broken out. We had gone from SD to several different kinds, including two from the vet and nothing worked. She still broke out and was throwing up. Vet finally suggested I try Lamb. Went with Authority and she has a beautiful coat and the throwing up has stopped. And that has been almost a year now. 
So people can bad mouth it all they want. I am sticking with what is working for me.


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## Lynda J (Sep 8, 2004)

The only complaint I have with the Authority Lamb is that it only comes in 8lb bags. I have 7 cats. They go through one bag a week. Have talked to PetSmart and for now that is the largest size they have available.


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