I fed my cat Wellness for almost 7 years. She loved it. I thought it was excellent quality from what I read on the label.

I recently changed to California Natural, however, because Wellness reformulated all their dry food (even the one called "Chicken") to contain fish/seafood -- which my cat cannot have.

I still feed my cat Wellness Turkey and Chicken wet foods once a week, as they don't contain fish/seafood. The wet food smells so good (all human-grade ingredients) that I'm often tempted to spread it on a cracker and eat it myself :) (except, I don't eat meat).

Two of my boys eat Wellness - one just the wet food (chicke, turkey and the turkey & salmon varieties), the other just the kibble (Indoor). Both love it - my kibble cat refuses to eat any other kibble but the Wellness; my wet food cat eats the Wellness and Science Diet Senior turkey interchangeably - he will only tolerate the Wellness for a few days before he tells me he wants a break by not cleaning his bowl. Neither of my boys have fish allergies so that's not an issue - kibble cat's favourite wet food is salmon. I'd give both a try and see which one your kitties prefer - my third cat has always refused to eat Wellness outright, but recently I've found him sneaking some wet food and chomping down on the kibble.

tess

I have to add, my cat loooves her new food -- the California Natural. I was afraid to change too quickly from the Wellness because she loved that. However, as soon as I poured out the new brand, she wouldn't touch the old. I had planned on mixing the two until the Wellness was gone and she was switched over, completely, to the C.N.. No go. She wanted the new dry food exclusively.

I feed innova dry, and wellness wet. So far, so good for both. I had the same debate, and just went with both.

My cats really love the Wellness dry and also Chicken Soup dry. They won't touch the Innova, however. All are good foods.

Why not both? Take samples home if you can, and let the cat choose. I don't feed just one brand to my cats, cause they get bored. I have to say that whenever I've brought home Wellness, it's ended up going to the strays outside because my cats hate it. They are so hard to please. Lately I've been feeding them Innova Evo and Solid Gold dry foods, plus Precise, Evo, & Eagle Pack canned food. We've gotten into the bad habit of mixing Fancy Feast in with it all, due to one of my cats going anorexic and it's the only thing I could get her to eat. The other cats tried to sneak into the room I was feeding her in and steal her food, so we started mixing it in with the other canned foods. When I told my vet about that, she said that Fancy Feast was like Crack Cocaine for kitties, and I believed her. I'm planning to wean them away from that, I hope. Anyway, I've digressed badly. Sorry.

Sally

"I have some slight concerns about the recent problems with the Innova brand -- substances found in the food"

Really? Do you have any information about these problems? I haven't heard anything about it! I feed my cat Innova dry.

Innova is SO much easier to find than wellness if that is a concern.

My cats were on Royal Canin Prescription Weight Control 38 for years. They were gaining weight on it. I couldn't cut quantity as they were sooo hungry already. I did a lot of reading when all the recalls came out, and decided two things.

(1) Most weight control diets are just junk. They decrease protein/fat and increase carbs. Cats do not need carbs. They need high protein, moderate fat, low carb food. FYI - in my opinion the Innova reduced fat CANNED food is higher in carbs that I wanted - and my cats didn't like it. Has a very odd consistancy too. Can't speak about the dry food, though as I they have not had it.
(2) And for me, I decided it was time to switch to wet. Two of my cats are eating 100 % canned food. Although my IBD cat just won't make the change and insists on eating at least 50 % dry food. In many cases it is better because it provides needed moisture as cats have a low thirst drive and generally most dry foods are high in carbs. Innova EVO and Wellness Core dry are exceptions - but they are both very high in calories.

As for the two companies, I feel the same way about Innova as you did. Plus when I asked them for information about their Innova red can food they kept insisting they were going to send me info and never did - despite repeated emails, phone calls, etc. So, that also left a bad taste in my mouth. Despite that, my IBD cat still gets the stuff in the red can - although it may be time for a switch as I think he is getting tired of it.

Wellness is pretty transparent about sharing nutrition information about their food. If you ask them, they will email you a detailed excel spreadsheet listing the various nutrient levels and protein/carb/ratio - already nicely converted to a dry matter basis for easy review. My IBD cat didn't do well on Wellness canned, but the other two have been eating the canned food since May. The IBD cat has been eating some Wellness Core for a while too.

Mother two cats were overweight. Since switching them from the lowest calorie dry food I know of (the RC Weight Control 38), they have finally lost weight eating the Wellness canned. Wilson has lost almost 2 lbs - he is now at the point where I need to increase his calories some as he is still loosing weight and shouldn't be. Bo has lost 2 lbs as well and has 1/2 lb to go (he started at 18.5 lbs). They have a lot more energy and have done really well since loosing weight. Bo is 8 years old and he was just running and jumping with Da Bird - something he would never do a few months agao.

Good luck! By the way, you may want to check the itchmo forums if you haven't already. There is lots of reading there about both food companies. Good luck!

I saw someone mentioned they had not heard of the Innova problem. Here is a link to the itchmo forums - there is actually an 80+ page thread covering it. Too long to read the whole thing but there is also a summary.
Itchmo was one of the most active sites during the recalls - sharing valuable information and sometimes alerting people to problems with foods.

Here is a link that might be useful: itchmo forums

At this point I feel like I would be taking simmilar risks with feeding my cats anything, as I would letting them out to fend for themselves.

Are there still big issues with innova? (I don't have time to tear through 85 pages of it right now, and I cant find the summary)

I didn't even know about this one, I thought I finally had all my animals on good food, without issues. My cats seem to be doing great on the innova dry (Not the evo), even prefering it over the wellness wet. (big suprise for my fatty) and I've given them strictly dry and the strictly wet to rule out any bowel/urinary problems with either food, and all seems well.

My dogs like their welness, and do well on it. Except for larger bowel movements, I expected the opposite, but its not a huge issue. But I don't know what to do with my cats. Is wellness completely safe so far, or have their also been issues??

Now I'm back on the debate, too!

As far as I know, there have been no issues with Wellness.

Sally, I'd love to hear your experience as you try to wean your cats away from Fancy Feast! When all the food scares came out last year, I tried so hard to do this. My two cats split a can of FF every day. I tried just about every premium/natural wet food there is; I drove all over town buying and trying new brands and spent what seemed like a small forture. They turned their noses up at absolutetly everything!! Finally, I gave up and went back to FF. Yes, it sure is Kitty Crack! They positively snarf it down. Well, I console myself with the fact that they don't really get that much of it, and they also eat premium dry food -- they love Wellness.

Some Fancy Feast formulas are actually low carbs and have no wheat gluten.

http://felinediabetes.com/glutenfree.htm

http://www.geocities.com/jmpeerson/canfood.html

I've been feeding Wellness and Innova Evo but have found out they are high in phosphorus and not good for cats with compromised kidneys.

Well, the issue with Innova is that one of the regular posters on itchmo reported that she had her food tested and found acetominophin in the dog food. I won't get into the whole debate here. There was only this one test that came up positive and it was an opened bag. The problem is although Natura did later test, they did not test from the same batch, with the same lab, etc. Now, I don't really know what to think about the whole thing myself as to whether there was something there or not. However, in the summary there were numerous pictures of stuff in the food that didn't belong there - blue things sticking out, string, etc. And then Natura really handled the situation poorly. Numerous people called in to Natura and were told that only one person had ever called in to the issue - despite all the people who were saying they called. I myself called and in passing brought up the issue. I was trying to get nutrition information on one of their canned foods because the information on their web page was bogus (they admited it was) - and despite numerous follow ups they never sent me the promised information.

So, I guess you can take away what you want. As I said, I don't know what to think about the acetamoniphine. But I do believe the pictures I saw with stuff that didn't belong there. And I do believe they did a poor job of handling that situation - and in fact think they should have recalled that batch. No matter what, they really botched up their customer service, both by being dishonest to people that called in with questions, brushing people off when they made inquiries, etc.

I haven't gotten them weaned from FF yet, but I hope to soon. We'll see.

As for Innova, of course there's something wrong with it - my cats like it. Everything they've like has been recalled, and they hate Wellness. Go figure. In any case, I just had one of my cats into the vet for her check up and shots, and the vet said she wished all her kitties were as healthy as this one. I don't think I'll eliminate the Innova from their buffet, at least not yet.

Sally

I was considering going to Innova but after reading here I will stick with Wellness. I had written the company on their animal testing policies because of companies like Iams who cruelly test on animals. Wellness is definitely a transparent company and give up info that's asked for. They do not use Menu foods another plus. And my cats love the taste. I had briefly switched to blue buffalo wilderness but my male cat got lethargic within 2 days and refused wet food (he never refuses treats) and after ready a lot of message boards where the BB wilderness caused crystallization in urinary tracts of male cats I immediately went back to Wellness and my boy was back to his old playful treat loving self within 2 days =)