“Wow they really look like cat pellets” (Me, first impression, 2024)

We’ve done it. We’ve hit peak cat ownership. I always knew we would spend on our bois, and they are always worth it. But this time, we REALLLLLLLYYY spent on the bois. Feline Natural’s Freeze-Dried cat food ticked all the boxes to peak our interest, “grain free”, “99% beef, hoki and organs” “low carbohydrates”.

First human impressions for when it arrived, smelt so nice (I assumed if us humans find it fragrant, so would cats…right?). It reminds me a bit of the flakey fish food. The aesthetics department could have been inspired less from cat pellets, but that’s exactly what they look like. But I mean, didn’t think our bois would care about such superficial things like appearances. So off we went, first dinner with Feline Natural (to our stupidity, in retrospective we should have gradually added it to their current dinner and kept increasing its proportion) and……they didn’t touch it after one bite…

We like to add some water to their dinners, even if they are wet food just to keep their kidneys healthy (much like you, the reader. It’s now a reminder to drink water). Maybe it was that combination? The pellet…I mean cat food became mushy, kind of like wet hay? (Ok I won’t make any more analogies). So whoosh went probably 5 dollars down the bin. We brought back their old dinner and just put a bit of Feline Natural on top, like a garnish, and they did not touch their trusted dinner either!

Now we’re panicking/disappointed. How can something that’s described as fully natural, packed with beef and fish flavors be so revolting for our bois? My answer, at least I think, is its texture. Maybe if we ever used this as a sole dry food it would be more attractive, but adding any form of moisture to it destroys its palatability for our bois. To save our wallets crying at our incorrect decision on introducing new foods, we’re now hand flaking 2-3 pellets into their usual dinner and mixing it all up, which they seem to enjoy (phew).

Price: Holy moly this is not cheap. It’s about $46 AUD for a 320g bag, which when you compare to standard dried cat food (let’s say $49 for 2kg) that’s nearly 6x the price!

Overall quality: Smells great, looks meh. I will say for the price, I am disappointed a lot of the pellets are pre-flaked or broken up in the bottom of the bag. I mean that just means they don’t use many carbs to bind it together which is a good plus for cats, but for us trying to flake consistent amounts, it gets a bit tricky. If you feed by weight this is not going to matter too much though.

Our bois rating: By itself, with water 2/10 :(. Painstakingly flaked into our regular meals (thanks mummy and daddy) 10/10 would gobble it down. Extra protein and extra flavour!

Conclusions: Feline Natural’s Beef and Hoki Freeze-Dried Cat Food can be described like the caviar or foie gras of humans (sorry, last analogue), it’s extremely high-class and means well for our bois being natural and high in protein, but not every cat will enjoy it. Mixing just the pellets with moisture was…weird, but flaking it was the way to go. So if your bois/girls don’t like it at first, maybe try it that way?