RateItAll: The Opinion Network

I have to say I'm relieved to see I am not the only one whose cat has reacted badly to this food...so I know it is the food and not necessarily my cat. I switched my cat to this food about 5 weeks ago, and three weeks ago he became horribly constipated and was in and out of the vet for a good two weeks...now the last few days, although he's been feeling a lot better now he has almost constant diarrhea. Needless to say I am taking him off Wellness. He seems to like the taste, but the mess and vet bills are not worth it!

my 12yr. old cat became diabetic. he was receiving 5 units of insulin twice a day,and eating vet prescribed food. i researched and discovered wellness. my cat is down to 3 units daily within a month and the slouch in his walk has all but disappeared. he is almost back to the cat my family has always loved. i am positive, the wellness diet is responsible.

I gave my cats Wellness canned chicken for several months in addition to their regular dry food, Innova Adult. They loved the Wellness, even my Ragdoll, who will not touch any other variety of canned food. But then I noticed that the food became increasingly full of lumps of some gelatinous stuff, so I stopped giving it to them. I'm now looking another quality canned food.

We stopped using Wellness. Our cats were not healthy, bad coats, bad litter habits, little energy.

I have been feeding my cats wellness dry and canned food for a long time.
Although it is a premium food there have been problems, such as acne on one cat's chin; so I switched to the dry indoor formula, but they experience constant loose stools' Slao same with wellness 5 adult food.
When I switched to other brands, such as Organix, the problem stopped.
So I checked these reviews and saw other cat owners experiencing the same thing.

i try to introduce this wellness indoor formula to my cat, beocoz of no grains and gulten, i mix with half of his regular royal canin persian formula and half of wellness for one week, now i need to switch back to royal canin persian formula, becoz every time he came out from his kitty litter box, i notice there is some mess behind his tail and i have to clean his behind everytime with toilet paper it was awful!
never again!
the reason i try to switch becoz grains and gulten is no good for cats it just carbs and fillers! cheap and $ making for pet food company!
but my cat just can't handle wellness!!!

I liked the ingredients listed and the food seems to be of quality, but my cats were not interested in the food. They refused to eat it. A bit expensive ....

I fed the canned Wellness products to my three cats during the recall scare. The ingredients in the food were really impressive, and the cats just loved the food. However, the price of the Wellness cans are twice as much as a packet of Nutro, so now that the recall scare is over I'm back to the Nutro, and my checkbook is very happy about that.

I have 3 Birman cats. I switched to Wellness Core after the Menu Foods pet food recall. I was feeding Eukanuba Dry Hairball formula prior to the recall, but once I saw that Eukanuba was listed as having contaminated pouch food, I stopped feeding Eukanuba altogether. I have found that since switching to Wellness Core my cats overall energy level and health has improved dramatically. They poop less, their coats are softer and silkier, and I have noticed that they eat much less, probably due to the grain-free recipe. The food is expensive, but for 3 cats I only have to buy one 12lb bag every 3-4 weeks, and that is with my cats free-feeding. I was buying easily twice the amount of Eukanuba dry food per month, so I am actually saving money by purchasing the Wellness Core, and I don't have to clean the litter boxes every day like before since they don't poop as much. I really recommend this food.

I originally had my kitty on Nutro brand cat food, then I noticed Wellness brand and started her on that (same prices, "better" ingredients). Now she has constant diarrhea. I'm switching her back.

this is the best food

I change my two rag dolls to Wellness Kitten Dry Food and Wellness Wet Pouches and both became very itchy and one of them has a huge bald spot! She is having an allergic reacation to the food - They have been on this food approximately 3 to 4 weeks...!!! HELP!

It is very good food, but my cats refuse to eat it! They all just snifff it! And to jman ~ most premium brand pet foods, if you save your receipt, are returnable to that store!

Quality is top-notch but my cat won't eat it...Try it and don't by a case like I did.!!

Wellness canned is one of the best cat foods that I've found so far in terms of ingredients and quality. My cats seem to like it as well. Several of the flavors are grain-free, but not all of them, which I find a little confusing. They have a grain-free dry food (Core) and other wheat/corn-free dry foods, all of which seem to be good quality foods even though I prefer feeding canned. Wellness has not been involved in any of the pet food recalls earlier this year.

Nursed an elderly, sick cat back to health on the canned varieties. He is doing very well on Wellness!

Before Wellness changed their formulations my cats loved the salmon/herring dry food. I have since tried the newly formulated Healthy Weight flavor and also Wellness Core but my cats have not been too crazy about them. However, I feed the Wellness Turkey/Salmon and Chicken wet food to my crf/cardiomyopathy kitty and he is thriving on it. He was very thin when I got him and now thanks to the Wellness canned food he is almost a porker. I think the canned is very very good for him and my other kitty likes it too. My third cat will not eat it at all but she doesn't like any wet food save tuna.

What people should know is that every cat is different and just because your cat doesn't do well on a certain food doesn't mean that it is necessarily bad. Just that it doesn't work for him/her. Example-I can eat dairy and peanut butter but lots of my friends can't. Does that mean those foods are bad in general? No-just that they are bad for certain people. That is why you have to try lots of different foods to see which ones work for your pets. Lots of people want to feed one food to all their cats but sometimes they need to be fed different foods in order to receive optimal nutrition and health.

The other thing I want to say is that people should feed their pets lots of variety to keep allergies, UTI's, food boredom and other health problems from developing. If you ate the same thing week in and week out you would develop health problems as well. Varying the food allows your pet to receive the broadest range of vitamins, minerals and amino acids and in constantly changing quantities. This is more along the lines of what nature intended. I do this with my cats and they are in EXCELLENT health. My vet always marvels at how wonderful they look, even the CRF kitty.

I have friends who feed their cats the same grocery store food year round and anytime they try to introduce a new food, their cats throw up. My cats never get sick on any food because their stomachs know how to deal with change. I can bring home a food they have never had ever and they will eat a bunch without it phasing them whatsoever. So feed Wellness chicken flavor this month and maybe California Natural herring the next month. Or you can just rotate flavors within Wellness and canned versus dry. Your kitties will be better off allaround.

One of my cats vomited after eating Innova evo. Both my cat vomited every time I fed them Wellness canned food. Super premium cat food does not guarantee right food for your cats.

Cat thought it was the litter.

After trying every pet food available that my vet recommended, we did a little research and discovered Wellness canned food. Switched our cats to this, our diabetic cat no longer required insulin and they are both down to a healthy weight.

Cats are OBLIGATE CARNIVORES meaning they are not meant to eat grains and rice and carbohydrates, no wonder so many of them have some kind of illness, diabetes, etc. Wellness brand is high protein, low carb, and the cats love the taste.

Highly recommend.

I ONLY feed the versions without alfalfa, which is actually toxic to cats.

This is a great food and now is even better since they reformulated it. I started my cat on it and he loves it.

Wellness Reformulated!!!! I talked to the rep a couple days ago and she told me that the new wellness formulas should be coming out by next week 3/5/07 (give or take a few days). This formula is amazing!!!They completely redid the entire bag and now have added a ton of cranberries, different meat formulas and even a no-grain food called Core. As I looked over the ingredients on Core I was shocked at how good it is! 50% protien (The first four ingredients are meats) and both amino acids. It is also extremely low in ash. If your cat has any urinary problems this is the food for you! Before they reformulated I rated this food a three...Now, its one of the best cat kibbles on the market (Now, if they'd only come out with a raw formula..sigh) Anyway, A+++, great reformulation!

I started wellness because one of my cats has inflammatory bowel disease (IBD)--he was on the prescription diet foods for years and the symptoms were getting worse. I went to dry and wet wellness about 2 yrs ago. This year my 8yr old girl kitty had some significant urinary issues and she had never been sick before. The vet couldn't figure it out-- her bladder was filled with crystals but they weren't struvite or oxalate--- some amorphic type with no known cause but the vet said most urinary issues are food related. so we had to get her off of wellness...I now worry about my IBD kitty but he is doing so great, he has put his weight back on and is now on reduced meds. I would recommend wellness with some apprehension.

Looking at the ingredient list on their website all looked well and good.... until I came to the end and saw Menadione Sodium Bisulfate (Vit.K3) listed. This is a dangerous synthetic form of Vit.K, not the same as Vit.K1 at all. There has been a lot of controversey over it, and many pet food companies are now taking it out. Google it for more info. I won't feed it to my fur-kids!

Just started my kitten on this food. Only premium kitten food I found that had a higher protein percentage with low ash (and the kibbles were actually kitten size--kitten couldn't eat the Innova b/c the kibbles were larger than my dog's food!).

**Update** After only two days of nibbling this he wouldn't eat anymore!! Tried to eat the dog's food instead. Gave him some Iams kitten (had a sample from vet on hand--even though it's not my favorite) and he inhaled it as if he was starving :( Guess the Wellness didn't taste good...what good is high quality ingredients if they won't eat it?

I usually don't do reviews but I just thought I should warn others before their cats might come to the same fate as mine. My to cats were on Wellenss dry/canned cat food for 6 years. In the begining I thought this was the best cat food on the planet. Now they both have developed a food allergy to it from eating the same kibble with no diet rotation. Not only are their coats in terrible shape they have itchy necks and one cat developed urine problems. After doing alot of research I found the Wysong.net website with an array of FREE information for pet health. Not only do they give you tons of free info for your pets they teach you how to feed your pets the healthy way through whole raw foods which all living creatures need for good health. I ordered some samples and when the package came her both cats wanted the food right away. They didn't even want to do through the whole mix your old food with the food game. They wanted that food right away and would pick out the Wysong kibble among there old food kibble. I never imagined a response like this. Now (after the help from Wysong) I feed my cats whole raw foods as well as Wysong canned and dry kibble and not only have they become more healthy they are completely thriving. Again I advise you to check out Wysong.net just to learn about pet health and how to incorporate whole foods into your pets diet.

My 13 year old cat was diagnosed with Chronic Renal Failure (CRF) seven months ago. Shortly after, she developed a food allergy to the Royal Canin we were feeding her. At first the vet wanted to put my cat on c/d. I told him "no" since my lifestyle doesn't easily allow me to feed any way except free feed and I didn't want my nine month old kitten eating the c/d since she didn't need it. I took him the label to Wellness and he said that would be fine to use for both cats. Both cats are happy and healthy. My CRF cat is shedding less, she is bright eyed and for the first time in her life she is playful. Wellness has been a miracle food for us. And her bloodwork has improved since starting Wellness. Before Wellness my cat wouldn't eat moist food at all. Now she eats it quite a bit. Both cats are eating much less food than they were before. I feed 1/3 to 2/3 a cup of dry food each day and one 5.5 oz can or two 3 oz cans. This is plenty for both cats. The moist is always gone and there is usually a teaspoon or two of dry left over the next day. I would recommend Wellness to anyone.

My cat peanut was diagnosed with lower urinary disease and she developed struvite crystals. I was tols by the vet to give her feline c/d which i did until i researched it and found out that it is garbage food. I put her on wellness and i give her 5 drops of cranberry extract every night and she is perfectly healthy now. She has the gloss back in her coat, the twinkle in her eyes and she is playful again. She was diagnosed with lower urinary disease when she was 3. She will be 7 in march and thanks to wellness my baby is back to normal.

A lot of people on here have complained that their cats "don't like" the taste of Wellness. They decided this because the cats don't eat as much as they used to. PLEASE read the feeding guidelines on the packages!!! Cats don't eat as much Wellness because they don't NEED to... it is a very nutritionally dense food with no fewer fillers than any commercial pet food I have ever seen. Wellness suggests that you serve wet food as well as dry (if you normally only feed dry... all wet is ok) to make sure that the animal gets enough moisture (as desert animals, cats have a weak thirst drive because most of their water came from their prey... dry food does not offer this). Wet food also helps keep the calorie level down because it doesn't have as much carbohydrate material as the dry. Cats are obligate carnivores (that is, TRUE carnivores) meaning they have a very short digestive tract and cannot process carbohydrates well. The process used to make dry food requires higher levels of carbs than cats need and feeding only dry can lead to weight gain and upset stomaches. Wet food can also decrease the risk of urinary problems, etc. I switched my cats to Wellness (though I occasionally mix some Premium edge, Merrick, Solid Gold, or Chicken Soup foods in for variety) and now, after about 3 months: they shed much less, have lovely glossy coats, my overweight cat now has a dissernable waistline (because of scheduled feedings, wet food, and portion control rather than free choice feeding) while the young, thinner cat continues to grow, and their eyes... they are so bright and clear! Do some research on feline nutrition. I have found that, other than a home-prepared raw diet (which I just can't bring myself to do) Wellness is about the best, most natural food there is.

Wellness is very good food. One of my cats was blocked after eating Friskies all his life. My vet put him on c/d. But my cat refused eat this and any other prescription diet, so I feed him Wellness wet only. He is OK for 2 years now.

My male cat is six and has been gaining weight the last three years. He is up to 22lbs. I have tried every diet dry food out there. I use wellness lite for almost two years. Both my cats love it, but he still is gaining weight. A friend says she has had luck feeding wet food for weight loss because of the high water content in it. Food for thought, I have not tried it yet, but I think I will.

Thank you for this information. I just started my cat on Wellness, and now I'm not sure I'm going to continue. The last thing I need is my cat having a Urinary problem. It's really sad, because the food has great ingredients. Thanks for the info.

I really love the ingredients in wellness, but my cats didn't seem to like it as much. They ate it, but usually left plenty behind, which is not usual for them.

My cats loved the dry food (the regular more than the light, though they liked that too), but even with careful portion control they gained weight on the dry food. Only two of five would eat the canned food, so after a couple of months I switched them to PetGuard. Wellness is a very high quality natural food, and if not for the taste issue I'd probably still be using it. I won't feed supermarket brands or Science Diet after doing research on their ingredients. I'd give Wellness dry food a 5 out of 5, since not all cats will have the same weight issues mine did. The overall 4 out of 5 is because I wasn't feeding it long enough to gauge long-term health issues, and because the wet food wasn't to my cats' taste. Other people's cats might love it, and Wellness canned food does come in a fantastic selection of flavors.

I do not use the kibble as they use canola oil as their method to shine up your pet's coat... I wish they would use a more natural method like truly holistic kibbles would. But it is certainly better than most kibbles out there. It's human grade, no by-products or fillers and quite balanced. There's meat, healthy grains, fruit and veggies! Their wet food is great. I feed my cat a tablespoon of this each day with seagreen powder and he loves it.

My cats loved the food. The only thing is that it caused them to have urinary problems. I have eight(8) cats and ALL of them started to have urinary problems in about a year or so after they started eating it. They could have been having the problems for a long time before I even noticed anything. I started off with one of my cats having blood is his urine and could only urinate a little bit. I took him to my vet, that I also work at and did a u/a on him. It showed that he had very high protein. He showed no signs of crystals in his urine or anything. We went ahead and treated him with antibiotics for 14 days. After the 14 days was up, he was still only urinating very small amounts with blood in it. I was told that some cats need to go through a second round of the antibiotics to get things back to normal, so we treated him for another 14 days with a stronger antibiotic and a steroid. When that treatment was done, he was still havng a lot of problems and after being treated for a month he should be better and he wasn't. We went ahead and did blood work on him and it showed that his kidney level was high. We did a ultrasound on him to see what was going on with his kidneys. The ultrasound showed that part of his kidneys died because he got blood clots in his kidney. I was told by the specialist that the type of food that I feed him could cause him to have problems with his bladder and kidneys. I told him that I feed all eight(8) of my cats Wellness Lite. He said that Wellness is a good food. I told him that my vet recommends it so I was using it. He said that he's seen a case simalar to mine in a dog with a different brand of food and that they treated the dog for 3 - 4 months with Batryl and then he was fine. We decided to go ahead and try treating my cat for the 3 - 4 months with Batryl to see if it would help him. After about 2 months or so of treating him with the Batryl AGAIN, I started to notice a differcnce in him. He was playing again and acting more like himself. My husband and I thought that he was the only one having the problems so that it couldn't be the Wellness food. About 1 1/2 - 2 months into my cat's treatment, we noticed that another one of my cats was having the same problems that my other cat was having, with the blood in the urine and being only to urinate extremely small amounts. We thought that it was too much of a coincidence for two (2) of my cats to be having the same symptoms, so we went ahead and did a u/a on him, who had the same results as the first one, showing high protein with no signs of crystals or anything. We treated him for a month with Batryl with no sucess. My husband and I started to pay real close attention to our cats when we saw them go to the litterbox. We looked to see how much that particular cat urinatd. It turned out that ALL eight (8) of my cats were only urinating very small amoounts. We knew that something was wrong since all of them were having problems. I talked to my vet about it to see if she thought that it could be the food of not. She said that, yes, it could be the food. I switched my cats back to Pro plan which is what they were eating before I switched them to Wellness. They've been back on Pro Plan for about 2 months now and they are all urinating normally now. My vet said that her cats were having the same problem as mine and they weren't even eating Wellness half as long as mine were. She switched HER cats back to Pro Plan also and now her cats aren't having any problems either. She did tell me that there have been several other cats that have come into our clinic that are having urinary problems that have been switched to Wellness within the past year. She thinks that there might be something in the food that's causing all of these cats to be having pretty much the same problem, like too much protein, or calcium, or something. None of the cats had any problems whle they were eating other cat foods, so maybe there really is too much or too little of something in the food to be causing the problems.

My cats love this cat food! I think its probably the best I've come across. Its a bit pricey, but I think you get your money's worth.

I thought the cranberries and blueberries would be a wonderful addition, but my cats refused to eat this food. It's the only food they've ever turned down.

Perhaps the overall finest cat food made. The ingredient list is fantastic. Very palatable. The addition of cranberries and blueberries for urinary tract health along with a lower ph. For a dry cat food will be very difficcult to top.