When I adopted my cat two years ago, I knew there were a lot of pet foods that were full of corn and by-products and gross things like that, and I knew I didn't want to feed those things to my cat. I researched cat nutrition for a couple weeks, and I decided that I really wanted to feed her a raw diet but since I couldn't afford raw, I made a checklist for what I wanted in a kibble. I wanted her food to be grain-free. It shouldn't have any by-products. It needed to be high-protein (replacing grain with tons of potato starch or tapioca or whatever wouldn't be good enough I wanted lots of meat!). It should have several different fruits and vegetables, since cats would eat a little bit of these if they were still wild animals it's healthy. I didn't want any ingredients I didn't recognize or easily understand if I looked them up. I didn't want any vague ingredients, like "animal fat" or "poultry meal" I wanted to know EXACTLY what it was. Ideally, it would also be made with meat that was humanely raised rather than raised on factory farms. Blue Buffalo Wilderness met all of my criteria except the last. (Among the dozen or so brands that I seriously considered, I was unable to find anything that met all of my qualifications.) Later on, I also learned that Blue only uses human-grade ingredients, which have much higher safety standards than pet-grade ingredients, and all its chicken comes from USDA-inspected farms. Yay!
I transitioned my cat to her new food a few days after I adopted her (I started with the chicken formula, and later tried out the duck and salmon ones as well). She took to it without any problems. At 11 pounds, she was a little chubby. I gave her 1/4 cup Wilderness kibble each morning and about 3 ounces of canned food (Wilderness or another grain-free brand) each evening. She also got a few drops of fish oil and a couple small treats (the kind that have greens for digestion) on top of her kibble. Within six months, she'd lost a pound and a half, which was perfect. She had great digestion; the occasional diarrhea that she'd had in foster care never showed up.
Around a year later, I was pretty much completely broke I was in college, and I only worked a few hours a week. I switched her to another grain-free, high-protein brand that I thought would be almost as good. Well, it wasn't a disaster, but she started getting softer stool, and it stuck in the fur around her anal area. As soon as I could afford it, I switched her right back to Wilderness, and her digestion cleared up just a week or so after she was completely off the old food. Phew! Both of us were glad about that. I think the reason for this is that Blue uses live fermentation product, which help support digestion. The other brand did not. Another possible factor is that I was more careful about keeping fresh potted oat grass around for her to nibble on (rather than treats with greens). I'm not really sure.
During the two years that I've had my cat, I've kept a close eye on pet food recalls. There were no recalls on Blue during this time.
Nowadays, two years later, her feeding routine is 1/4 cup of Wilderness kibble in the morning, 1/3 of a 5.5-ounce can of another Blue Buffalo formula (mixed with a little additional water, simply to help keep her well-hydrated) at night, and occasional bites of my parents' cat's food throughout the day. I'm always careful to keep her oat grass around, since she prefers to nibble on that than my mom's toxic houseplants, and she chews off a couple blades several times a day. She does very well with this routine.
The only issue I've had is that my cat is more prone to dry skin than most cats. Her coat is nice and soft, but once in a while, she gets a patch of horribly flaky skin on her back towards her tail. This started right around when she decided she didn't like fish oil anymore. I've just started switching her to the salmon flavor, and that will provide her with everything she was getting from the fish oil. All the other Wilderness formulas do have fish meal and/or flax seed for omega fatty acids, but the salmon flavor has salmon as the first (and therefore main) ingredient. My cat is a big chicken lover, so I was worried that she might not like it, but she didn't seem to even notice that there was something different mixed in with her regular chicken Wilderness today.
I've loved Wilderness. I recommend it to friends all the time, and I've even recommended it to people taking their new cats home when I volunteer at cat adoptions (yes, the same place where I found my cat the danger of being a volunteer is that the animals sometimes come home with you...).
By the way, if you're thinking about trying this for the first time, look at the Blue Buffalo website and take the "True Blue Test" they'll send you a coupon for cat food. You can only do this once, though. The company stated that these are the only coupons they ever issue, so if you want more discounts, keep an eye on sales instead.
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