Instinct Original Grain Free Real Chicken Recipe Natural Wet Canned Cat Food, 3 oz. Cans (Case of 24)

Incomplete

Les encantó a mis gatos

My 2 year old cat loves this product.

EDIT 3: After running out of cans, I ran to my local Petco. Once again, NV caused my cat to vomit, albeit I gave them one final chance and figured there may have been some soap left over from washing his plate. After testing my theory with a paper plate and getting the same result, I've finally given up on this brand. The numerous times I've had my kitty get sick from bad batches has made me lose my trust in this brand, especially since they rarely ever recall food despite numerous people complaining on amazon. I fed him tuna after the last 2 NV cans made him sick, low and behold he didn't vomit! Poor thing was starving. I've temporarily switched him to Wellness striped chicken and he hasn't thrown up. I advise anyone looking to buy this brand to look elsewhere. The company never replied to complaints on amazon right up until recently when numerous 1 star reviews started appearing. I still have the 2 empty sealed cans they packaged. One would assume numerous bad batches would imply amazon doesn't keep these properly stored, but if Petco is having bad batches too I am to assume either this brand has an ingredient that causes a reaction, or QC is slipping at NV which is very likely. Sayonara Nature's Variety, it was lit. EDIT 2: Got another empty can in my orders, this is starting to get ridiculous. Quality check is slipping at NV, you can't ask NV for compensation from their mistakes as they'll tell you to ask for a refund/replacement from your vendor. Yeah, because Amazon is seriously going to give you your money back for 1-3 empty cans or send an entire order to replace the rouge cans. Very disappointing customer service at NV, they happily send out free samples but no replacement for obvious factory duds? I paid for 24 cans not 22. EDIT: As of September and October I can no longer rate Instinct 4 stars, it's dropped to one. Being a faithful customer to Natures Variety since 2011 I've seen the inconsistencies between batches. I've seen cans come full, others quite full of gravy but moderate amounts of meat, to atrociously dented cans while the food remained intact and healthy. Whenever my little guy would eat instinct regardless of the flavor he would gobble it up. If he ever were to throw up it was his own fault for not taking it so slow. Not this time. I received packages from amazon, after my mailman lost my package once then delivered it to the wrong address, and one package had 2 rouge cans in one batch of 3 oz case of 24 chicken. One can had no label and the other was hollow! They actually delivered me a can that had no food in it but was sealed! By no means is this Amazons fault, both these batches were sealed by the factory. The other batch, a best by date of June 03,2018 had gone bad. The entire 24 cases were gray colored instead of the usual pink/brown you'd see. It had a bit of a pâté consistency. Absolutely no gravy whatsoever, and when trying to cut it up for my little guy it felt like the meat had gone bad at the factory before shipping. A very spongy texture. My cat ate a bit and had a reaction to it. He wouldn't stop licking his face and started to throw up. I figured it might have just been that one can but opening another one revealed the same thing. He refuses to eat them and would rather starve than eat that specific batch. I still had some cans from a previous shipment left over and he would happily eat those, they contain the old style of gravy/meat. I'm not sure if NV changed the formula or if this is a bad batch, but I'm willing to bet my money its a bad batch. I've sent a complaint to NV and encourage anyone else with bad batches to complain as well. Very good quality canned food. I had purchased this 3 years ago when I adopted a severely underweight kitten. This helped him recover to a healthy weight and he can't get enough of this food! The gravy may be inconsistent from batch to batch but overall should be there. The only thing I'm wondering is what caused Nature's Variety to increase the price. To the more exotic flavors I could understand but there's no shortage of beef nor chicken. Why the jumps in prices? The limited ingredients versions would be understandable but not this one. In their defense it hasn't increased exponentially to my knowledge lately, is it a union thing?

Since I've been feeding premium foods to my cats, my cats have been living into their mid-20s, and with very few veterinary bills. One of them was only a few months short of 29 years old. So, the ingredients are my primary concern. Of course, good ingredients aren't useful if my cats don't eat the food. The ingredients in Instinct recipes look very good. For example, the first five ingredients in its Real Salmon Recipe are Salmon, Fish Broth, Beef, Beef Heart, and Beef Liver. That's great; all of the first five ingredients are real proteins from fish or beef, and there's nothing that looks scary in the rest of the ingredients. The first ingredients in cat food should always be meat, fish, or poultry, and broth is good too because cats get a large part of their liquid requirements from their food, which is particularly important as they grow older and generally drink less water. Real Duck Recipe: Duck, Chicken Broth, Chicken Liver, Egg Product, and Dicalcium Phosphate as the first five ingredients. Perhaps not quite as good as the Real Salmon Recipe in that respect, but still very good. Real Chicken Recipe: Chicken, Chicken Broth, Chicken Liver, Egg Product, Dicalcium Phosphate. This is pretty much the same as the Real Duck Recipe, only with chicken rather than duck as the first ingredient. I look for cat food without corn, soy, wheat, gluten, or by-products. While the heart and liver might be considered a by-product in one sense, it's a named by-product. When an ingredient is simply listed as "by-products" or "chicken by-products," the actual ingredient could be any scrap that would otherwise go to waste, so I don't buy cat food that lists "by-products" as an ingredient. On the downside, Instinct is far from my cats' favorite food, for reasons that only cats can determine. Sometimes they refuse to eat it, but, at other times, they'll walk away from it in protest only to return to eat it later. On that end, they prefer the Chicken and Salmon recipes to the Duck, and I've found that to be true for other cat food brands as well. They just don't care for duck. For some reviewers, this might warrant a poor rating. After all, if your cats don't like it, why give it a good rating? However, cats are fickle, and they are also individuals. The ingredient list is good, and your cats might love it. If this turns out to be the case, this will be a good choice for you. This isn't my first order. Besides my two cats (Ella, age 8, and Bubba, age 2), I feed a few feral cats as well, and, although they are not my cats, I don't want to feed them junk, so I look for something that has reasonably good ingredients and yet is affordable, and Instinct fits the bill. It's not nearly as expensive as some of the other cat food that I buy, and whatever my cats won't eat is set on the porch for the ferals, and they love it. Curiously, one of the most expensive canned cat foods I've ever bought was rejected even by the ferals, so it's not a given that the feral cats will eat anything. This is a good cat food. If your cats like it, you will be feeding them well without breaking the bank.