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While shopping for kitten food, veterinarians recommend thinking about the following factors.
All of the food below is specifically formulated for kittens, meets AAFCO nutrition standards and has a meat source as the first ingredient, per expert recommendations. I included kitten food NBC Select pet parents recommend and highly rated options.
Iams’ kibble is small in size, making it’s easy for kittens to chew. It’s made without fillers, artificial flavors or artificial preservatives. It contains nutrients similar to those in kittens’ mother’s milk, like vitamin E, which supports the immune system. The food also has omega-3 DHA, as well as fiber and prebiotics for healthy digestion.
My cat Lucy ate Wellness Complete Health’s dry kitten food before I adopted her, so I continued feeding it to her at home. The small, pellet-shaped kibble is made with natural ingredients and does not contain meat by-products, fillers or artificial preservatives. It’s formulated with vitamins A, E and zinc to support immune health; calcium and phosphorus to support the bones and muscles; and prebiotics, probiotics and fiber to support digestive health.
Hill’s Science Diet’s dry kitten food is made with all-natural ingredients, and it’s free from chicken by-product meal, artificial flavors, synthetic colors and artificial preservatives. The kibble is small and pellet-shaped, making it easy for kittens to chew. It’s formulated with DHA from fish oil, an antioxidant blend of vitamins C and E to support the immune system, and prebiotics to support the gut microbiome and digestive system. You can also purchase a version of this dry kitten food that does not contain corn, wheat or soy if your cat is sensitive to those ingredients.
Blue Buffalo’s wet kitten food is made with real chicken, not poultry by-products. It’s also free from corn, wheat and soy, as well as artificial flavors and preservatives. It has a pate texture, and is formulated with fish oil as a source of DHA and natural ingredients like brown rice, flaxseeds, sweet potatoes and carrots.
I fed my cat Wanda Merrick’s grain-free dry kitten food when I first adopted her at two months old. Although she had only a few teeth, she happily ate this small, pellet-shaped kibble. It has natural ingredients like deboned chicken, salmon oil, potatoes, and cranberries. It has probiotics that support digestion, antioxidants that support the immune system and omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids that support the skin and fur. The dry food is also made without artificial colors, flavors or preservatives.
Both of my cats were picky about their wet food as kittens, but they always ate this Fancy Feast formula without hesitation. It’s made with real milk and vitamins like E, B-12 and D-3. The wet food has a pate texture and does not contain artificial preservatives or colors.
This wet food is available in five protein-rich flavors, so you can experiment with different options until you find the one your kitten likes best. It is made with easily digestible ingredients, as well as vitamins C and E, to support young cats’ immune systems. It also has DHA from fish oil in its formula, plus prebiotic fibers to keep the gut microbiome and digestive system healthy.
I’ve also fed my kittens Wellness Complete Health’s wet food, which is free from grains, corn, wheat and soy. It has a smooth pate texture and contains natural ingredients like carrots, pumpkin, flaxseeds and cranberries. The food’s formula has fish oil as a source of DHA and prebiotics for digestion support. You can purchase the wet kitten food in a multipack of flavors or individually.
Royal Canin’s wet food for kittens is made from thin slices of meat in a gravy sauce, giving it a soft texture that’s easy for baby teeth to chew. The food contains antioxidants like vitamins E and C and fish oil, a source of omega-3 fatty acids. You can also purchase the food as a pate loaf in sauce.
The Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO) is a non-profit organization that establishes nutrition standards for pet food and labeling standards for different life stages. Pet food companies formulate and test their products against these standards to ensure they’re “complete and balanced” — this means the food contains necessary nutrients in the correct ratios, according to the AAFCO. The nutrient quantities and ratios necessary for each life stage vary, so the AAFCO’s nutrition standards differ accordingly. For example, growing pets, meaning puppies and kittens, need more calorie-rich food that may cause less active adult animals to become overweight.
That said, make sure the kitten food you buy meets AAFCO nutrition standards. You can determine this by checking the nutritional adequacy statement, usually printed in small text on the back or sides of the package. The label should note that the food is “complete and balanced for growth,” meaning designed for kittens only, or “complete and balanced for all life stages,” meaning designed for cats of all ages.
Experts tell us that as long as you buy kitten food that meets AAFCO standards, all the ingredients are safe and each serving offers a complete, balanced meal. But if you want to know more about exactly what the food is made from, read the nutrition label with the following in mind.
Hart says the protein and fat content in wet kitten food might be falsely low because moisture is accounted for. Your vet can help you determine if a kitten’s food meets the appropriate protein and fat percentages on a dry matter basis, meaning the percentage without accounting for moisture.
Should kittens eat dry food, wet food or both? This is a common question among cat parents. Ideally, cats, regardless of their age, should eat wet and dry food daily because each type offers different benefits. Loftus says that exposing kittens to wet and dry food early in life can also help reduce food aversions later on.
Once you’ve picked out wet and dry food, you should determine how much and how often you should feed your kitten. Below, experts share their tips.
How much food you need to feed your kitten changes as they grow and age, and factors like their breed, growth rate and overall health status contribute. That means there’s no hard-and-fast rule for how much food to feed your kitten, so talk to your vet about what they recommend. The nutrition label on cat food packaging offers serving size guidelines based on cats’ size and weight, a great reference point, says Gonzalez.
You have three options when it comes to feeding frequency for kittens: meal feeding, free feeding and combination feeding.
Meal feeding
Meal feeding involves feeding your kitten a few small meals daily, giving them wet and dry food at specific times to create a consistent schedule. You can experiment with the exact time of feedings to figure out when they tend to get hungry. Kittens ages zero to six months typically need to eat two to three meals a day, but some may require meals every six to eight hours, which could end up being three to four meals a day, says Hart. Starting at six months old, you can just feed your kitten twice a day, says Loftus.
Free feeding
Free feeding involves making food available to your kitten at all times. You can only free-feed dry food, however. You should not leave wet food out for more than four hours because it can grow bacteria and dry out, which may make it less appetizing to your kitten and can deter them from eating it again in the future, says Hart. If you’re free-feeding dry food, discard anything that hasn’t been eaten every 24 hours and replace it with fresh kibble.
The main downside to free-feeding kittens is that it can cause them to gain unhealthy weight early in life, potentially predisposing them to health conditions later on, says Hart. Kitten food is higher in fat and calorie count than adult cat food, so serving them limited portions prevents overeating. But as long as you monitor their body condition to ensure they’re gaining weight appropriately and have an ideal muscle-to-body fat ratio as they reach maturity, free feeding can be a great option for some kittens, experts told us.
Combination feeding
Some kittens are grazers, meaning they don’t like to eat all their food at once and prefer to nibble a little bit at a time, says Loftus. If that’s the case, combination feeding might be their best option. You can free-feed dry food, leaving a measured portion out all day so your kitten can eat whenever they want, and meal-feed wet food, giving your kitten a small portion twice a day at specific times. I’ve always fed my cats this way, and it’s worked very well for both of them. But every cat is different, so pay attention to their eating habits and feed them accordingly.
The main difference between cat food and kitten food is the proportion of nutrients each is made with. Kitten food has higher levels of protein, fat, calcium, and phosphorus compared to adult cat food to support young cats’ growth and development, says Loftus. Adult cat food also lacks DHA and other fatty acids that are essential to kittens’ brain and eye development. Because of this, experts told us kittens should not routinely eat adult cat food.
Some cat food is formulated to meet the nutritional needs of kittens and adult cats — it’s labeled cat food for “all life stages.” However, one serving of cat food for all life stages tends to be less calorically dense than one serving of kitten food, which may mean you’ll need to feed your kitten more often.
You can usually transition your kitten to adult food when they’re about one year old or when they’ve reached maturity and stopped growing, says Loftus. Some cats reach maturity later than one year old, like Maine Coon cats, which is a large breed. Talk to your vet about what they recommend for your kitten before transitioning.
Loftus recommends changing your cat’s food over a five- to seven-day period or even slower if they have a particularly sensitive stomach. He recommends transitioning a cat’s diet from kitten to adult food in quarters. On day one, feed them 1/4 of the new food and 3/4 of their old food, gradually increasing to 100% of the new food over time.
Just like kids, kittens can be picky about their food. While this can certainly be due to general pickiness, it could also be an indicator of illness, says Loftus. So before you try anything else, be sure to have your kitten examined by their vet to rule out parasites or infections that could affect their appetite. If the vet gives your kitten a clean bill of health, you can try a few different strategies to make eating more pleasurable for them.
Yes, grain-free diets can be safe for kittens or cats of any age, so long as they’re still eating sufficient levels of carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals, experts told us. “Grain-free” is a claim some brands add to their foods’ labels when made without wheat, barley, rye, corn, millet, rice or oats. Some people think a grain-free diet is healthier for cats because wild cats don’t eat these types of grains, so they believe domestic cats don’t need them either, says Hart. However, grains are an important source of carbohydrates for energy, as well as vitamins and minerals like iron, calcium and vitamin B, which are essential for proper organ function.
Experts told us that if you work with your vet to find a complete and balanced grain-free food, it’s safe for your kitten to eat. “The FDA is still investigating the link between feeding grain-free diets and heart disease in dogs, but no such link appears to exist in cats,” says Hart. “Thus, there does not appear to be a risk in feeding grain-free foods to kittens at this time.”
No, raw food diets are not safe for kittens or cats of any age. All the experts we spoke to recommend against feeding your cat a raw food diet, as does the American Veterinary Medical Association. A raw food diet is centered around ingredients that are not cooked or otherwise heat treated, which some people believe is healthier to feed cats because ingredients are closer to their natural forms, closely mimicking the diet of wild cats, says Hart. But because raw food diets contain uncooked eggs and meat, there’s a high risk of foodborne illness for the cat eating it and the person serving it, says Loftus.
At NBC Select, we work with experts who have specialized knowledge and authority based on relevant training and/or experience. We also ensure that all expert advice and recommendations are made independently and with no undisclosed financial conflicts of interest.
I am a reporter at NBC Select who writes about pets, including articles on cat carriers, vacuums for pet hair, how to get rid of fleas and dog beds. For this article, I interviewed three veterinarians about how to shop for the best kitten food and rounded up options that meet experts’ guidance. I also have two cats, and raised a total of six cats throughout my lifetime. I have volunteered at animal shelters for over a decade as well.
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