Choosing the best cat food for your feline friend is a very important decision, especially when it comes to kittens. Ensuring your kitten grows into a healthy adult cat starts with deciding what to feed them. The best kitten food supports their development throughout their first year of life and makes them look forward to mealtime. But with dozens of options on the market, how do pet parents decide what dry and wet food to buy? Below is a breakdown of what to consider while picking a kitten food, including options from Purina, Fancy Feast and Hill’s Science Diet.
Key Considerations When Choosing Kitten Food
When shopping for kitten food, veterinarians recommend thinking about the following factors:
AAFCO Nutrition Standards
Ensure you buy kitten food that meets AAFCO nutrition standards. You can determine this by looking at the nutritional adequacy statement printed on the label. It should note that the food is either “complete and balanced for growth” or “complete and balanced for all life stages.” This ensures that the food you buy is formulated to address kittens’ nutritional needs and has been tested for efficacy and safety.
Ingredients
Ingredients on a food label are listed by weight from highest to lowest, which means the first three are the most important to consider, according to the AAFCO. The first ingredient should be meat (including fish) that contains some source of DHA, an omega-3 fatty acid, like fish oil. Kitten food should also have appropriate levels of nutrients like calcium, phosphorus, vitamin E, taurine (an amino acid) and fiber.
Food Type
You’ll see wet and dry food while shopping, and cats of all ages should eat both daily if possible. While dry food is crunchy and supports kittens’ dental health, wet food is high in water content and helps with hydration.
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Availability
Kittens sometimes eat up to four times a day, so you’ll need a constant supply of food at home. Kittens can get an upset stomach if you suddenly change their food, so make sure you always have access to whatever you feed them. Some retailers offer cat food subscription services if you want to set up scheduled deliveries regularly.
Price
The price and quality of kitten food are not always correlated. It’s better to focus on finding one within your budget that your kitten enjoys eating, is made of healthy ingredients and meets AAFCO nutrition standards.
Top Kitten Food Recommendations
Here's a curated list of top kitten food options, formulated specifically for kittens, meeting AAFCO nutrition standards, and featuring a meat source as the first ingredient, based on expert recommendations:
Best Overall Dry Food: Iams
Iams’ kibble is small in size, making it 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.
Best Natural Kitten Food: Hill’s Science Diet
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.
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Best Pate: Blue Buffalo
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.
Best Grain-Free: Merrick
Merrick’s grain-free dry kitten food 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.
Editor’s Pick: Wellness Complete Health
Wellness Complete Health’s dry kitten food 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.
Best for Digestive Health: Purina Pro Plan
Purina’s Pro Plan line offers some of our favorite cat food, and this specific formula is made for growing kittens. It’s a mix of crunchy kibble and shredded, meaty chicken pieces. In addition to essential nutrients like DHA, calcium and phosphorus, the dry food contains probiotics to support kittens’ digestive health and antioxidants to help them develop immune systems.
Best Overall Wet Food: Fancy Feast Kitten
Fancy Feast formula is 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.
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Best for Picky Eaters: Wellness Complete Health
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.
Best Grain-Free Wet Food: Wellness Complete Health
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.
Best in Gravy: Royal Canin
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.
How to Shop for the Best Kitten Food
AAFCO Nutrition Standards
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 looking at the nutritional adequacy statement on the label. It’s usually in small print 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.
Ingredients
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.
Protein (ideally 35% to 50%): On a food label, ingredients are listed by weight from highest to lowest. When it comes to kitten food, protein should always be the first ingredient, meaning it makes up the bulk of the recipe. Protein is important for kittens to eat at high volumes because it helps ensure proper bone and lean muscle growth.
Fats (ideally 18% to 35%): The kitten food you buy should contain some fat, like DHA, an omega-3 fatty acid.
Calcium (ideally 0.8% to 1.6%) and phosphorus: Kitten food with sufficient calcium and phosphorus ensures proper bone development. The calcium level is usually higher than the phosphorus level.
Other important nutrients: Other important nutrients are vitamin A, which helps with growth, muscle and neurological development, and vitamin E, which supports the immune system. Kitten food also needs to have taurine, an amino acid that strengthens the heart and supports healthy blood flow, among other benefits. Fiber, which supports digestive health, is crucial too.
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.
Food Type: Wet vs. Dry
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. Exposing kittens to wet and dry food early in life can also help reduce food aversions later on.
Wet food is high in water content and helps cats get extra moisture into their diet. This is important since cats don’t naturally drink a lot of water but need it to maintain proper kidney function. Dry food typically has more carbohydrates than wet food, and it’s beneficial for cats’ dental health. Its abrasive texture helps scrape plaque and tartar off cats’ teeth as they chew. You can also use dry food as cat treats or put it inside puzzle toys, which keeps kittens mentally engaged as they work for food.
How to Feed Your Kitten
Once you’ve picked out wet and dry food, you should determine how much and how often you should feed your kitten.
How Much Food?
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.
How Often to Feed?
Regarding feeding frequency for kittens, you have three options: meal feeding, free feeding and combination 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. Starting at six months old, you can just feed your kitten twice a day.
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. 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. 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. 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.
Transitioning to Kitten Food
Kittens start transitioning off of their mother’s milk and onto solid food at around four weeks of age. The weaning process is both voluntary and forced. It’s a gradual process that usually takes a few weeks.
When to Stop Feeding Kitten Food?
It's generally recommended that cats switch to an adult diet at 1 year of age, but this varies depending on when the cat reaches physical maturity. Around that time, you can gradually switch your cat off of their kitten food and onto a diet formulated for adult cats.
Can Adult Cats Eat Kitten Food?
Adult cats can eat kitten food, but it’s not necessarily a good long-term choice. Compared to products intended for adult cats, kitten food may have more calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, and other micronutrients that support skeletal development. Remember that kitten food is packed with calories to fuel babyhood growth. For this reason, it may be a good choice if you need to help your adult cat gain weight.
The Importance of Protein in Kitten Food
Your growing kitten needs a protein-packed diet that supplies the energy and nutrients they need to support healthy development. Providing your kitten with a nutritionally balanced diet is crucial, particularly while they’re still growing. Protein is the foundation of a healthy diet for cats of all ages. Compared to adult cats, however, kittens are more sensitive to both the quantity and quality of that protein.
On a kitten food label, the protein content will be listed as a percentage in the guaranteed analysis. For dry kitten food (average moisture content of 8%-10%), look for a minimum of 28% crude protein. For wet kitten food (average moisture content of 78%-80%), look for a minimum of 7% crude protein.
Caloric Density
Kittens need more calories per pound of body weight than the average adult cat to support their rapid growth. When shopping for kitten food, check the label to determine the food’s caloric density (the number of calories per ounce). The higher the caloric density, the less your kitten will have to eat to meet their needs.
Animal-Based Protein is Key
As obligate carnivores, kittens require the amino acids found in animal tissue. Animal-sourced protein provides all the amino acids cats and kittens need to thrive while plant-based proteins only contain some of the essential amino acids. An ideal diet for cats and kittens is primarily animal-based with minimal carbohydrate content. It’s also rich in moisture which supports healthy digestion as well as your kitten’s hydration.
Artificial flavors, coloring agents, and synthetic preservatives have no place in your kitten’s diet.
Wet Food Considerations
When they’re very young and still have baby teeth, your kitten will likely find it easiest to eat soft, wet food. This could be cooked homemade, fresh, or canned food. Though dry food may provide some mechanical dental benefit in gently scraping plaque off the surface of your cat’s teeth, cats don’t tend to chew their food enough for it to make much difference. Early in your kitten’s life, however, it’s best to choose foods they can easily eat that meet their nutritional needs. A balanced diet supports oral health by providing essential nutrients like vitamins and minerals that strengthen gums and teeth.