Instinct Pate Entrees, Wet Canned Cat Food, Grain-Free - Real Duck, 5.5 oz. Cans (Pack of 12)

This is a great food and my cat loves it! The only thing that seems a bit strange to me is the difference in consistency between batches, and even the difference in consistency between the 3 ounce cans and the 5 ounce cans. Seriously, it looks like a different food, with the 3 ounce cans looking much smoother in texture, and the 5 ounce cans looking much more "grainy". I hope that the following review will help someone with a cat that has stomach issues similar to mine... I have tried many, many products aimed at helping with digestive upset for my cat. Her pain and suffering was so great that I thought I was going to have to put her to sleep. I went to multiple vets and had thousands of dollars worth of diagnostics done to try and find out why she was having acid reflux, crying and subsequently vomitting (endoscopy, xray, ultrasound, bloodwork, etc). One vet told me to just give her pepcid. This worked for a while, but then became completely ineffective after a while. The same vet then told me that she probably just has food allergies and would have to be on steroids for the rest of her life, and thats all that could be done, and prescribed different kinds of Science Diet (which we all know is actually a terrible food for cats with digestive problems). Well, what do you know, the steroids didn't help AT ALL. I tried probiotics of various brands for pets, I tried digestive enzymes, I tried many different natural products designed to help ease digestive / intestinal inflammation.... I tried a homiopathic vet (the only one in my area) and spent a few thousand more dollars rerunning tests and running other tests for pancreatitis, etc. I tried MAKING her food from raw meat to try and eliminate food allergies to commericial foods as a potential problem, etc. I TRIED EVERYTHING, but still my cat was constantly licking her lips, then crying in terrible pain and vomitting very consistently, and now was losing interest in her food and was losing weight and starting to look boney. I was determined to not give up on her though. I had just lost my wife to infection during a failed bone marrow transplant / cancer during all this, and was not about to give up on my girl. I stopped making her food and started getting her Natures Variety canned Rabbit formula and the duck formula. She loved the food but it did not seem to be helping her feel all that much better, even though a lot of other people were having great success. I then found a site called wellvet dot com that said that this Ulcinex was very effective at repairing ulcers and the stomach lining in pets. It also said that it was very effective at controlling vomitting that occurs a few hours after eating, which is EXACTLY what was consistently happening, and no other product that I had found so far claimed to do same thing. I was skeptical as soon as it started talking about chinese herbs and such, but I figured it was worth a shot. I started giving this as prescribed from wellvet ALONG WITH Georges Aloe Vera juice (the one without preservatives and no taste), which is said to help a lot for acid reflux sufferers (I found a few people that said it worked great for their cats), and continuing the rabbit / duck formula. All the while praying, within a few days I started noticing a drastic improvement. She was licking her lips less, and was able to relax for longer periods of time without jumping up in pain and crying. She vommitted once within a several day period. Several days later, NO MORE CRYING, and instead of hiding behind the bedroom door licking her lips the whole night, she started sleeping with me at night like she used to. Now, several weeks later, she is literally 90% better. NO MORE VOMITTING AT ALL, is in very little pain, VERY little lip licking and only very occasionally at that. She also gets much more rest, and has put on several pounds and is back above her normal weight and has a nice chubby belly. My cat suffered daily for 2 long years during this whole process before I found this and the other two mentioned products. The aloe vera juice on its own didn't seem to completely do the trick, so I think its the combination of the three things that is really effective. I only hope that no permanent damage has already been done, but now I have my cat back and don't have to suffer through losing a great wife and a great cat. If you have a cat with severe stomach issues, you owe it to yourself and your cat to try this along with the Georges Aloe Vera and Ulcinex. Metagenics - Ulcinex - 90 Tablets Warren Laboratories - George's Aloe Vera, 64 fl oz liquid

I have previously purchased Instinct Grain-Free Canned Cat Food from a pet store and was very happy with the product. My cats enjoyed it and I liked the limited, healthy ingredients. To try to save time and money, I decided to purchase the food from amazon. I ordered two flavors (duck and beef) and both turned out to be very disappointing. Every can that I opened from both cases had moldy spots, was discolored, and had a bad odor (more so than is expected from cat food) . I included an image for comparison. The can on the left is the one I purchased from the pet store. The two cans on the right came from the two cases of food purchased from Amazon, but every can I opened in the case was like that. It is obvious that the food must have gone bad but I could not find an expiration date on the can. I did not feel comfortable feeding the food to my cats (and I doubt they would have even eaten it) so I contacted customer service for a refund. In terms of customer service I would give 5 stars as the immediately credited my account the full purchase price. However, I would not order this food online again but will continue purchasing it locally. I ended up throwing out both cases of food.

Excellent quality canned food, which I'm aware is somewhat of an oxymoron. I feed my cats mostly raw food, but this is great to have on hand for times when you just need the convenience. Plus, my cats regard canned food as a special treat. The food is well tolerated - one of my cats gets diarrhea on many canned foods, but has no problems on this one. The recipe appears very similar to their raw frozen food, with a list of vegetable ingredients that are limited to 5% of the total weight. Most commercial cat foods contain far more "fillers" than that. Fillers are designed to sound good to us, but are useless to cats as they lack the enzymes to digest them. The cans are more expensive than their raw food, but the subscribe and save brings the price down from the stratosphere to something reasonable. The best part is that this is one of the very few canned cat foods that are not designed to make diarrhea and stinky poop. That's because it is free of gums: xantham gum, guar gum, carrageenan, agar agar, etc. Nature Variety uses montmorillonite clay as a binder instead. As a result, my cats' poop is small, dry and odorless on this food, and nearly the same as it is with their raw diet. I understand some people are concerned about the clay, but I can find no good reason to worry. Whereas carrageenan metabolizes to a form that is a known carcinogen, and gums that disturb digestion can't possibly be a good thing. So I am 100% with Nature Variety on this one, as are my cats!

I've had my cats on this food for 2 years and they used to gobble it up and lick their plates clean. One of my cats suddenly stopped eating which made me think there might be something wrong with him. I opened up a can of food and i immediately noticed that it looked different in both color and texture. I checked the ingredient list and was shocked to find not only a formula change, but they now use guar gum which i have been avoiding giving my cats. I looked online to see what was go on, and the reviews on instincts website told me everything i needed to know. This changed happened months before I even noticed, so I must have been getting older batches of food until they ran out and got the new stuff in. I'm so upset that I can no longer trust this brand and that there was no notice of the ingredient change. After being a loyal customer and recommending this brand to everyone i knew who had a cat or dog, this is not what I expected from them. Some transparency would have been appreciated! I am switching over to Feline Natural and Orijen which just released a line of wet food. Both of these brands are actually worth the premium pricing and have top quality ingredients. I won't be purchasing this wet food again and I will tell everyone to steer clear.