The Best Cat Treats

How We Chose the Best Cat Treats

All standard-issue cat treats

We started by compiling a list of major cat treat brands sold at pet supply retailers like Chewy.com, Petco, and PetSmart — brands like Blue Buffalo and Purina, which most cat owners recognize from a trip down the cat food aisle. This gave us a starting list of 254 products, from baked treats and freeze-dried minnows to individual tuna pouches. Note that we looked only at treats for cats in good health, avoiding products intended to treat issues like hairballs or diabetes.

No wheat, soy, or corn

In the wild, the cat diet is meat — and that’s pretty much it. Their dietary fiber tends to come from whatever grains and grasses are already inside their prey’s stomach. Housecats might be more interested in attacking the curtains than killing their dinner, but their dietary needs remain the same as those of their wild kin. That’s why we prioritized treats based on whole proteins, avoiding formulas that relied on corn, wheat, or soy as fillers. Cats and carbs simply don’t mix. Dr. Gary Richter of Oakland’s Montclair Veterinary Hospital and Holistic Veterinary Care explains, “Diets with high levels of carbohydrates can lead to weight gain, insulin resistance, and diabetes.”

No added sweeteners or sodium

Many cat treats contain added sweeteners like corn syrup or sugar. We weren’t happy about these additions for two reasons: First, with diabetes and pet obesity growing concerns in the U.S., the addition of sugar to treats is considered harmful by experts. Second, evidence suggests that cats can’t even taste sweet — there’s truly no reason for sugar to show up at all in your treats’ ingredient list. Eliminating extra sodium took many more brands off our list than extra sugar, and while this cut out brands typically regarded as “healthy” (like Blue Buffalo), veterinarian Dr. Elisa Katz of the Feline Nutrition Foundation points out that cats on dry food diets are already prone to dehydration, and salt is a known dehydrator. Bad enough by itself, dehydration can in turn lead to issues like kidney stones and urinary crystals.

No artificial flavors, preservatives, or dyes

Pet treats need preservatives in order to stay fresh on the shelf for months, but as we learned when we reviewed dog treats, many commonly used options come with health concerns for our pets:

• Artificial preservatives BHA and BHT appear in cat foods and treats from respected brands like Purina, but there is evidence to suggest they’re carcinogenic to animals.
• Glycerin frequently crops up too, but because this ingredient is often derived from petrolatum, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has raised concerns over methanol contamination. (Note that “vegetable glycerin” is a distinct, and totally safe, ingredient.)
• Artificial dyes are used to make treats look more appealing to pet owners. But these ingredients are suspected carcinogens to humans — and your cat couldn’t care less.

A treat or two with any of these ingredients isn’t going to be especially harmful. But given the choice, we opted for no dyes and for natural preservatives, like tocopherols (vitamin E) or ascorbic acid (vitamin C), which are widely regarded as harmless.

No byproducts or meat meal

Meat by-products and meat meal are the parts of a carcass deemed unsuitable for humans to eat, like bones or viscera. Your cat might not object to them, but it’s hard to gauge their quality. One industry study suggests that the poor quality of the protein in many meat meals can negatively impact a cat’s health. Dr. Richter told us, “The unknown quality and digestibility of these products makes them highly undesirable for pets to consume. Think of nutrients as construction materials. To build a high-quality building, you have to start with the best materials.”

Testing process

We considered the following elements when deciding on the best of the best cat treats.

• Smell: Cat treats are designed to appeal to animals who’d happily eat a dead bird, so we weren’t expecting to find them appealing. But we wanted to be able to open the bag without cringing (we were out of luck when it came to the potently fishy PureBites Oceanfish treats).
• Size: A bite-sized tidbit is not only easier for a cat to eat, it’s also better for them since it helps you avoid doling out unnecessarily large portions. Grandma Lucy’s Freeze-Dried Liver, for example, packs plenty of great nutrients but comes in chunks roughly the size of a quarter that seemed more appropriate for dogs (in fact, the treat is advertised as being “for dogs and cats”).
• Packaging: We made sure each bag was easy to open and reseal for freshness. Most treats didn’t have trouble here, although Fancy Feast Tuna Treats lost ground. Its individual plastic packages of pre-portioned tuna seem like a neat idea, but they take a lot of effort to open and then dole out.
• Real-life testing: To make sure we were only recommending cat-approved products, we gave each treat to our four feline judges: two healthy seniors and a pair of two-year-old siblings. Our cats were generally eager to taste every treat given to them, although they had a slight preference for fish smells and flavors.