Best-value wet cat food

Feed a 4 kg neutered cat nothing but pouches and it eats about 100 to 120 kg of food a year, depending on the recipe. The sum: 70 x kg^0.75 x 1.2 from the Merck Veterinary Manual gives 238 kcal a day, and wet food holds few calories per kilo.

I've ranked five foods from Pets at Home. The three with printed calories come first, by price per 1,000 kcal. The two without follow, by price per kilo, because I won't guess at calories. All of it comes from store labels and named sources, read on 2 November 2026. I haven't fed these to a cat, and the calorie figures are what the store's pages state.

The year column is the same formula at each printed calorie figure, at the pack prices above.

Why the own-label box wins on the sum

Two things stack up. The price per kilo is lower, and each kilo holds more energy: 880 kcal/kg against 750 kcal/kg for Felix. The pouches are bigger too, at 100 g rather than 85 g.

Much of that extra energy looks like fat. The label shows 6 % fat and 8 % protein. Felix shows 2.3 % and 11 %. I'd still buy on the sum, unless your vet has a reason not to.

A feeding table I wouldn't follow

Pets at Home's table for this box looks muddled. A 2 to 3 kg cat gets 2 to 3 pouches a day. A 3 to 5 kg cat gets 1 1/2 to 2. A 5 to 7 kg cat gets 2 1/2 to 3. So a heavier cat is told to eat less than a lighter one, which reads like a misprint to me. The formula gives about 2.7 pouches at 4 kg, above that middle row.

Whiskas and Felix look saner. Whiskas suggests 3.5 to 4 pouches at 4 kg, and the formula says 3.8. Felix suggests 3 to 3.5, against the formula's 3.7. At 3.25 Felix pouches a day the year comes to about £445 rather than £510.

Battersea's cat cost page, updated on 6 July 2026 with no separate date on its costs, says a typical adult needs two pouches a day and around 20 g of dry. That's a different bill, and I price it in wet vs dry, the yearly sum.

Paying for the small packs

Royal Canin and Lily's Kitchen cost about three times Felix per kilo: £13.52/kg and £14.10/kg, against £4.41/kg. I can't tell you what a year of either costs. Without a calorie figure I can't run the sum.

Protein doesn't explain the gap on paper. Royal Canin shows 9.7 % and Lily's Kitchen 9.5 %, both below Felix. People pay for the indoor recipe or the grain-free one, and that's a fair thing to want. Just know it's the recipe you're buying.

One practical point. On the sum above, a 4 kg cat gets through about 21 own-label boxes or 34 Felix boxes a year, so check you've somewhere to keep them.

If pouches alone look steep, see the best-value dry cat food list. You can also put your cat's weight into the pet cost calculator or browse all wet cat foods.