Hill's Science Plan Sterilised Cat Adult Dry Cat Food with Chicken - 1.5kg

Sterilised Cat Adult Dry Cat Food with Chicken is a complete dry food for adult cats, made with chicken. Neutering genuinely changes what a cat needs, and this recipe is built around that.

Key Features

• Weight Control: L-carnitine, which helps the body turn fat into energy, with the fat level kept down.
• Lean Muscle: Protein kept high relative to fat, so weight lost is fat rather than muscle.
• Urinary Health: Controlled minerals, since neutered cats are at higher risk.
• L-Lysine: Included at a raised level in the chicken recipe.
• Pack Size: A single 1.5kg bag.

Why Neutered Cats Need Different Food

• Neutering lowers a cat's energy requirement by roughly a fifth while often increasing appetite. That combination is why so many cats put on weight in the year after the operation, and it is not the owner being careless.
• A sterilised recipe responds with lower fat, higher protein to protect lean muscle, L-carnitine to help the body use fat, and controlled minerals, since neutered cats are also at higher risk of urinary problems.
• The food helps; the portion decides. Weigh it, count treats, and weigh your cat every month or two for the first year after neutering. Catching half a kilo early is much easier than taking a kilo off later.

When To See Your Vet Instead

• A cat straining in the litter tray, going in and out repeatedly, producing only drops, crying while trying, passing blood, or urinating outside the tray needs a vet straight away. In male cats a blocked urethra can be fatal within a day or two, and the early signs look exactly like constipation.
• No everyday food treats that. This is maintenance for a healthy cat, and the time spent hoping a food will fix symptoms is the thing that does the damage.
• Water intake does most of the real work: wet food, several bowls away from the food, a wide shallow bowl or a fountain, and one litter tray per cat plus a spare, scooped daily.

Why Cat Food Looks Like This

• Cats are obligate carnivores: they cannot make enough taurine, arachidonic acid, vitamin A or vitamin D for themselves and have to take them in ready-made from food. That is why a complete cat food is not just a dog food with a different picture on the bag, and why cats should never be fed a vegetarian diet.
• Taurine is the one most people have heard of. Without enough of it cats develop heart muscle disease and go blind, which is why it appears on the front of every bag. Any complete cat food supplies enough, so this is a reassurance rather than a differentiator.
• The balanced minerals Hill's mention are about keeping magnesium, phosphorus and calcium in proportion rather than simply low, because both too much and too little cause problems.

Cats And Water

• Cats evolved to get most of their water from prey and have a weak thirst drive, so a cat on dry food alone often runs mildly short of water. That matters for the urinary tract and the kidneys, which are the two things most likely to shorten a cat's life.
• Practical fixes: more bowls than you think you need, away from the food and the litter tray; a wide shallow bowl so the whiskers stay dry; and a fountain, since many cats drink more from moving water. Adding some wet food to the day is the single most effective change.
• In UAE heat and air conditioning, check the bowls twice a day. Cats drink less from water that has sat out and gone warm and dusty.

Feeding, Storage And The Range

• How much: start from the chart on the pack by weight, then adjust to what you can feel. You should find the ribs easily under a thin layer of cover. Weigh the food rather than using a cup, and count treats towards the day's total.
• Changing over: move across gradually over about seven days. A sudden switch is the usual cause of a loose stool that then gets blamed on the food.
• Storage here: keep the bag sealed, cool and out of sunlight and use it within about six weeks of opening. UAE heat turns the fats in kibble stale faster than the packaging assumes, and that is the usual reason a pet goes off a food it used to like. Keep it in its own bag rather than tipping it into a bin.
• Who makes it: Hill's was founded by an American vet, Mark Morris Senior, who formulated a kidney diet for a guide dog in the 1940s. They run feeding trials on their recipes, which is why they can say clinically proven where most brands cannot, and the main reason the range costs what it does.
• Science Plan is not Prescription Diet: this is the everyday range for healthy pets. Prescription Diet is the separate therapeutic range for diagnosed conditions, sold on a vet's recommendation. The names overlap confusingly and they are not interchangeable, so if your vet has set a diet, ask them before changing it.

Good To Know

• This listing is the 1.5kg pack.
• Complete dry food. Nothing needs adding to a complete diet.
• Keep fresh water available at all times.
• Store sealed, cool and out of sunlight. Use an opened bag within about six weeks.
• Science Plan is a non-prescription everyday food, not a veterinary therapeutic diet.
• Made by Hill's Pet Nutrition, part of Colgate-Palmolive.