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Mallory Crusta / Cats.com
Meal delivery services aren’t just for humans anymore—your cat can have their meals delivered too. Cat food delivery companies prepare homemade-style cat food and ship it right to your door on a custom subscription. Between ingredient quality, palatability, packaging quality, and managing the subscription itself, there’s a lot to analyze.
After trying just about every cat food delivery service on the market, we’ve ranked the following fresh cat food services that offer a combination of product quality and customer experience that could make them worth the recurring subscription cost.
At a Glance: Best Best Fresh Cat Food Meal Delivery Service
Want a quick look at the products reviewed in this article? In the comparison table below, we’ve highlighted some of the most important features of each product. You’ll find more detailed information about each product later in the article.
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Smalls Ground Bird Fresh Cat Food
- Good variety of recipe options
- Smalls foods are species-appropriate and nutritious
- High-quality, human-grade foods
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Milk Pet Food Cat Food Chicken Recipe
- Rich in animal-derived protein
- Gently cooked to preserve nutrition and flavor
- Primarily made with whole food ingredients
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Just Food for Dogs JustCats Fish & Chicken
- Rich in high-quality animal protein
- High moisture content
- Easily digestible, no artificial additives
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Raised Right Cat Food
- Recipes formulated by veterinarian, Dr. Karen Becker
- Limited ingredient whole food recipes that are low in carbs
- 100% human-grade food made in a USDA inspected facility
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My Perfect Pet Cat Food Toby’s Turkey Carnivore Grain-Free Blend Cat Food
- A low-phosphorus option is available for cats with kidney issues
- Available in several flavors to satisfy different needs
- Cats loved the way it tastes
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Viva Raw Cat Food Turkey Recipe
- Species-appropriate blend of muscle meat, organs, and bone
- Relies on animal-sourced fat
- Smooth texture is easy for cats to eat
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Shine Pet Food Co. Frozen Transitional Raw Venison Recipe
- No subscription required
- Mix of raw frozen and freeze-dried foods
- Single-protein formulas
Top Picks Explained
Why Trust Cats.com
Since 2018, we’ve conducted in-depth analyses of most cat food delivery services as they enter the market. We purchase the products independently, going through the signup process to evaluate the consumer experience from start to finish. The fresh cat food delivery services recommended below have been reviewed by several human members of our team and more than a dozen feline taste testers.
In testing fresh cat food delivery services, we pay attention to the user-friendliness of the brand’s site, the ease of the ordering process, and options for customizing your subscription. We take notes on delivery speed, packaging, freshness of the food, and how easy it is to portion and serve. We rely on our cats to provide their opinions on the food’s aroma, flavor, and general appeal.
The Best Fresh Cat Food Meal Delivery: Our Top 7 Recommendations
Because it’s one of the only services that provides a wide variety of flavors and multiple textures, we’ve chosen Smalls as the overall best fresh cat food meal delivery service. On top of a strong product variety, this brand’s fresh foods are fully human-grade and received a unanimous paws-up from our taste testers.
While Smalls is one of our top-recommended brands, it might not be right for every cat. To help you find the perfect fresh cat food service for your cat, we’ve categorized our picks by price, life stage, and other considerations. Read on for in-depth reviews of each service.
What to Consider When Shopping for a Cat Food Meal Delivery Service
As their popularity has grown, meal delivery services for cats have become increasingly diverse. From unaltered, humanely sourced ground meat to gently cooked, nutritionally complete diets, there’s a fresh cat food subscription out there for just about every cat.
If you’re considering this option for your cat, here are some tips for choosing the right one:
- Prioritize Nutrition: The food should be nutritionally complete and balanced according to AAFCO (the Association of American Feed Control Officials) guidelines. Beyond meeting those baseline nutritional requirements, the best cat food is rich in animal protein with the right amount of fat and not too much plant matter.
- Think About Quality: Most fresh cat food delivery services claim to use human-grade ingredients. Prioritize those that offer human-quality ingredients from reputable sources and adhere to strict manufacturing standards.
- Consider Product Variety: If you’re going to be relying on a cat food delivery service as your cat’s only source of food, that service should be able to provide the types of protein sources, textures, and flavors your cat likes and needs.
- Don’t Forget Customer Experience: We’re looking for easy navigation, plenty of options for customizing your subscription, and a history of good customer service.
- Make Sure You Can Afford It: Buying a fresh cat food meal delivery isn’t cheap, but it should be affordable.
Always check with your veterinarian before making significant changes to your cat’s diet. A long, slow transition period is optimal to minimize the risk of digestive upset, so don’t throw away your cat’s old food when you first start your subscription.
Frequently Asked Questions
What fresh food is best for cats?
The best fresh cat food is rich in high-quality animal-derived ingredients, including fresh meat, organs, and animal fat. It should meet AAFCO guidelines for your cat’s life stage and come from a reputable company.
Is fresh cat food better for cats?
There’s not much research on the benefits of fresh, homemade-style food versus traditional foods for cats. Compared to heavily-processed dry foods, however, these products tend to retain more of the nutritional integrity of their ingredients and may be a more efficient source of nutrition for your cat.
Which cat food company is best?
Great cat food companies have a robust research and development department and work with veterinary nutritionists, allowing them to formulate species-appropriate, nutritious foods for cats. They adhere to strict safety and quality protocols and take consistent action to make sure their products are safe and wholesome for cats.
What is the best top-of-the-line cat food?
The best cat food for any particular cat depends on their unique needs, but all of the best top-of-the-line cat foods offer excellent ingredient quality, species-appropriate formulation, and meet AAFCO guidelines for the cat’s given life stage.
Im scared of the spearmint in the Raised Right. Many sources claim it is toxic for cats.
This is a great list, thank you for taking the time to review them and post about the companies in such detail.
I would like to say that Smalls is not consistent. We have been a customer for going on 2 years and for the past year, we have been receiving rotten warm food for our cat. The gently cooked food is frozen, which is the only food we buy. They have offered us a refund several times, yet that does not feed our cat when she runs out of food due to the incompetence of their warehouse. They also have strict shipping days and times and when a new shipment is needing to be sent out to replace the rotten or incorrect product, we’ve been told “we missed the shipping cutoff” for that week. Sometimes that can transpire to another 10 days before cat food is delivered. That is unacceptable in our standards.
They blame a 3rd party shipping company for the problem. I have suggested numerous times a shipping company that without fail always delivers our dog food frozen. I appreciate they are a “newer” company, but the life of my cat has been so disrupted, not to mention the stress and anxiety we experience due not being able to trust our shipments will arrive safe to consume and arrive as the correct order. If this problem only happened once or twice, we could potentially understand. But it has occurred too many times to count. We cancelled our auto-ship and will not recommend them to anyone.
Hi Stacey, thank you for sharing your experience with Smalls. We forwarded your message to the Smalls support team and they said that the issues you experienced may have been related to recent extreme weather in the United States. However, it sounds like your experiences started further back, and I can echo that consistency has been a, well, consistent issue over the last year. Of course, we also have the pandemic to blame for that. At any rate, we’re currently gearing up to do a complete rewrite of this review after ordering new batches of food and re-evaluating their updated customer flow, and I hope to bring good news. Until then, thanks again for being here, and I’m sorry you had a disappointing experience with this company. – Mallory
Yes I had the exact same problems with Smalls.They also change the recipe any time they want and my baby kitty would not eat it anymore. With all of the problems it just was not worth it anymore. I was a customer for about 2 1/2 years. I am looking for an alternative. In the mean time I feed them (senior and young kitty) Iams wet food.
Thanks for sharing, Bonnie. Have you considered freeze-dried food? There are plenty of flavor options out there and the texture is similar to fresh food when you crush it up and rehydrate it. Here are some of our favorite brands:
https://cats.com/best-freeze-dried-cat-food
Thank you for reviewing the foods for our feline family members. I was not aware of the Just Foods and Smalls companies..
I would like to try Just Foods for cats but, they are out of stock at this time, so we ordered the trial pack from Smalls.
We previously used NomNom Fish Meals but, unfortunately, they no longer offer the Fish Meals for cats which is why we were searching for another company.
Thanks again for your reviews.