The complete guide
Choosing Grain Free Dry Cat Food for an Indoor Cat
The problem with feeding a cat who never goes outside
An indoor cat lives a very different day to a cat with a cat flap. She sleeps a lot. She patrols the same four rooms. Her exercise is a ten minute burst at six in the morning and another one at nine at night, usually involving your ankles. Everything she eats comes from a bowl you fill.
That means the food choice carries more weight than it does for a cat who hunts and roams. There is no topping up elsewhere. Whatever is in the bag is the whole picture, which is why so many owners end up reading ingredient lists properly for the first time when they bring a cat indoors full time.
The trouble is that the dry cat food aisle is a wall of near-identical bags. Grain free, high protein, indoor, hairball, sensitive. Picking between them from the front of the pack is close to impossible. The useful information is on the back, and it is mostly in the first five ingredients and the feeding guide.
What grain free actually means on a bag
Grain free means the recipe is built without grains such as wheat, corn or rice. It does not automatically mean low carbohydrate, because something has to hold the kibble together. In this Wellness CORE Indoor recipe, that job goes to peas and dried ground potatoes, which sit just after the meat ingredients on the list.
The maker lists this food as soy free and wheat free as well. There is also a line on the pack saying it is made in a facility that also processes grains. That distinction matters if you are managing a strict avoidance on a vet's instruction, and it is the sort of detail worth reading rather than assuming.
Whether a grain free cat food is the right call for your particular cat is a question for your vet, not for a product page. Some cats are moved onto one for a specific reason. Others are simply fed one because the owner prefers it. Both are common, but only a vet can tell you which category your cat falls into.
Reading the first five ingredients
Ingredient lists are ordered by weight before cooking, so the top of the list tells you most of the story. Here the order runs deboned chicken, turkey meal, chicken meal, peas, dried ground potatoes.
Deboned chicken is chicken with its water still in it, so it weighs more at that point in the process. Meals are a more concentrated form, with the moisture already removed. Seeing both in the top three is normal for a meat-led dry cat food and it is why the flavour reads as chicken and turkey cat food on the front of the bag.
After that come dried plain beet pulp, flaxseed and chicken fat. Further down the list sit cranberries, taurine, dried chicory root, hydrolysed yeast, dried kelp and L-carnitine, followed by a long run of vitamins and minerals and three fermentation products. Rosemary, green tea and spearmint extracts close it out, alongside mixed tocopherols which the maker says are there to preserve freshness.
You do not need to recognise every item. What you are looking for is a list where the protein sources are named and sit near the top, and where you can at least work out what the bulk of the food is made from.
Who this particular bag suits
The maker lists this as an adult formula for all breed sizes. So it is aimed at a grown cat rather than a kitten or a cat in a senior-specific program. If you have two or three adult cats of different builds sharing a house, an all-breed adult cat kibble keeps things simple at feeding time.
The 2.27 kg size, which the maker also calls a 5 lb pack, is a middle-ground bag. It is big enough to last a single cat a decent stretch and small enough that it does not go stale at the bottom of the bin before you finish it. If you are trying a new dry cat food for indoor cats for the first time, a mid-size bag is generally a safer bet than the biggest one on the shelf.
Where it will not suit: kittens, dogs, or any cat on a prescription diet your vet has put them on. If a vet has specified a particular food, follow that advice and ask them before introducing anything else.
Working out portions
The maker's feeding guide is printed on the bag and reproduced in the specifications above. It is laid out by cat weight, running from roughly 2 to 3 kg at the lighter end up through 5 to 7 kg, with a dry-only column and a combination feeding column that pairs kibble with an 85 g can of wet food. For cats heavier than 7 kg, the guide says to add a set amount for each additional kilogram.
One line in the maker's guide is worth repeating. It says CORE is highly palatable, so some cats may tend to eat more of it, and that you should watch initially in case you need to adjust eating patterns. In plain terms, if your cat suddenly hoovers the bowl and comes back asking for more, that is not unusual with a food she likes and it does not mean she needs a bigger portion.
The maker also says to keep clean, cool fresh water available at all times, and to feed wet food in combination where you can to lift the water content of the diet. Dry food is low in moisture by nature, and indoor cats are not always great at drinking.
Beyond repeating the maker's guide, we cannot tell you how much to feed. Age, size, activity level and breed all shift the number, and your vet is the one who can look at your cat and give you a figure.
Switching foods without drama
Cats are creatures of routine and a sudden food change rarely goes smoothly. The usual approach is to mix a small proportion of the new food into the current one, then shift the ratio a little each day over about a week until you are feeding the new food on its own.
Go slower if your cat seems hesitant. Some cats take to a new high protein cat food on day one. Others need the full week and a bit of patience. If anything about the change worries you, stop and ring your vet rather than pushing through.
Storage and keeping it fresh
Dry food goes stale when it meets air, warmth and light. Fold the top of the bag down and clip it, or drop the whole bag inside a sealed tub. Decanting the kibble straight into a container is tempting but it loses you the batch code and the best-before date, both of which are printed on the pack and both of which you want if there is ever a question about a particular bag.
Keep it off a sunny windowsill and away from the oven. Wash the bowl regularly, since oils from the kibble build up on plastic over time and can put a cat off her food for reasons that look mysterious from the outside.
The best-before date is on the pack. We do not quote one here because it changes with every batch.
Ordering, delivery and returns
Orders are dispatched within 2 working days and then take up to 7 working days with a tracked courier. Delivery is free on orders over $99 and $12 below that.
Sealed, unopened packs can be returned within 14 days of delivery if you change your mind, with return postage paid by you. Opened food cannot come back for change of mind, which is standard for anything edible. None of that affects your rights under the Australian Consumer Law, which apply in full. There is no separate manufacturer warranty on food.
The short version
This is a 2.27 kg bag of grain free dry cat food in a chicken and turkey flavour, made by Wellness Pet LLC under the Wellness CORE Indoor name. It is for adult cats of all breed sizes, comes as kibble, and is listed by the maker as soy free and wheat free. The ingredient list leads with deboned chicken, turkey meal and chicken meal.
Portions come from the maker's guide on the pack. Store it sealed and dry, check the printed best-before date, and keep water available. For anything to do with your cat's diet, allergies or health, your vet is the right person to ask.