Home / Cat food / Instinct / Original Patés for Kittens Chicken Recipe

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Instinct Original Patés for Kittens Chicken Recipe

Wet food · kitten cats

A chicken-first wet food from Instinct. Cat-food pricing isn't in our corpus for this SKU yet, so cost-per-day isn't shown — the composition numbers below are fully verified.

THE FACTS, ONE SENTENCE — data as JSON · reference cat 10 lb · updated 2026-07-12

Your catupdates every number on this page
10 lb

Joint, kidney, dental or heart concerns? Labels can't honestly answer those — that's vet territory. Why we don't checkmark them →

The evidence

The Verified Label

Every food on this site gets this exact panel — same fields, same order, sourced from the official label — so brands finally become comparable. Dots show where this food sits among all 732 wet cat foods we've verified.

Verified LabelThe standardized pet-food panel
VPFD № INSTIN
verified 2026-07-12

Composition — dry-matter basis

why dry matter
Dry food is ~5-10% water, wet food ~75-82%, so as-fed numbers are on two different scales. As-fed values shown small. How the conversion works →
Protein 54.5%label: 12% min typical — the median wet cat food is 53.3%
Fat 36.4%label: 8% min no corpus anchor for fat yet
Fiber 4.5%label: 1% max no corpus anchor for wet-food fiber yet
Est. carbohydrates ash not disclosed → 8% assumed, so this is an estimate · this estimate came out negative — a known artifact of the flat ash assumption on very lean/high-protein foods; read as "very low," not literally not determinablediabetic-check target <10% lower than 93% of wet cat foods
Magnesium as fed: not yet verified
why 0.12% DM
A commonly cited veterinary target for helping manage struvite-crystal (urinary) risk in cats is magnesium under roughly 0.12% on a dry-matter basis. This is a general, label-checkable guideline — not a diagnosis, and not a substitute for your vet, especially for cats with a history of urinary issues.
 Not yet verifiedmagnesium no threshold to check — magnesium not in our verified record
Ash 8% assumed — not disclosed on label 3%as used in carb estimate no corpus anchor for ash yet

Calories & cost — for your 10-lb adult cat

Calorie density Not yet verifiedkcal/kg no corpus anchor for this value
Daily serving—
Cost per day—
Bag lasts—

Cost per 1,000 kcal not available yet — this cat food isn't price-matched to a retail listing in our corpus yet. Serving math uses standard veterinary energy formulas — see the formula.

Standards & ingredients

AAFCO statement
what this means
Two claims exist: formulated to meet a profile, or fed to real cats in an AAFCO trial. Which is stronger, and how rare it is →
 Not yet verified from label
First five ingredients (by pre-cooking weight)Chicken · Chicken Broth · Beef Liver · Salmon · Egg Product
Named animal protein first; named meals onlyYes
Legumes in first 10 (FDA DCM inquiry)None
BHA / BHT preservativesNone on label
Carrageenan (thickener)None
Ethoxyquin
why unknown
A preservative added by a fish-meal supplier need not appear on the finished label, so no label can prove its absence. Why we show gaps →
 None — no fish meal in this recipe

Safety

FDA recalls — Instinct, since 2023None on record
ManufacturerNot confirmed from label
Label transparency 7 of 15 standard fields
Green = verified favorable · amber = gap in the record · red = verified unfavorable · gray = not disclosed / neutral fact.
Source: official label source (official) · anchors: 732 verified wet cat foods · how to read this label

The fit

For your cat, specifically

Checked for a 10-lb adult cat with urinary health + a low-carb goal — the same published criteria our finder uses. Change your cat above and these update.

·
Life-stage coverage not disclosedNo AAFCO nutrient-adequacy statement was found on the label for this SKU, so we cannot confirm adult-maintenance coverage.
·
Urinary fit — can't assessMagnesium is not disclosed on this label, so the urinary/struvite check cannot be run — most cat food labels omit it entirely (only a small share of the cat foods we've verified disclose magnesium at all).
·
Fiber 4.5% DMNot selected as a concern for your cat — shown here for reference.
·
Sensitive stomachNot selected for your cat — but shown here for reference.
·
Contains chickenNot selected as a concern for your cat — shown here for reference.
✓
Estimated carbs fit a low-carb targetnot determinable carbohydrate (dry-matter, estimated) is under the ~10% DM target some vets use for diabetic/low-carb cats. (this specific estimate came out negative — a known artifact of the flat ash assumption on very lean, high-protein/fat foods; read it as "very low," not as the literal number) Estimate only — not a lab measurement, and ash was assumed rather than disclosed on this label.

The source material

The full ingredient list

Every flag above is computed from this list. Why order is by pre-cooking weight, and how splitting bends it →

Chicken, Chicken Broth, Beef Liver, Salmon, Egg Product, Ground Flaxseeds, Dried Kelp, Taurine, Tomato, Potassium Chloride, Pumpkin, Menhaden Fish Oil (preserved With Mixed Tocopherols), Minerals (Iron Proteinate, Zinc Proteinate, Copper Proteinate, Manganese Proteinate, Sodium Selenite, Potassium Iodide), Salt, Choline Chloride, Vitamins (Thiamine Mononitrate, Vitamin E Supplement, Niacin Supplement, Vitamin A Supplement, d-Calcium Pantothenate, Vitamin B12 Supplement, Riboflavin Supplement, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, Biotin, Folic Acid, Vitamin D3 Supplement), Sunflower Oil, Magnesium Sulfate, Broccoli, Cranberries, Blueberries, Kale, Parsley

2 ingredients in this list are ones we hold sourced evidence on , and none of them is contested in the veterinary literature.

  • Mixed tocopherols (natural vitamin E) · ingredient 12Well supportedA blend of vitamin E forms (alpha-, beta-, gamma-, delta-tocopherol) used as a natural-source antioxidant to slow fat rancidity, commonly chosen as an alternative to synthetic preservatives. EFSA concluded that tocopherol-rich extracts are safe for all animal species and the consumer and are efficacious antioxidants in feed.
  • Taurine (supplemental) · ingredient 8NeutralA sulfur amino acid that dogs can normally synthesize from methionine and cysteine, so it is not classically essential for them. However, some breeds (e.g., golden retrievers) and some diets are linked to low taurine status and dilated cardiomyopathy: an observational study (Ontiveros 2020) associated non-traditional, largely grain-free diets with taurine deficiency and DCM-consistent echocardiographic changes in golden retrievers, though causation and mechanism remain under investigation.

The maker

Who makes this — and how they back it up

The four questions the WSAVA nutrition guidelines tell you to ask a pet-food company. Every answer is sourced or marked as an undisclosed gap — never guessed. This is the "is it made competently?" axis that star-rating sites skip.

Owns its manufacturing Owns its plants

Site states Instinct makes food in 'our own facilities' (company-operated plants in Lincoln, Nebraska). Source language specifically covers raw production and does not address whether any dry/canned lines use co-packers, so not classified 'mixed.'

source →
Employs a qualified nutritionist Yes — sourced

Vets page names Dr. Susan Wynn, DVM, DACVIM (Nutrition) — a board-certified veterinary nutritionist — and refers to 'our on staff Board Certified Veterinary Nutritionist.' DACVIM (Nutrition) is the ACVN-equivalent board certification.

source →
AAFCO feeding trials Undisclosed

No feeding-trial AAFCO statement found on the 46 labels we’ve verified for this brand, and no company-wide claim was found either. Most pet foods are only "formulated to meet" AAFCO profiles (a paper calculation) rather than fed to real animals in trials — this is common, not necessarily a red flag.

Peer-reviewed research Unmeasurable

Count of PubMed-indexed records with the entity in an author affiliation (animal/pet-domain filtered). A reproducible FLOOR, not a total: affiliation strings vary and some research is published under institute names. research_entity_affiliation is recorded only for manufacturers with a dedicated pet-nutrition research arm; brand_affiliation.count is null where the brand name is an ambiguous homonym.

Parent company Agrolimen ↗ Founded 2002 ↗ Headquarters / plant St. Louis, Missouri, USA ↗ FDA recalls on record None on record

Full company scorecard, sources, and every SKU we've verified for this brand: Instinct brand page →