Home / Cat food / Merrick / Purrfect Bistro Grain Free Tuna Pate Wet Cat Food

product photo
coming soon
no verified photo yet — never a mockup

Merrick · brand facts & recall history →

Purrfect Bistro Grain Free Tuna Pate Wet Cat Food

Wet food · adult cats · distributed by Merrick Pet Care

A formulated-to-meet, tuna-first wet food from Merrick, denser per can than 71% of the wet cat foods we've verified. Price-matched at $16.74 per 1,000 kcal, verified 2026-07-12.

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

$37.92 $4.37/day as of 2026-07-12 Check price →
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 № MERRIC
verified 2026-07-12

Composition — dry-matter basis

why dry matter
Moisture hides the real recipe: dry food is ~5-10% water, wet food ~75-82%. Removing water puts every food on one scale, so these are the only nutrition numbers that can be compared across foods. As-fed label values shown small.
Protein 45.5%label: 10% min lower than 72% of wet cat foods
Fat 13.6%label: 3% 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 ≈22.7%diabetic-check target <10% higher than 95% 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 94 kcal/can1110 kcal/kg denser than 71% of wet cat foods (median 74)
Daily serving2¾ cans
Cost per day$4.37
Bag lasts—

Cost per 1,000 kcal: $16.74 — price-matched to a current retail listing, verified 2026-07-12. Serving math uses standard veterinary energy formulas — see the formula.

Standards & ingredients

AAFCO statement
what this means
Two kinds of AAFCO claims exist. Most foods are only "formulated to meet" nutrient profiles — a paper calculation. A smaller set carry the stronger claim: fed to real cats in AAFCO-procedure trials ("Animal feeding tests using AAFCO procedures substantiate…").
 Formulated to meet · maintenance
First five ingredients (by pre-cooking weight)Tuna · Tuna Broth · Chicken · Chicken Liver · Natural Flavor
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
When a fish-meal supplier adds ethoxyquin, U.S. rules don't require it on the finished label — so no label can prove its absence for recipes containing fish meal. We report this as a gap rather than guessing.
 None — no fish meal in this recipe

Safety

FDA recalls — Merrick, since 2023None on record
ManufacturerMerrick Pet Care, Hereford, TX 79045
Label transparency 8 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.

✓
Validated for adult catsAAFCO statement covers adult maintenance.
·
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.
✕
Too many estimated carbs for a low-carb target≈22.7% carbohydrate (dry-matter, estimated) is over the ~10% DM target some vets use for diabetic/low-carb cats. Estimate only — not a lab measurement. See lower-carb options →

The source material

The full ingredient list

Every flag on the Verified Label is computed from this list. Ingredients are ordered by pre-cooking weight — the first five carry the most information.

Tuna, Tuna Broth, Chicken, Chicken Liver, Natural Flavor, Tricalcium Phosphate, Dried Cranberries, Minerals [Potassium Chloride, Magnesium Proteinate, Zinc Sulfate, Ferrous Sulfate, Manganese Sulfate, Copper Sulfate, Potassium Iodide], Guar Gum, Menhaden Fish Oil, Taurine, Choline Chloride, Vitamins [Vitamin E supplement, Thiamine Mononitrate, Niacin, d-Calcium Pantothenate, Vitamin A supplement, Menadione Sodium Bisulfite Complex (source of Vitamin K), Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, Riboflavin Supplement, Vitamin B-12, Biotin, Folic Acid, Vitamin D-3 Supplement], Salt. E280023-3

Nutritional twins

Cheaper close matches

Verified foods with a closely matching label at a meaningfully lower cost per 1,000 kcal.

Blue Buffalo BLUE Tastefuls Ocean Fish and Tuna Entrée Paté
45.5% protein (DM)$8.25 / 1,000 kcal51% less per 1,000 kcal
Blue Buffalo BLUE Tastefuls Adult Cat Ocean Fish and Tuna Paté
45.5% protein (DM)$8.25 / 1,000 kcal51% less per 1,000 kcal
Blue Buffalo BLUE Freedom Adult Cat Grain-Free Indoor Fish Recipe
43.2% protein (DM)$11.69 / 1,000 kcal30% less per 1,000 kcal

Label-composition matches only: same species, form, and growth stage; same primary protein where both are known; grain-free preserved; protein within 4 points and fat within 4 points, and estimated carbs within 8 points, on a dry-matter basis. Not a medical or quality recommendation.

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

Merrick owns and operates its own dry plant and wet cannery in Hereford, Texas.

source →
Employs a qualified nutritionist Undisclosed

Merrick's parent Nestlé Purina PetCare employs a board-certified veterinary nutritionist (Arleigh Reynolds, DVM), but Merrick operates as an independent business and no fetched source names a board-certified veterinary nutritionist or PhD animal nutritionist on Merrick's own staff, so value is null.

source →
AAFCO feeding trials Undisclosed

No feeding-trial AAFCO statement found on the 123 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 Nestlé Purina PetCare ↗ Founded 1988 ↗ Headquarters / plant Hereford, Texas, USA ↗ FDA recalls on record None on record

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