InstinctOriginal Grain Free Recipe Variety Pack Natural Wet Canned Cat Food by Nature's Variety, 3 Ounce (Pack of 12)

This is a great food and my cat loves it! The only thing that seems a bit strange to me is the difference in consistency between batches, and even the difference in consistency between the 3 ounce cans and the 5 ounce cans. Seriously, it looks like a different food, with the 3 ounce cans looking much smoother in texture, and the 5 ounce cans looking much more "grainy". I hope that the following review will help someone with a cat that has stomach issues similar to mine...I have tried many, many products aimed at helping with digestive upset for my cat. Her pain and suffering was so great that I thought I was going to have to put her to sleep. I went to multiple vets and had thousands of dollars worth of diagnostics done to try and find out why she was having acid reflux, crying and subsequently vomitting (endoscopy, xray, ultrasound, bloodwork, etc). One vet told me to just give her pepcid. This worked for a while, but then became completely ineffective after a while. The same vet then told me that she probably just has food allergies and would have to be on steroids for the rest of her life, and thats all that could be done, and prescribed different kinds of Science Diet (which we all know is actually a terrible food for cats with digestive problems).Well, what do you know, the steroids didn't help AT ALL. I tried probiotics of various brands for pets, I tried digestive enzymes, I tried many different natural products designed to help ease digestive / intestinal inflammation.... I tried a homiopathic vet (the only one in my area) and spent a few thousand more dollars rerunning tests and running other tests for pancreatitis, etc. I tried MAKING her food from raw meat to try and eliminate food allergies to commericial foods as a potential problem, etc. I TRIED EVERYTHING, but still my cat was constantly licking her lips, then crying in terrible pain and vomitting very consistently, and now was losing interest in her food and was losing weight and starting to look boney. I was determined to not give up on her though. I had just lost my wife to infection during a failed bone marrow transplant / cancer during all this, and was not about to give up on my girl.I stopped making her food and started getting her Natures Variety canned Rabbit formula and the duck formula. She loved the food but it did not seem to be helping her feel all that much better, even though a lot of other people were having great success. I then found a site called wellvet dot com that said that this Ulcinex was very effective at repairing ulcers and the stomach lining in pets. It also said that it was very effective at controlling vomitting that occurs a few hours after eating, which is EXACTLY what was consistently happening, and no other product that I had found so far claimed to do same thing. I was skeptical as soon as it started talking about chinese herbs and such, but I figured it was worth a shot.I started giving this as prescribed from wellvet ALONG WITH Georges Aloe Vera juice (the one without preservatives and no taste), which is said to help a lot for acid reflux sufferers (I found a few people that said it worked great for their cats), and continuing the rabbit / duck formula. All the while praying, within a few days I started noticing a drastic improvement. She was licking her lips less, and was able to relax for longer periods of time without jumping up in pain and crying. She vommitted once within a several day period. Several days later, NO MORE CRYING, and instead of hiding behind the bedroom door licking her lips the whole night, she started sleeping with me at night like she used to. Now, several weeks later, she is literally 90% better. NO MORE VOMITTING AT ALL, is in very little pain, VERY little lip licking and only very occasionally at that. She also gets much more rest, and has put on several pounds and is back above her normal weight and has a nice chubby belly. My cat suffered daily for 2 long years during this whole process before I found this and the other two mentioned products. The aloe vera juice on its own didn't seem to completely do the trick, so I think its the combination of the three things that is really effective. I only hope that no permanent damage has already been done, but now I have my cat back and don't have to suffer through losing a great wife and a great cat. If you have a cat with severe stomach issues, you owe it to yourself and your cat to try this along with the Georges Aloe Vera and Ulcinex.Metagenics - Ulcinex - 90 TabletsWarren Laboratories - George's Aloe Vera, 64 fl oz liquid

Cat likes it. Keeps his coat shiny and give him extra moisture. One of the better quality canned foods. Vet recommended feeding it because my rescue cat is not a big water drinker. I make sure he gets more moisture by feeding one or two cans a day. Hopefully this will prevent kidney problems latter in his life.

EDIT 3: After running out of cans, I ran to my local Petco. Once again, NV caused my cat to vomit, albeit I gave them one final chance and figured there may have been some soap left over from washing his plate. After testing my theory with a paper plate and getting the same result, I've finally given up on this brand. The numerous times I've had my kitty get sick from bad batches has made me lose my trust in this brand, especially since they rarely ever recall food despite numerous people complaining on amazon. I fed him tuna after the last 2 NV cans made him sick, low and behold he didn't vomit! Poor thing was starving. I've temporarily switched him to Wellness striped chicken and he hasn't thrown up.I advise anyone looking to buy this brand to look elsewhere. The company never replied to complaints on amazon right up until recently when numerous 1 star reviews started appearing. I still have the 2 empty sealed cans they packaged. One would assume numerous bad batches would imply amazon doesn't keep these properly stored, but if Petco is having bad batches too I am to assume either this brand has an ingredient that causes a reaction, or QC is slipping at NV which is very likely. Sayonara Nature's Variety, it was lit.EDIT 2: Got another empty can in my orders, this is starting to get ridiculous. Quality check is slipping at NV, you can't ask NV for compensation from their mistakes as they'll tell you to ask for a refund/replacement from your vendor. Yeah, because Amazon is seriously going to give you your money back for 1-3 empty cans or send an entire order to replace the rouge cans. Very disappointing customer service at NV, they happily send out free samples but no replacement for obvious factory duds? I paid for 24 cans not 22.EDIT: As of September and October I can no longer rate Instinct 4 stars, it's dropped to one.Being a faithful customer to Natures Variety since 2011 I've seen the inconsistencies between batches. I've seen cans come full, others quite full of gravy but moderate amounts of meat, to atrociously dented cans while the food remained intact and healthy. Whenever my little guy would eat instinct regardless of the flavor he would gobble it up. If he ever were to throw up it was his own fault for not taking it so slow. Not this time. I received packages from amazon, after my mailman lost my package once then delivered it to the wrong address, and one package had 2 rouge cans in one batch of 3 oz case of 24 chicken. One can had no label and the other was hollow! They actually delivered me a can that had no food in it but was sealed! By no means is this Amazons fault, both these batches were sealed by the factory. The other batch, a best by date of June 03,2018 had gone bad.The entire 24 cases were gray colored instead of the usual pink/brown you'd see. It had a bit of a pâté consistency. Absolutely no gravy whatsoever, and when trying to cut it up for my little guy it felt like the meat had gone bad at the factory before shipping. A very spongy texture. My cat ate a bit and had a reaction to it. He wouldn't stop licking his face and started to throw up. I figured it might have just been that one can but opening another one revealed the same thing. He refuses to eat them and would rather starve than eat that specific batch. I still had some cans from a previous shipment left over and he would happily eat those, they contain the old style of gravy/meat. I'm not sure if NV changed the formula or if this is a bad batch, but I'm willing to bet my money its a bad batch. I've sent a complaint to NV and encourage anyone else with bad batches to complain as well.Very good quality canned food. I had purchased this 3 years ago when I adopted a severely underweight kitten. This helped him recover to a healthy weight and he can't get enough of this food! The gravy may be inconsistent from batch to batch but overall should be there. The only thing I'm wondering is what caused Nature's Variety to increase the price. To the more exotic flavors I could understand but there's no shortage of beef nor chicken. Why the jumps in prices? The limited ingredients versions would be understandable but not this one. In their defense it hasn't increased exponentially to my knowledge lately, is it a union thing?

My cat is so picky she doesn't even like people food unless its cream cheese. I cannot give a fair review because she doesn't like anything. I would try it out anyway. The ingredients were nice and the value was good as well.