Purina split into two separate companies several years ago. The label under which the high end foods are maufactured is PMI Nutrition. This is not the Purina that you can buy in supermarkets or pet stores. It is the high end food which has only ever been available from Purina distributors. They have a dealer locator on their home page at www.pminutrition.com. Every time we try something different or I try to cut corners financially by mixing Exclusive with another brand, we return time and again to the Exclusive only. PMI Nutrition makes a slightly lower quality food called PMI and it's pretty good, but still not the same. Once you've used a true high-end dry food, you'll be able to tell kitty junk food just by looking at it and/or smelling it - the junk foods have everything from odor enhancers to food coloring and fillers added. As for the Exclusive, we've found that the maintenance/growth formula is a bit rich for some of our cats. So we feed our whole household, kittens included, a 2-to-1 mix of maintenance and light formula. Most of our cats actually prefer the light formula! Nonetheless, when we have the occassional male or older neuter/spay that gets a bit plump, we put them on the light formula only and they do slim down. But please feel free to try the maintenance/growth formula straight up for younger kittens as they do thrive on it.
We don't feed any canned food at all any more. Once we got started on the ground raw meat diet, we never looked back. It took our adult cats some getting used to since it is so low in odor that it just doesn't "smell" tasty. But once they saw the kittens (that didn't know any better) gobbling it up, they too dove in. And what a difference we see now! Our kittens are fatter and healthier than when we started them off on canned food. And they start eating the ground meat at a much younger age, some as young as three-weeks-old! This of course keeps our nursing mothers in much better health too. It gets pretty expensive with as many furries as we have. But, like the Exclusive, it's worth every nickle. We feed our kittens and mothers ground meat twice a day and the babies learn to supplement with dry food if/when they're hungry in between. And we give our older kittens and non-pregnant/nursing females and males raw meat once every day or two. I'd honestly feed the raw gound meat diet exclusively if I didn't need to know that our kittens and cats will eat dry food. Plus the Exclusive is great food. The overall health of our cattery has benefited tremendously from the ground raw meat diet. And all studies confirm that this is the best diet to feed as it has been proven to help correct the symptoms of most digestive disorders, boost the immune system and simply promote great basic health and coat. Just be sure to provide a taurine supplement if you choose to feed raw ground meat only and skip dry food. Exclusive has taurine added. So if you choose to feed it along with the raw meat, you're all set. We use a brand of raw gound meat called Bravo and they too have a dealer locator search engine at www.bravorawdiet.com. This is a company based right here in Connecticut. So I'm not sure how widely they distribute their product. Just be sure not to buy any of the brands that include vegetables or fruit as most Turkish Angoras won't eat them. And also beware of any products that are labeled anything like "Greyhound Food". Stick only with the high end, ground meats that many quality pet stores now carry. Our guys love the ground rabbit the best, followed closely by chicken, turkey and buffalo. They don't seem to care for most of the darker meats at all like the Ostrich and other gamey prey. Nor do they care much for the variety of fish that's available. It was suggested to me that buffalo are likely range fed still and this could well be why our discriminating TAs do like it although it is fairly dark compared to the rabbit, chicken and turkey.