I And Love And You is a sassy new pet food brand that claims to be 100% wholesome, but just how much of that is true?

This month’s Chewy Influencer review is all about I And Love And You canned cat food. Let’s dive right in!

The Brand

I And Love And You are an elusive bunch. There really isn’t anything on their website that talks about who they are (who the founders are, who their employees are, etc.). I had to do a little extra digging on this one.

How I And Love And You Got Their Start

Marty Grosjean is the man behind the I And Love And You brand. He owns a pet store in Boulder, CO called Only Natural Pet Store. With the help of three other co-founders, he created a new pet food brand whose focus was grain-free, all-natural pet food.

The terms “fillers” and “natural” have no legal definition per se, so I took this information with a grain of salt. That being said, I And Love And You do seem to use higher quality ingredients than most pet foods. I had to laugh when I saw this quote in Denver Post’s article:

A 5-pound bag of I and Love and You dog food costs $17.99 at Whole Foods. Most of the other 5-pound bags at Whole Foods cost around $15.99. A 20-pound bag of Purina costs around $12 at Walmart.”

WHAT. NO. YOU DON’T SAY. I love how Purina is the comparison here, as if natural pet foods should be the same price as Purina. Purina Pet Food is absolute crap. You have to pay for quality, my friends. It’s basic economics.

Well, as long as we’re here, let’s talk about price.

How Much Does I And Love And You Canned Cat Food Cost?

Whole Foods is expensive as hell, so I’m not going to use their prices. You can easily get I And Love And You from Chewy (duh, where did you think I got it?) or Amazon (see Amazon’s prices here).

ILY (I’m seriously getting tired of typing it out… lol) canned cat food in packs of 12 retail on Chewy for around $12. That’s an average of $1 per 3 oz. can. For a single 10-pound cat, that averages out to a total monthly cost of $75 if you feed only ILY canned food.

The feeding instructions on Chewy say different, but the can itself says to feed two cans per 6-8 lbs per day. That means that you would go through a single 12-pack in less than 6 days. For reference, it costs me anywhere from $45-$90 to feed a single cat in our household, and we feed them Primal raw food.

For only $15 more, or sometimes less, I can feed them much better food that’s higher in quality and healthier for them. This brings me to the pros and cons of I And Love And You canned cat food…

The Pros And Cons Of ILY Canned Cat Food

The Meow Place takes a firm stance that a raw food diet is what cats need to be healthy. That being said, we also recognize that affording raw food can be an issue for low-income families. Don’t feel bad if you can’t feed your cats raw food – just do the best you can. That means buying the best food you can reasonably afford.

For this reason, there are certain ingredients in this food that concern me. You may remember the long list of harmful ingredients when we reviewed Solid Gold cat food. A few of those ingredients found their way into ILY’s food, but let’s start with the good stuff.

The Good Stuff

I And Love And You claims to source their ingredients primarily from the US and Canada:

Our products are manufactured in the USA, but we do source some high-quality ingredients from around the world… We do source some proteins from outside the US or Canada, such as from Australia, Brazil, and New Zealand…”

The reason this is important is that countries rife with contaminated foods and chemical-laden ingredients like to export their products to other countries, countries that then export to the US. These countries are mostly Asian countries, but it’s always possible that the above mentioned also received tainted products.

Having ingredients primarily from North America means that the food is usually safer. Usually.

Other awesome things about I And Love And You canned cat food are worth mentioning, such as:

• Meat is the first ingredient
• No carrageenan
• Free of grains, corn, wheat, soy and rice
• Includes essential vitamins

The brand gets bonus points for its mission of sustainability and its donations to charity. If you sign up for their newsletter, they donate five meals to their shelter of the month. Pretty sweet!

The Bad Stuff

Unfortunately, like many pet food companies, ILY uses some potentially harmful ingredients in its canned food, such as a variety of gums (guar, xanthan, cassia). Other concerning ingredients include choline chloride and sodium selenite. See our post about Solid Gold for further explanation on these ingredients.

“Natural flavor” is also very vague. What flavor? What do they mean by “natural”? You see, the word ‘natural’ can mean a lot of different things. Did you know that arsenic has an organic form? There are things in nature that are harmful to your pet, but since they are in no way synthetic, they are considered ‘natural’.

One more thing: the formula change. I And Love And You canned cat food recently changed their formula for Chicken Me Out, and fans of the brand are upset. Just check out the reviews page for this flavor on their website. I have no idea whether this was due to supply shortages, a need for cheaper ingredients due to budget issues, or what. All I know is that this change has caused some upset.

What Our Cats Thought Of It

Misha and Tippy wouldn’t touch the stuff the first time we fed it to them. Gradually, they got less picky. Both of them ended up liking the food despite their initial avoidance of it.

Loki and Izumi eat stuff like cardboard and ladybugs, so they really have no palate. They will eat almost anything we give them (just not oranges). I And Love And You canned cat food was an instant hit with them.

The Final Verdict

If it weren’t for the questionable ingredients and somewhat questionable sourcing (they never said they DIDN’T source from Asia), this food would get a high rating. The price is also an issue for many people.

The Meow Place has decided to rate this 3 out of 5 meows. This brand is really going places, but they need to be just as sustainable and careful with their food sourcing as they are environmentally-friendly.

I would definitely be up for giving ILY canned food to my cats as an occasional treat. I have no problem with that. Therefore, I recommend it as a wholesome and fairly nutritious treat with good moisture content. As far as meals go, I don’t recommend you feed your cat this food exclusively.

For more information on I And Love And You canned cat food, visit their FAQ page.

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