I have bought an embarrassing amount of cat food. Four cats, seventeen years of running this site, and a bad habit of buying the new thing just to see if it is better. Most of it was fine. Some of it was expensive garbage. Life's Abundance is the one that is still on auto-ship in my house, and it is what all four of mine eat every single day right now.
This is a positive review. I want to say that up front so you can calibrate. But I am also going to tell you exactly what is annoying about it, including the part about how it is sold, because if you find that out later from somebody else it is going to feel like I hid it from you.
Why I Switched In The First Place
I was not unhappy, exactly. I was suspicious. Penelope had a dull, slightly chalky coat that no amount of brushing fixed. Luna's digestion was inconsistent in a way that made cleanup a daily lottery. And Stripes had steadily put on weight while eating a food that had the word "weight" printed on the bag.
What finally pushed me over was sitting on the kitchen floor one Sunday reading four ingredient panels back to back. A lot of grocery-store cat food leans hard on corn gluten meal, generic by-product meal, and artificial preservatives, and once you notice how far down the panel the actual meat sits on some of those bags, you cannot unsee it.
What's Actually In It
The short version: real meat protein leads the panel, there is no corn or wheat doing the heavy lifting, and there are no artificial colors, flavors, or preservatives. The chicken and whitefish recipe I buy leads with chicken meal, which people sometimes flag as a red flag, and it is not one. Chicken meal is rendered chicken with the water removed, so by weight it delivers considerably more actual protein than "chicken" listed as whole wet muscle meat. It is a concentration thing, not a quality downgrade.
- Real meat protein as the leading ingredient, not a grain or a vague filler
- No artificial preservatives, no artificial colors, no artificial flavors
- Added taurine, which cats cannot produce in useful amounts on their own and which matters a great deal for heart and eye function
- Four guaranteed live probiotic strains listed right on the panel: dried Lactobacillus acidophilus, Lactobacillus casei, Bifidobacterium thermophilum and Enterococcus faecium fermentation products. Most brands either skip these or list them without a guaranteed level. I am fairly convinced this is the part that fixed Luna
- Antioxidants and omega fatty acids, which is the coat and skin side of the equation
Read the panel on the bag that actually shows up at your door. Formulas get revised over time, and I would much rather you verify it yourself than take my word for a recipe I bought last quarter.
The No-Preservatives Thing Is Also A Logistics Thing
Here is the piece most reviews skip. If you leave artificial preservatives out of a dry food, you cannot let bags sit in a distribution warehouse and then a retail shelf for a year and a half. That is the actual reason this food ships direct to your house instead of sitting in a pet aisle. It is not a marketing choice, it is a shelf-life constraint.
You can smell the difference when you open a bag. It smells like food. Not like a chemical approximation of food that has been sitting somewhere warm since last spring. It also means you have to plan ahead, which brings us to the downsides section later on.
The Transition: Four Cats, Four Personalities, One Bad Week
Do not dump the new food in the bowl and hope for the best. I know people who did that and then spent three days cleaning carpets. The standard 7 to 10 day transition exists for a reason, and with four cats I stretched it to 14 days on purpose.
Days 1 to 4: 25% new, 75% old
Stripes ate it immediately. Stripes eats anything. Stripes would eat drywall if I salted it. Penelope ate it, then sat back and considered the bowl like she was preparing a segment about it. Luna ate hers at 3am, because Luna does everything at 3am. Minnie Mouse ate around it. She physically nosed the new kibble out of the bowl and onto the floor, one piece at a time, then looked at me. This is where the hunger strike began.
Days 5 to 7: 50/50
Minnie skipped a meal. Then she skipped another one. This is the exact moment most people abandon the switch and go back, and I understand why, because a cat refusing food is legitimately scary.
So let me be direct about this. Cats that genuinely stop eating can develop hepatic lipidosis, and that is serious. I was watching Minnie closely. She was drinking, using the box normally, and still eating some food. My hard line was that if she went a full 24 hours with nothing at all, I was calling my vet, not toughing it out. Please use that same line, and call sooner if anything else looks off. I am an owner sharing what happened in my house, not a veterinarian.
What actually broke the strike was a splash of warm water over the kibble. That is the entire trick. Warming it releases the aroma, and Minnie is a nose-first cat. She ate it that night and never protested again.
Days 8 to 11: 75% new
Digestion got weird across the board for about two days. Softer, more frequent, four cats, five boxes, no fun for anybody. Then it settled on its own. This is the normal part that people panic about and it is why you go slow. If it had not settled within a few days I would have paused the ratio and held steady, which is what you should do too.
Days 12 to 14: 100% new
All four eating normally. Minnie behaved as though the entire thing had been her idea, which is very on brand for her.
What Actually Changed, And When
I tracked this in a note on my phone because I knew I would write about it eventually, and because I do not trust my own memory about vague things like "he seems happier."
| Change | When I noticed it | Which cats |
|---|---|---|
| Firmer, less frequent stool | About 3 weeks | All four, most obvious in Luna |
| Less litter box odor | About 3 weeks | Whole house |
| Softer, shinier coat | 6 to 8 weeks | Penelope by a mile |
| Noticeably less shedding | About 8 weeks | Stripes and Minnie |
| Steadier energy, no post-meal coma | About 4 weeks | Stripes |
| Weight slowly normalizing | About 4 months | Stripes, gradually |
The coat change on Penelope is the one other people noticed before I mentioned it. She is the white bicolor who hosts Feline Facts with Penelope, and white cats show absolutely everything on camera. Her coat went from slightly chalky to genuinely glossy, and it is the clearest before-and-after I have from this whole experiment.
The litter box result surprised me the most. Better digestion means less undigested filler coming out the other end, and the ambient smell in my office dropped enough that I noticed it without looking for it. That alone was worth the price difference to me.
The Honest Downsides
You cannot buy it in a store
It ships direct to your door, period. There is no running out at 9pm because you miscounted scoops. If you are the kind of person who buys cat food the moment you notice the bag is empty, this will bite you at least once. Set up auto-ship, and set it to land earlier than you think you need it. I keep about a week of buffer at all times now.
It costs more than grocery brands
Meaningfully more. Not boutique-raw-diet more, but you will feel it against a store brand, especially multiplied by four cats. My argument is that the per-day difference is small and the vet-bill math tends to favor better food over time. I am not going to pretend it is cheap, though. If your budget is genuinely tight, a solid mid-tier food you can afford consistently beats a premium food you end up rationing.
The transition week is rough
See the entire section above. Budget two weeks, expect at least one cat to be theatrical about it, and do not start the switch the week you are traveling or hosting people. Ask me how I learned that one.
It uses a direct-sales model, and I am part of it
This is the one I want to be completely straight about. Life's Abundance is sold through a direct-sales structure, which is MLM-adjacent, and I am inside that structure. If you buy through my link, I earn from it. Some people do not care at all and some people find that model off-putting on principle, and honestly both reactions are reasonable.
My position: the sales model is how the food gets distributed, it is not what is in the bag. I judged the food on the food. But you should know the structure exists, you should know I benefit, and then you get to decide. I would rather lose the sale than have you feel handled.
Who This Is Actually For
- Buy it if your cat has a dull coat, inconsistent digestion, or a smell problem you have been blaming on the litter
- Buy it if you already spend real money on gear and food is the obvious remaining gap
- Buy it if you are tired of reading ingredient panels and want to stop thinking about this decision
- Skip it if money is tight enough that a price increase turns into smaller portions
- Skip it if your cat is on a vet-prescribed therapeutic diet. Do not switch off a prescription food because a guy on the internet likes his chicken formula. Ask your vet first, every time.
- Skip it if the direct-sales structure bothers you. That is a legitimate reason and I am not going to argue you out of it.
The Verdict
All four of my cats eat this every day and it sits on auto-ship, which is the only endorsement that really counts. Anybody can write a nice review. Not everybody keeps paying for the thing month after month with their own card.
The improvements in coat and digestion were real and they showed up on a timeline I wrote down as it happened. The downsides are equally real: it costs more, it only ships direct, the transition week is genuinely unpleasant, and the sales model is what it is. If none of that is a dealbreaker, this is the food I recommend with the most conviction of anything on this site.
If you are switching, order before you run out, go slow over 10 to 14 days, and keep a cup of warm water handy for whichever cat is your Minnie. You can see the current cat food lineup and pricing here.
One last practical note. The transition week is hard on your litter setup, so this is a good moment to have a decent litter mat ($13.99) and some deodorizer pods ($5.99) on hand before you start. Two weeks from now you will not need them nearly as much, which is sort of the whole point.