Matisse or N&D: which Farmina cat food?
Matisse is not grain-free and N&D is. What the price gap buys, what each costs per kilo in Hyderabad, and which bag your cat needs.
Matisse is Farmina's everyday line and N&D is the premium one. Matisse is not grain-free, whatever you have read, and N&D is. For a healthy adult cat, either one is a complete food. Buy Matisse and put the difference into getting the portion right.
Key Takeaways
- Matisse contains rice and corn. N&D is the grain-free line. Plenty of Indian pet pages have this the wrong way round.
- Both bags sit above the published protein minimum for cats, so the cheaper one is not a nutritional compromise.
- After your cat is neutered, cut the daily amount. That decides its weight more than the bag does.
Is Matisse grain-free?
No. Farmina's own India page for Matisse Chicken & Rice lists rice as the second ingredient and corn as the third. The kitten bag is built the same way, with rice and corn behind the chicken. N&D is the grain-free range: it uses sweet potato where Matisse uses rice, and that difference is most of what you are paying for.
This gets stated backwards often enough to be worth checking yourself. Several Indian pet blogs describe Matisse as grain-free, including one of the pages that comes up first for the brand. Turn the bag over and read the composition. The ingredient list settles it.
So if you switched to Matisse to get your cat off grain, you did not.
What does the extra money buy?
More meat and more fat. N&D Prime leads with boneless chicken and dehydrated chicken protein. Matisse leads with dehydrated chicken protein and then fills out with rice and corn. On the label that works out at roughly a third more protein in N&D and close to double the fat.
Here is what the two lines cost on our shelf:
| Bag | Pack | Price | Per kilo |
|---|---|---|---|
| Matisse Chicken & Rice Adult | 10kg | Rs 6,799 | Rs 680 |
| Matisse Chicken & Rice Adult | 1.5kg | Rs 1,471 | Rs 981 |
| N&D Prime Chicken & Pomegranate Adult | 5kg | Rs 6,462 | Rs 1,292 |
| N&D Prime Chicken & Pomegranate Adult | 1.5kg | Rs 2,260 | Rs 1,507 |
| Matisse Kitten | 1.5kg | Rs 1,319 | Rs 879 |
| N&D Prime Kitten | 1.5kg | Rs 2,398 | Rs 1,599 |
The gap looks widest when you compare the biggest pack of each, because Farmina India does not make a ten-kilo N&D. Compare the same pack size and it narrows to about half again, rather than double.
Does grain-free matter for a cat?
Less than the shelf suggests.
What a cat genuinely needs from its food is animal protein, and with it taurine, which plant ingredients do not carry. A cat short of taurine loses heart muscle strength and eyesight. Both Farmina lines are built on meat rather than plant protein, so neither one is a risk there. Matisse prints its taurine figure on the pack, and the kitten bag carries more of it than the adult one.
The grain argument is a separate claim: that starch in the bowl is what makes cats fat or diabetic. Researchers have now pooled the feeding trials that measured it, across a wide spread of starch levels, and the link did not hold. The figures are in the research section below. What did track with body fat was the fat in the food, which is the ingredient the premium bag has more of.
That is not a mark against N&D. It is a reason to weigh it out rather than fill the bowl.
So which bag should you buy?
For a healthy adult cat with nothing particular wrong, buy Matisse Chicken & Rice. It is the cheaper food per kilo, it clears every published minimum, and cats here eat it without a fuss.
Buy N&D Prime when there is a reason. A cat that has turned its nose up at two or three foods and settles on this one. A vet who has asked for a higher-protein diet. A household with one small cat, where the five-kilo bag gets finished while it is still fresh.
For kittens the same split holds. Matisse Kitten runs to a year old and is a real step up from the adult food in both protein and fat. N&D Prime Kitten is the richer option at roughly twice the price per kilo.
If your cat is neutered, look at Matisse Neutered Salmon before either. It is priced close to the standard Matisse and it is built for the cat most Hyderabad flats actually have.
What neither line does is get water into a cat. Both are dry food, and a cat that will not drink needs wet food or a fountain, not a better kibble.
What matters more than the bag
Three things, in this order.
The amount. In one hospital's records, close to half the cats seen were carrying too much weight, and no bag on any shelf corrects that. Weigh the food out, or use the same scoop every single time, and split it across two meals. Treats come out of that total, not on top of it.
Neutering. Cats eat more after the operation. In a small study, males left to eat as much as they wanted put on a fifth of their body weight within six months, and most of the gain was fat. The researchers traced it to the extra food rather than to any drop in what the cats burned. Cut the daily amount on the day of the operation rather than three months later when the belly shows.
Water. Hyderabad is hot for most of the year and a cat on dry food alone runs closer to the edge than one on wet. Keep a second bowl away from the food, fill it fresh each morning, and watch the litter tray. Small hard clumps mean a cat that is not drinking enough.
One local note on storage. A ten-kilo sack in this humidity will go stale before one cat finishes it, and the fat in it turns first. Decant into an airtight container, keep the bag inside it, and store it off the floor where the ants are. Smaller packs cost more per kilo and waste less.
The research behind this
The two bags, in the manufacturer's own words. Farmina India lists Matisse Chicken & Rice Adult as "Dehydrated chicken protein (32%), rice (25%), corn, dehydrated fish protein, chicken fat" with analytical constituents of "Crude protein 32.00% Crude fat 11.00% Crude fibres 1.20% Crude ash 6.60% Taurine 1800mg/kg". Matisse Kitten 1-12 Months is "dehydrated chicken protein (36%), rice (20%), chicken fat, corn", at 36.00% protein and 14.00% fat with taurine at 2900mg/kg. The widely repeated figure of 38% protein for the kitten bag is not Farmina's own. N&D Prime Chicken & Pomegranate Adult is "boneless chicken (30%), dehydrated chicken protein (28%), sweet potato, chicken fat" and "crude protein 44.00%; crude fat 20.00%; crude fibres 1.80%; moisture 8.00%; crude ash 8.50%".
The minimum. The Merck Veterinary Manual gives it as "a minimum of 26% protein as dry matter or 65 grams of protein per 1,000 kcal ME (AAFCO guidelines)" for adult cats, and 30% dry matter for growing kittens. Both Farmina lines are above both figures. The same page is where the taurine point comes from: "Taurine is an essential amino acid in diets for cats, and taurine deficiency can cause dilated cardiomyopathy and central retinal degeneration in cats."
Carbohydrate. A 2025 meta-analysis in the Journal of Animal Science pooled sixteen studies, nine of them measuring body fat, and concluded that "dietary carbohydrates (NFE), included between 2.8% and 57% ME, are not a risk factor for greater BFM, fasted insulin, and glucose concentrations in cats". In the lean cats in those trials the model found body fat "to decrease when NFE content increased as a proportion of the DEI", while dietary fat moved it the other way. Two caveats. These are feeding trials on colony and research cats, not house cats in Indian flats. And the finding is about healthy cats: a cat already diagnosed as diabetic is a different question and belongs with your vet.
Pack sizes. Farmina India lists Matisse in "400g - 1.5kg - 10kg" and N&D Prime Chicken & Pomegranate Adult in "300g - 1,5kg - 5kg". There is no ten-kilo N&D, which is why the biggest-pack comparison flatters Matisse.
What neutering does.
| What changed | % gained in six months |
|---|---|
| Body weight | 20 |
| Body fat | 75 |
Population: 9 adult male domestic shorthair cats followed from before neutering to six months after, University of California, Davis, 2014. Source: Wei and others, Early Effects of Neutering on Energy Expenditure in Adult Male Cats, PLOS ONE, 2014.
Nine cats is a small group, and they were housed and fed under laboratory conditions rather than in a home. Read it as a direction rather than a rate. The authors' own conclusion is the practical part: "Long-term control of FI should be initiated after neutering to prevent hyperphagia and weight gain in male cats."
How common the problem is. In a cross-sectional study of cats seen at a Swedish university animal hospital between 2013 and 2015, "The prevalence of overweight was 45% in the medical records cohort" of 1,072 cats. That is Sweden, not Hyderabad, and cats at a hospital are not a random sample of cats. Nobody publishes the equivalent figure for India.
Prices. Every rupee figure above was read off our own live product pages on 24 September 2026. The per-kilo figures are ours, worked out from the pack prices.
Read next: How Long Do Cats Live? A Real Guide for Indian Cat Parents; Which Royal Canin does your kitten need?; How much does it cost to feed a cat in India?
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Matisse cat food grain free?
No. Farmina's own India page lists rice at 25% and corn in the composition of Matisse Chicken & Rice, and rice at 20% with corn in the kitten bag. The grain-free Farmina range is N&D.
Which is better, Matisse or Farmina N&D?
For a healthy cat, neither is better in a way you would notice. N&D carries more meat protein and more fat and costs roughly twice as much per kilo. Matisse clears every published minimum for an adult cat.
How much protein does Matisse cat food have?
Farmina lists Matisse Chicken & Rice Adult at 32% crude protein and Matisse Kitten at 36%. The 38% figure that circulates for the kitten food does not come from Farmina.
Is Farmina N&D worth the price for a cat?
It earns it for a picky cat that will eat nothing else, or where your vet has asked for a higher-protein food. It is not worth it on the grain-free argument alone, which the research does not support for healthy cats.
Which Farmina food should a kitten eat?
Matisse Kitten runs to twelve months and is a genuine step up from the adult bag. N&D Prime Kitten is the richer choice. Either will grow a kitten; the kitten bag matters more than the line.
अक्सर पूछे जाने वाले सवाल
क्या Matisse cat food grain free है?
नहीं। Farmina की अपनी इंडिया वेबसाइट पर Matisse Chicken & Rice की सामग्री में चावल और मक्का दोनों लिखे हैं। जो लोग grain free खाना ढूँढ रहे हैं, उनके लिए Farmina की N&D रेंज है, Matisse नहीं। पैकेट पलटकर सामग्री की सूची पढ़ लीजिए, वही सही जवाब देती है।
Matisse लूँ या N&D?
सेहतमंद बिल्ली के लिए दोनों पूरे और संतुलित खाने हैं। N&D में मांस और चर्बी ज़्यादा है और दाम लगभग दोगुना है। अगर बिल्ली को कोई ख़ास दिक़्क़त नहीं है तो Matisse ठीक है, और बचा हुआ पैसा सही मात्रा नापकर खिलाने में लगाइए।
बिल्ली की नसबंदी के बाद खाना कितना देना चाहिए?
नसबंदी के बाद बिल्ली की भूख बढ़ जाती है पर ज़रूरत घट जाती है। उसी दिन से रोज़ की मात्रा कम कर दीजिए, खाना नापकर दो बार में दीजिए, और कटोरा भरा हुआ मत छोड़िए। वज़न बढ़ने के बाद घटाना कहीं ज़्यादा मुश्किल होता है।
Sources
- Matisse Chicken & Rice — Farmina Pet Foods India
- Matisse Kitten 1-12 Months — Farmina Pet Foods India
- N&D Prime Feline Chicken & Pomegranate Adult — Farmina Pet Foods India
- Nutritional Requirements of Small Animals — Merck Veterinary Manual
- A meta-analysis: dietary carbohydrates do not increase body fat or fasted insulin and glucose in cats, 2025 — Journal of Animal Science
- Early Effects of Neutering on Energy Expenditure in Adult Male Cats, 2014 — PLOS ONE
- Overweight in adult cats: a cross-sectional study, 2018 — Acta Veterinaria Scandinavica
- Farmina Matisse: The Best Cat Food? (Updated 2026) — Petfather, cited as the source of the grain-free claim, not as evidence for it
Prices are current as of September 2026 and do change. The figure on each product page is the live one.
