Meow Mix is a variety of dry and wet cat food known for its advertising

jingle A jingle is a short song or tune used in advertising and for other commercial uses. Jingles are a form of sound branding. A jingle contains one or more hooks and meaning that explicitly promote the product or service being advertised, usually ...

. It is a product of

The J.M. Smucker Company The J.M. Smucker Company, also known as Smuckers, is an American manufacturer of food and beverage products. Headquartered in Orrville, Ohio, the company was founded in 1897 as a maker of apple butter. J.M. Smucker currently has three major busi ...

as of March 23, 2015. Meow Mix was introduced in 1974 and sells many flavors, including Original Choice and Seafood Medley, among many others. It also is known for selling Alley Cat dry cat food. Their current slogan is "it's the only brand cats ask for by name."

Overview

The Meow Mix Company operates from a facility in

Decatur, Alabama Decatur (dɪˈkeɪtə(r)) is the largest city and county seat of Morgan County (with a portion also in Limestone County) in the U.S. state of Alabama. Nicknamed "The River City", it is located in northern Alabama on the banks of Wheeler La ...

and produces Alley Cat brand cat food products. Originally a product of

Ralston Purina Ralston Purina Company was a St. Louis, Missouri,–based American conglomerate with substantial holdings in animal feed, food, pet food, consumer products, and entertainment. On December 12, 2001, it merged with Swiss food-giant Nestlé's Fr ...

, Meow Mix was divested for antitrust reasons in the early 2000s. The brand was acquired by

Del Monte Foods Del Monte Foods, Inc (trading as Del Monte Foods) is an American food production and distribution company headquartered in Walnut Creek, California. Del Monte Foods is one of the country's largest producers, distributors and marketer of b ...

in May, 2006. Their most famous slogan is, "Tastes so good, cats ask for it by name." The company was acquired by Cypress Group, a New York-based

private equity In the field of finance, the term private equity (PE) refers to investment funds, usually limited partnerships (LP), which buy and restructure financially weak companies that produce goods and provide services. A private-equity fund is both a t ...

firm in a $425 million

leveraged buyout A leveraged buyout (LBO) is one company's acquisition of another company using a significant amount of borrowed money ( leverage) to meet the cost of acquisition. The assets of the company being acquired are often used as collateral for the loa ...

in 2003. Three years later,

acquired the company for $705 million. The company had also been owned by

J.W. Childs Associates J. W. Childs Associates limited partnership, L.P. (JWC) is an American private equity firm focused on leveraged buyout and recapitalization transactions for Middle-Market Companies, middle-market growth companies. JWC places particular emphasis ...

which acquired the business in 2001 for $160 million. On March 23, 2015, parent company Big Heart Pet Brands was acquired by

for $5.8 billion.

Jingles

"The Meow Mix Theme" was written by

Shelly Palmer Shelton Leigh "Shelly" Palmer advertising, marketing and technology consultant, and business adviser. He is the Professor of Advanced Media in Residence at the S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University and CEO of The P ...

in 1970. The idea came from Ron Travisano, at the advertising agency of

Della Femina Travisano and Partners Jerry Della Femina (born 1936) is an American advertising executive and restaurateur. Starting from a poor Italian background in Brooklyn, he eventually became chairman of Della Femina Travisano & Partners, an agency which he founded with Ron ...

, who had the account with

in 1974. The first TV spot aired in 1974, and consisted of animals walking across the screen. Travisano put together film footage with editor Jay Gold, looping images of a cat to make it look like it was singing. The music was then composed by Tom McFaul of the jingle house Lucas/McFaul, one of the major jingle-composing houses at the time. Working from Travisano's film, McFaul wrote and produced music to fit, with the actual meowing performed by professional singer Linda November. Travisano then came up with the idea of adding English "translation" subtitles, along with a

bouncing ball The physics of a bouncing ball concerns the physical behaviour of bouncing balls, particularly its motion before, during, and after impact against the surface of another body. Several aspects of a bouncing ball's behaviour serve as an intro ...

pointing out the words, which often reflected the specific flavor(s) of Meow Mix product being advertised and changed from commercial to commercial. The song was used by the

CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...

during the

War on Terror The war on terror, officially the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT), is an ongoing international counterterrorism military campaign initiated by the United States following the September 11 attacks. The main targets of the campaign are militant ...

to torture captives.

Products

The brand includes a variety of dry cat foods, wet foods, and treats, including the new Meow-Mix Tender Centers cat food.

Meow Mix House

''Meow Mix House'' was a

reality TV Reality television is a genre of television programming that documents purportedly unscripted real-life situations, often starring unfamiliar people rather than professional actors. Reality television emerged as a distinct genre in the early 19 ...

show created by Meow Mix and hosted by

Tom Shillue Thomas A. Shillue (; born June 13, 1966) is an American stand-up comedian, actor, author, and talk-show host from Norwood, Massachusetts. He was a correspondent on ''The Daily Show'' on Comedy Central and hosted '' Red Eye'' on Fox News. He has b ...

in the format of Survivor. Ten cats rescued from

animal shelter An animal shelter or pound is a place where stray, lost, abandoned or surrendered animals – mostly dogs and cats – are housed. The word "pound" has its origins in the animal pounds of agricultural communities, where stray livestock would ...

s nationwide (including the

ASPCA The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) is a non-profit organization dedicated to preventing animal cruelty. Based in New York City since its inception in 1866, the organization's mission is "to provide effective mea ...

in New York, Touched by an Animal in Chicago, and Kitten Rescue in Los Angeles) competed for a grand prize — an executive-level position with the Meow Mix Company. These three-minute reality TV segments aired on

Animal Planet Animal Planet (stylized in all lowercase since 2018) is an American multinational pay television channel owned by the Warner Bros. Discovery Networks unit of Warner Bros. Discovery. First established on June 1, 1996, the network is primarily ...

for ten consecutive weeks, beginning on June 16, 2006. The cats were viewable full-time via webcam and were adopted as they were voted off of the show, receiving a year's supply of Meow Mix as a consolation prize. Weekly contest winners for areas such as "Best Purr" and "Greatest Post Climber" were decided by a panel of judges. Two winners were chosen — one through professional judges, and a second by television viewers. The company stated that the winner received the title of Meow Mix's "feline vice president of research," as well as becoming part of a new family. A second corporate position was provided to the cat voted most popular by viewers. Miami's Cisco won the top prize of vice-president of research and development at Meow Mix, and Ellis from Portland was "viewers' choice" winner.

Varieties

Meow Mix comes in many varieties, including Meow Mix Original Choice, Meow Mix

Seafood Seafood is any form of sea life regarded as food by humans, prominently including fish and shellfish. Shellfish include various species of molluscs (e.g. bivalve molluscs such as clams, oysters and mussels, and cephalopods such as octopus an ...

Selections, Meow Mix Indoor Formula, Meow Mix Tender Centers and the now discontinued Meow Mix Market Select which was intended to compete against Fancy Feast.

Ingredients

Note: ingredient list for Meow Mix Original Choice Dry Cat Food Ground Yellow

Corn Maize ( ; ''Zea mays'' subsp. ''mays'', from es, maíz after tnq, mahiz), also known as corn (North American and Australian English), is a cereal grain first domesticated by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 10,000 years ago. The ...

, Corn

Gluten Gluten is a structural protein naturally found in certain cereal grains. Although "gluten" often only refers to wheat proteins, in medical literature it refers to the combination of prolamin and glutelin proteins naturally occurring in all grai ...

Meal,

Chicken The chicken (''Gallus gallus domesticus'') is a domesticated junglefowl species, with attributes of wild species such as the grey and the Ceylon junglefowl that are originally from Southeastern Asia. Rooster or cock is a term for an adu ...

By-Product Meal,

Soybean The soybean, soy bean, or soya bean (''Glycine max'') is a species of legume native to East Asia, widely grown for its edible bean, which has numerous uses. Traditional unfermented food uses of soybeans include soy milk, from which tofu ...

Meal,

Beef Beef is the culinary name for meat from cattle (''Bos taurus''). In prehistoric times, humankind hunted aurochs and later domesticated them. Since that time, numerous breeds of cattle have been bred specifically for the quality or quantit ...

Tallow Tallow is a rendered form of beef or mutton fat, primarily made up of triglycerides. In industry, tallow is not strictly defined as beef or mutton fat. In this context, tallow is animal fat that conforms to certain technical criteria, includ ...

Preserved with Mixed-Tocopherols (Source of

Vitamin E Vitamin E is a group of eight fat soluble compounds that include four tocopherols and four tocotrienols. Vitamin E deficiency, which is rare and usually due to an underlying problem with digesting dietary fat rather than from a diet low in vi ...

Turkey Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with a small portion on the Balkan Peninsula ...

By-Product Meal,

Salmon Salmon () is the common name for several commercially important species of euryhaline ray-finned fish from the family Salmonidae, which are native to tributaries of the North Atlantic (genus '' Salmo'') and North Pacific (genus '' Onco ...

Meal, Oceanfish Meal, Brewers Dried

Yeast Yeasts are eukaryotic, single-celled microorganisms classified as members of the fungus kingdom. The first yeast originated hundreds of millions of years ago, and at least 1,500 species are currently recognized. They are estimated to constit ...

Phosphoric Acid Phosphoric acid (orthophosphoric acid, monophosphoric acid or phosphoric(V) acid) is a colorless, odorless phosphorus-containing solid, and inorganic compound with the chemical formula . It is commonly encountered as an 85% aqueous solution, w ...

Animal Animals are multicellular, eukaryotic organisms in the biological kingdom Animalia. With few exceptions, animals consume organic material, breathe oxygen, are able to move, can reproduce sexually, and go through an ontogenetic stage ...

Digest, Calcium Carbonate, Potassium Chloride, Tetra

Sodium Sodium is a chemical element with the symbol Na (from Latin ''natrium'') and atomic number 11. It is a soft, silvery-white, highly reactive metal. Sodium is an alkali metal, being in group 1 of the periodic table. Its only stable ...

Pyrophosphate, Calcium Chloride, Choline Chloride, Added

Color Color (American English) or colour (British English) is the visual perceptual property deriving from the spectrum of light interacting with the photoreceptor cells of the eyes. Color categories and physical specifications of color are associ ...

( Red 40,

Yellow Yellow is the color between green and orange on the spectrum of light. It is evoked by light with a dominant wavelength of roughly 575585 nm. It is a primary color in subtractive color systems, used in painting or color printing. In th ...

Blue Blue is one of the three primary colours in the RYB colour model (traditional colour theory), as well as in the RGB (additive) colour model. It lies between violet and cyan on the spectrum of visible light. The eye perceives blue when ...

2 and other colors),

Salt Salt is a mineral composed primarily of sodium chloride (NaCl), a chemical compound belonging to the larger class of salts; salt in the form of a natural crystalline mineral is known as rock salt or halite. Salt is present in vast quant ...

, Taurine, Zinc Sulfate, Ferrous Sulfate, L-alanine, Niacin,

Vitamin A vitamin is an organic molecule (or a set of molecules closely related chemically, i.e. vitamers) that is an essential micronutrient that an organism needs in small quantities for the proper functioning of its metabolism. Essential nutrie ...

Supplements

References

External links

* {{Smucker's Cat food brands Animal food manufacturers Manufacturing companies based in Alabama Products introduced in 1974 Ralston Purina products Del Monte Foods brands 1974 establishments in Alabama Private equity portfolio companies The J.M. Smucker Co. brands