I read today on the front page of the local paper that dry food is bad for cats. Apparently a well known vet said this based on her own extensive research and that of a few of her peers. The claim is that cats are natural carnivores and that dry food contains an excessive amount of wheat and other non-meat stuff. This fact apparently has caused serious health problems for scores of felines.
I can’t give you stats but I can give you anecdote: I have had multiple cats over more than 4 decades and not one has had trouble associated with dry food, which is all any of them have ever gotten other than the occasional bit of real food.
For some cats, feeding cheap dry food exclusively is bad for them. Generally it’s too much “ash”. Corn as the first ingredient is also a bad sign.
But any “Premium” brand, like those at pet stores (Science Diet, Iams, Maxcat, Felidae and so forth) is fine. Current weirdness with tainted pet food notwithstanding, of course.
what the **dr ** said. i have a very old cat who had kidney issues, and and a three year old who’s healthy as a horse.
they both eat the same Hills Prescription food. turk has been on it all of his life after he was weaned. murphy’s kidney issues disappeared within a month and turk is going strong on it.
To cut a long story short: depending on genetic predisposition, some cats react with bladder issues. Also dry cat food has lots of calories. I always recommend switching to a canned-food-only diet when somebody needs their cat to lose weight.
I asked this in the earlier thread as well, but I’ll ask here - okay, so I have a kitten who is getting WAY TOO FAT. He’s heavier than the cat now! (I typoed “heavier than the fat!”, which is possibly closer to the truth.) I feed him dry food because it just seems natural to me that he’d get fatter on the wet stuff. He eats the amount he’s supposed to eat (we don’t see him stealing Dewey’s food anymore, at least) and he’s super-active. Is wet really the way to go with him? And if so should he get a “kitten” wet food? It seems you have to go to the pet store to find anything labeled for kittens that’s wet. He’s about six months old.
Cats fed exclusively canned food can have health problems, too, usually problems with their teeth (dry food helps clean their teeth in a way that wet food doesn’t). My mom had a cat that only ate canned food. It had dental problems, and its breath could have knocked over a rhinoceros at fifty paces.
One of the Neville kitties seems to be unusually susceptible to dental problems (she’s three years old and has already had to have a couple of teeth pulled- poor thing ), and the other one loves cornmeal (she jumped up on the stove to take bites out of a pan of cornbread once), so dry food will probably always be a part of their diet. Yes, I’ve tried explaining the concept of “carnivore” to Luna (the cat who loves cornmeal), but she doesn’t listen.
Here’s what I think is probably the best advice regarding pet food in the article:
On overeating: The only time any of my cats got fat was when we switched to Iams dry cat food. My vet said cats will not naturally overeat except when the food is too yummy. We went back to Purina Cat Chow, and the cat came back to a normal weight.
On urinary problems: My current cat, Freckles, is the only one who ever had UT trouble. The vet said some cats have a genetic tendency toward that, and he advised us to switch to a food made for cats with urinary problem, for the rest of his life. He now eats Purina One Special Care Urinary Tract Health Formula, and he’s fine.
Dry food can be a problem if you feed only low-quality dry food. But so can low-quality wet food. And it’s easy to tell high-quality from low-quality: look at the ingredients list. High-quality food has meat listed first, not grain (except for diet-type low-calorie feed).
With dry food, cats need to drink sufficient water. And many cats can be rather finicky about water. So you need to provide clean, fresh water, probably daily. One of those automatic fountain waterers that provides a running stream of water, and filters it thru charcoal is good – most cats like to drink from them.
Some cats eat too much dry food, when it is available. They may eat fast, finish theirs, and then eat more from another cats’ dish. So you need to take steps to prevent the ‘piggish’ cat from over-eating. But such cats may over-eat on wet food, too. (Dry food is often fed free choice, and it’s better for the cat to eat that way – smaller amounts all day rather than a big meal morning and night. With wet food, it’s not good to leave it out (it can spoil quickly), so you generally have to feed it as 2 or 3 meals per day.)
A small minority of cats seem to have problems with kidney, bladder, or urinary tract problems when fed dry food, even with enough water. These cats may need to be fed on wet food, often specialized diets. (Personally, I think cats with such genetic problems ought to die out. So they should certainly all be neutered, and not allowed to breed.)
Because it isn’t true, and people in the field know that. Professional cat breeders have been feeding their cats dry food for years, without problems.
But there are certainly cites that argue otherwise for diabetic cats and those with kidney problems, as you noted. And it’s not to far from that to extrapolate that wet food may therefore be better for hydration period. Meanwhile the argument against much dental benefit from dry food makes a certain amount of sense to me ( and I’ve seen a paper cite or two to back this up ) - i.e. cat jaws aren’t designed to masticate, so they aren’t likely to get a lot of cleaning action from crunching up the hard stuff.
I’m challenging less because I’m true believer ( I feed both wet and dry and more dry than wet ), than damn it I want a definitive answer :D! I keep seeing online debates over this issue and I’d like to see some actual research papers that have explored this. Somebody must be doing this research.
Rather unscientific way of extrapolation, I’d say.
Because a few sick individuals have problems with x, the whole species should avoid x?
I had an uncle who was allergic to dairy products; therefore all humans should avoid dairy? I have a friend with cancer, who can only eat a very restricted amount of protein. So should all humans limit their protein?
I don’t think that is a valid way of extrapolating.
Not Vet journals, but here are some cites for most people feeding cats dry food:
(Interesting difference between the two countries: American are much more likely to have cats than Japanese.
In America: households with dogs - 36%, households with cats - 33%.
In Japan: households with dogs - 20%, households with cats - 12%.
Given the generally smaller properties in Japan, I would have expected more cats than dogs.)
Oh, to be sure. My comments were based more on readings articles that claim things such as this:
*Homeostatic control of water balance in cats differs in some important respects from that of dogs Cats make less precise and rapid compensatory changes in voluntary water intake than dogs in response to changes in the water content of their food. Similarly, their compensatory drinking response to dehydration due to increased environmental temperature is less effective than dogs. This apparent weakness of the cat’s thirst drive to respond to changes in her state of hydration has led to the conclusion that feeding canned food assures adequate hydration at all times. *
Like I said, I’m not entirely convinced that this is of pressing importance for your average cat. While my current cats get “ultra-premium” food, my previous one lived 17 years on the equivalent of Meow Mix and similar junky foods, mostly dry. Then again, that’s nothing but another anecdote and maybe she’d have made it to 28 if I’d fed her on wet Wellness her whole life. shrug
So I find articles like the above at least thought-provoking and it’d be nice to get the straight skinny.
No, but you may remember my cat having been diagnosed with diabetes a few months ago. Until then, I’d fed him dry food exclusively (Iams most of the time), with occasional allowances for plate-licking and tuna juice.
The vet told me that most dry food, including brand like Iams, is too high in carbs for certain cats. Once my cat switched to prescription, high-protein, low-carb cat food (yes, as my vet explained, the kitty equivalent of the Atkins Diet), the difference was dramatic and nearly immediate. Within a few weeks, he was no longer insulin-dependent, his blood sugar was back to normal, and so far (fingers crossed) he has remained that way. The behaviors that led me to take him to the vet in the first place stopped, too.
Of course, I don’t know to what extent you can extrapolate that to all cats - after all, mine is now 13, and could stand to lose some weight. I’ve tried to put him on a diet, both by restricting food intake and by feeding him low-calorie food, but every time he’s gotten so aggressive that I’ve had to give up. (I have very little willpower when sleep-deprived, and he would attack me in my sleep if he was hungry, despite how affectionate and mild-mannered he is most of the time.)
Okay, if I don’t get any responses to this I may start its own thread - I’ve been feeding Fattles and Dewey seperately for the past few days and giving Eddles kitten pouch food, from Iams. I just took a good look at the label and saw that it suggests feeding, like, six pouches a day! Dude, I’m trying to make him LESS FAT, not make my own little Jabba the Hut (and we’d have to live in a cardboard box!) What up with this?
Goddamn it! Now I look at the website and they say these things are recalled, which they WEREN’T before! Thanks, guys, I fed them to him because of this thread.
He’s how old? Though kittens are generally considered kittens up until about age one ( and they may not reach full size until 18 months or longer ), they may need to come off kitten food much earlier than that. I often see six months as an age where in at least some cats metabolism starts slowing down from the full-on kitten overdrive. My own kittens pretty much started getting a wee bit chunky around 7 or 8 months.
Basically if he’s gaining weight like crazy I’d go ahead and put him on regular adult food and start measuring it out carefully.
Hmmm…sorry? But while I can understand you’re upset I don’t think anybody here specifically suggested you buy that stuff. And if it’s recalled the store you got it from really should have been more on the ball by now - there is no excuse for any of that garbage to still be on shelves.
Some brands that have very good reputations that aren’t associated at all with Menu foods are Felidae and Natural Balance. Might have to go to a specialty store to find them, though. I know Pet Food Express carries them, but places like PetCo don’t seem to.
), and the other one loves cornmeal (she jumped up on the stove to take bites out of a pan of cornbread once), so dry food will probably always be a part of their diet. Yes, I’ve tried explaining the concept of “carnivore” to Luna (the cat who loves cornmeal), but she doesn’t listen.