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Our vet would like our cats to be on an all-canned diet. She gave us the web address to Feeding Your Cat: Knowing the Basics by Lisa Pierson, which some of you are familiar with. Our cats love canned food but also like to eat a little dry food here and there throughout the day. They get a maximum of 1/2 cup per day each cat. (This was what was previously recommended by the same office, different vet.)
I've been reading about dry food and know it is better to give them natural ingredients such as chicken and turkey, with no by-products, vegetables they don't need, brown rice, or grain. My question is, is it acceptable to give them dry food that meets these requirements, or is it still better to give them canned only? Is grain free dry food the answer if given at a minimum, or is it that much better for them to completely cut all dry food out? Both cats are a few pounds overweight and the vet is concerned one in particular could become diabetic if we continue to give her high-calorie food and/or dry food. What do you think? Should we bother trying the grain free dry food? One of the cats would drive us insane if she couldn't have any dry food all day long; this is part of the issue.
Canned is suppose to be so much healthier for them. Of course, that means a quality canned food...One that has less than 15% carbs is best.
Wish I could get my 5 on canned...I have tried and tried and they have no interest in it all all.
We have our cat on grain-free canned and a tiny (scant 1/8 cup per day) amount of grain-free dry, and it seems to be suiting him very well indeed. He, too, was about a pound heavier than he should have been the last time we had him into the vet, so he gets half a can a day of Wellness grain-free, plus the tiny amount of Nature's Variety grain-free dry, and he has returned to his correct weight now. We split the canned into a quarter can each morning and evening, and mix water in to get more fluids into him to minimize the risk of urinary problems (neutered male).
It did take a while to get him on the canned; he had been a dry-food-only cat for a long time. The way I went about it was to put the canned down for no more than 30 minutes, and if he hadn't finished it in that time, I threw the rest away. He yelled at us about it, of course, but he learned pretty quickly that when the food was available, he'd best gobble it up. Now he has the bowl polished clean in about 3 minutes when we put it down, and that scant 1/8 cup of premium dry lasts him 24 hours; he's not terribly fond of the flavor, so he only nibbles it when he's genuinely hungry.
The funny thing is that way back a couple of years ago, we used to buy him the mass-produced Purina dry food, which he really, really liked a LOT, and we kept it in this plastic tub in the kitchen to keep him from gnawing through the bag. Since we buy and feed him smaller quantities of more premium food now, the empty tub has been consigned to the basement - but he still remembers that once upon a time, it contained yummy dry food. And to this day, every time I go to the basement, he runs down the stairs after me, races over to the empty tub, stands up on his hind legs and drums on the side of the bin while yowling at me to tell me that he'd like to have what used to be inside!
Is grain free dry food the answer if given at a minimum, or is it that much better for them to completely cut all dry food out?.
The way I see it, none of us lives in a world of absolutes. Would be nice... but it's not the case. We need to balance what's best for our pets with what we can afford, what we have time for (i.e. convenience), how it all fits together etc. etc. The "fundamentalists" that bang on about one method of feeding or another sometimes fail to take into account that although we own pets, we also have lives.
There's a lot written about the evils of dry food.... but in all that's been written, the issue of high-quality, 100% grain free dry food is, generally, conveniently left out. That's a failing. In fact, in one of Dr. Fox's recent columns (some of you might have his syndicated column in your newspapers) he went so far as to name a particular brand of dry food as a viable alternative.
The issue of weight and cats is a tricky one and one that you need to address - an overweight animal is not a healthy animal. How easy or difficult it is to address has a lot to do with how you keep your cats (i.e. do they have the opportunity to dine al fresco as it were)?
Personally, I feed wet and dry. Each cat gets their share of wet plus 1/8 cup of Wellness Core two times a day. I don't leave food out for "grazing" - cats being cats, and like all pure carnivores, are biologically designed to eat a meal and go sleep it off. Plus I personally only have one cat that will not eat herself stupid... so if there was food available, the others would just go eat as much as they could (and one is already prone to obesity, keeping weight off her is not easy). So as much as you want to be looking at the type of food you're feeding, you also want to be looking at your feeding routine and making some gradual changes to it.
It's 75% meat and fish and 25% vegetables.
No grain.
All the meat and fish is freshly caught and the meat is freshly killed.
None of it is frozen and they don't use any by products.
All of it is either caught or raised in Canada, nothing in it comes from China.
It's always fresh as each bag is vacuum sealed in foil.
Both cats are a few pounds overweight and the vet is concerned one in particular could become diabetic if we continue to give her high-calorie food and/or dry food. What do you think? Should we bother trying the grain free dry food? One of the cats would drive us insane if she couldn't have any dry food all day long; this is part of the issue.
I agree wholeheartedly with your Veterinarian and Drs. Pierson & Hodgkins. especially with Dr. Pierson in not "closing the barn door after the horse has already gotten out." JMHO.
One thing which is all too common when cats do become Diabetic is the biggest challenge: Getting the cat unaddicted to dry food. Feline Diabetes is, indeed, a man made disease and merely eliminating the cause is our only guarantee cats won't get it.
On DiabeticCat, the caregivers there vehemently insist on removing all dry food from the home, as the cat can sense/detect it. (Even one crumb of it, in their experiences, and the numbers shoot up.) As long as it is there, they will hold out -- even if you have it buried in the basement, cats will know and be stubborn, spoiled brat hold-outs.
I know there are very high-quality dry foods out there but, personally, if we were to have another cat (if a Holistic Vet becomes available in this area), I'd feed Raw after having read both Drs. Pierson's and Hodgkins' sites; the experiences of folks' cats going through health nightmares, and how they got them healthy again; and, most of all, finally "getting" the whole 'Obligate Carnivore' Thing and just what that means.
(In their experiences, there is no compromise for dry food for a Diabetic, none, if the cat is ever to get off Insulin.)
If your vet is concerned about Diabetes (hang on to that angel-vet!!), wouldn't even consider risking it. The "addicted brat" will get over it and realize The Fix is history. Tough love will keep her with you longer. My sister did it, and her cats were spoiled rotten addicts, so I believe.
Cat Nutrition.Org is another priceless labor of love I can't recommend enough for all cat lovers.
Last edited by Travel'r; 06-13-2009 at 06:16 PM..
Reason: Feline Diabetes
Who really knows? When I got my first kitty 30 or so years ago the prevailing thought was canned food was not good for the cat and kibble was the best. My vet told me that in all reality the best food for a cat is a mouse. The cat gets the protein from the meat plus the small amount of grain that would be in the mouse's belly added to the calcium from it's bones. In other words, mother nature supplies her critters with the perfect food. Cats need all of those things.
Of course we can't feed out cats mice or birds or the other prey they would eat if they were in the wild. So we have to depend upon commercially made food to keep them healthy. My kitty will not eat anything from a can. She is doing fine. I buy her a good quality kibble I obtain from a pet supply store. I have tried different brands but some of the most expensive and "pure" gave her the runs.
My last two kitties before her lived to be 18 and they ate supermarket purchased cat food. They were healthy all their lives.
I think as long as the cat is healthy and happy and has good checkups, a good quality cat food is just fine; canned or dry.
The cat gets the protein from the meat plus the small amount of grain that would be in the mouse's belly added to the calcium from it's bones. In other words, mother nature supplies her critters with the perfect food. Cats need all of those things.
Of course we can't feed out cats mice or birds or the other prey they would eat if they were in the wild.
I agree that birds and mice are the food cats evolved to eat, but I don't agree about them getting much grains from stomach contents.
In my experience, (from when I lived in the country and had outdoor/indoor cats) the guts/intestines were often the only part of killed prey my cats wouldn't eat (and believe me, I had to clean numerous gut piles off my deck - yuck).
I suppose if a cat were very hungry they might eat it all, but mine rarely, if ever, did. And the amount of grains gleaned would be negligible. Not like modern cat foods who use grains as the majority of ingredients!
I feel that the ingredients (protein from meat sources, not grains or glutens) is much more important than the form (wet or dry) the food comes in.
I guess what gets lost in the shuffle of the pet food debates is the fact that cats, by nature, do not have a natural thirst drive to begin with and really are driven to drink water when they are dehydrated, as they are designed by nature to get moisture from their food. (I do not consider this "just opinion", as it could be found in even the oldest of Encyclopedias ever written, and National Geographic would agree as well)
Another article by a knowledgeable Veterinarian, just stating the very basic facts on these obligate carnivores and also addressing even grain-free kibble: Little Big Cat
Just an excerpt:
<<<Dry food is very dehydrating. Our feline friends descend from desert-dwelling wild cats who are well adapted to limited water resources. Their ultra-efficient kidneys are able to extract most of their moisture needs from their prey. However, the end result is that cats have a very low thirst drive, and will not drink water until they are 3-5% dehydrated...This chronic dehydration may be a factor in kidney disease, and is known to be a major contributor to bladder disease (crystals, stones, FUS, FLUTD, cystitis). Caution: adding water or milk to dry food does not solve the problem; and the fact that there are always bacteria on the surface of dry food means that adding moisture can result in massive bacterial growth--and a very upset tummy.>>>
They are the strictest of all carnivorous mammals -- NOT opinion -- just a fact of nature. It is not even debatable. It was the pet food industry, and their convenience, which has succeeded in completely burying this fact, and created Feline Diabetes and so many other illnesses which we have come to accept as "just normal cat things" (vomiting; UTI, IBS, etc.)
They need moisture IN their food.
Funny, snake owners wouldn't even consider feeding their Boa Constrictors
hard, processed anything -- thankfully for them, the almighty pet food industry does not advertise "snake kibble."
Last edited by Travel'r; 06-14-2009 at 04:31 PM..
Reason: spelling; addition
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especially with Dr. Pierson in not "closing the barn door after the horse has already gotten out." JMHO. 
Tough love will keep her with you longer. My sister did it, and her cats were spoiled rotten addicts, so I believe. 
