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I guess I'm out of the loop here but I've raised eleven cats in my lifetime, all on dry food, and all lived to be in their elderly teens with no outstanding health problems. The two I own now turn up their noses at anything other than their dry food. An added bonus, besides affordability, is that it keeps their teeth clean.
They are both eight years old and my orange tabby has become overweight. She's the first overweight cat I've ever had. The options the vet offered were insanely expensive so we switched to using the same brand as we always have only using the cat food for senior cats.
We started by mixing half-and-half. Both cats made the transition very easily and Ms. Chubby is gradually losing weight whereas so far it doesn't seem to have affected the other cat. If she should start to lose weight then we will have to devise supplementary eating for her. But they've always shared a double bowl so it was difficult to make a change for one and not the other.
And with wet food you need low carb food. Less than 5% carbs.
Sheba chicken and turkey are 3%. Many people with diabetic cats feed their kitties Sheba chicken and turkey.
I use Sheba for my eldest who is a couch potato and a chubby. We're still working on getting her down to 12 lbs.
Cats cannot lose weight too fast otherwise they will develop Fatty Liver disease......
Cats with moderate activity levels require approx 20 calories per pound. At 18 lbs.......that's 360 calories per day. Whoa.........that's a lot of food. Sheba cans are around 95 cal per 3 oz.
If he's a couch potato.....I'd cut his caloric intake to around 300 calories.
Also smaller portions and more frequent intervals. Lily gets 1/2 can or 1.5 oz of Sheba canned 4 times a day. I work from home so I can control her feedings. However, I do have 3 other cats......and no matter how fast I am she is faster......and will steal another cat's food. So it is an ongoing battle with her weight.
One vet in the practice I go to.....handed me this bag of dry food........some sort of diabetic/maintenance diet junk. 24% carbs! Then she handed me a canned variety.....24% carbs. Nope......I wouldn't go for it........
You can get Sheba canned at Wally World. 50 cents a can.
IF the cat will eat wet food, some don't. Otherwise give dry food and keep up the exercise. Some cats are just big cats, we had one that weighed 26 pounds and he was not fat at all.
Thanks for the advice everyone. I'll try to remember to take pictures of Mr. Parker after the holiday. But he is a tuxedo or Billet cat. I take him to the vet Monday to be weighed but until then I'm going to start the wet food slowly.
Last night my daughter and I tried playing with him, rubbing him and opening the window for him. He wasn't interested. He kept jumping and running from us back to his bowl. He even started putting his paw under the lower cabinets and slamming it back and forth because he knows I keep his food in one of the higher cabinets. Smart cat!
I guess I'm out of the loop here but I've raised eleven cats in my lifetime, all on dry food, and all lived to be in their elderly teens with no outstanding health problems. The two I own now turn up their noses at anything other than their dry food. An added bonus, besides affordability, is that it keeps their teeth clean.
They are both eight years old and my orange tabby has become overweight. She's the first overweight cat I've ever had. The options the vet offered were insanely expensive so we switched to using the same brand as we always have only using the cat food for senior cats.
We started by mixing half-and-half. Both cats made the transition very easily and Ms. Chubby is gradually losing weight whereas so far it doesn't seem to have affected the other cat. If she should start to lose weight then we will have to devise supplementary eating for her. But they've always shared a double bowl so it was difficult to make a change for one and not the other.
This would be true only if you also state you clean your teeth by eating crackers and chips. Do you clean your teeth with crackers and chips?
Cats are obligate carnivores, meaning they must eat meat. Most "affordable" dry food is nothing but garbage...grains, fins, and feathers, none of which is meat.
If I'd ever had a cat die young I may sit up and listen but I have had healthy, long-lived cats for almost seven decades and all of them have been fed with food from the same company. So it's difficult to convince me that there has been anything harmful in what they've been eating.
I've watched friends pay enormous vet bills from all kinds of cat ailments and we've never once experienced anything more serious than having to use eye or ear drops, the usual vaccinations, occasional parasite prevention or cure and a few wound treatments.
I think it's a function of today's buying public, with all the over-marketing they've absorbed, to believe they need "special" products. Companies hire marketing psychiatrists to team with their own paid scientists to produce convincing arguments which they then repeatedly feed to the consumers. And it makes people feel good to think they're providing little Fuzzball with the very best of the best.
Given the success I've had with my dear cats I simply can't see any logical reason to change what works.
Cats don't need "special" food, they need food sourced from meat, it's a simple as that. You don't tell us what you've fed your cats but if it was a dry diet, you need to understand that while your cats survived, they could have done so much more than that, so much more.
My poor cats just barely survived, but your cats "have done so much more that that, so much more?"
We're playing some kind of game right? It sounds like a version of, "I'm a good mother and you're not." I remember those days. Every mom on the block fighting to prove that she knew the only right way to raise a child.
I don't know whether to laugh or to "Tsk, tsk" you for your absurdity.
I'll do both. Tsk! Tsk!
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Tsk!
