Hello there,
Firstly if you can try to get her off the dry - she will love it - but we like cake but don't eat it all the time! It's full of completely unnecessary carbs that are there to bulk the food out and make it cheaper for the manufacturers to produce. Add to that that cats find it incredibly hard to metabolise you end up paying for them to poop it out. The additives and sugars that are in dry are a contributory factor to feline obesity.
Also dry is incredibly dehydrating for cats as cats have evolved to get 99% of their fluids from their prey and so have no natural thirst drive. For each 50g of dry they eat they need about 1/2 pint of water to counteract the dehydrating effects. Even with a water fountain most cats find this a hard amount of water to drink.
Dehydration can lead to kidney problems, UTIs and crystals forming in the bladder. This is especially bad for neutered boys (no idea why neutered) but boys because they have a longer urethral tract and often the crystals get stuck in their willy when they try to pass them and it is incredibly painful. Obviously not all cats will get this - but you have to weigh up the risks and decide to do what is best for you.
The worst wet is better than the best dry. Yes even Whiskas and Felix!
For wet the higher the meat percentage the better. I like to feed anything above 60% but tend to go for 97% or more, watch out for the offal content though.
I personally feed a mixture of raw, Bozita, Aminonda Carny (was feeding Smilla but it's just changed and I won't be buying it again), and Grau, I have fed Natures Menu and Hi-life in the past, and probably will again to replace the Smilla. Other good ones are Petnatur, Tiger etc. These foods are found either at
Pet Supplies, Pet Food, Dog Food, Cat Food and Pet Accessories at Zooplus or other german suppliers. Other have ordered from the other suppliers but I haven't had the courage yet. Nature's Menu can be found at
[email protected] as can Hi-life.
If you really need to feed dry - look at Orijen, Applaws, and Acana - these are grain free.
As with all good food they may seem more expensive (wet and dry) to begin with, but you feed less and they poop less, AND it's a lot less smelly.
SOme reading for you
Page Cannot Be Found
Does Dry Food Clean the Teeth? | Little Big Cat
Feeding Your Cat: Know the Basics of Feline Nutrition :: healthy cat diet, making cat food, litter box, cat food, cat nutrition, cat urinary tract health
cat nutrition - blog
Feline Urinary Tract Health: Cystitis, Urethral Obstruction, Urinary Tract Infection by Lisa A. Pierson, DVM :: cat urinary tract health
Kidney Failure in Cats Symptoms and Treatment
I suppose it's all about risk.
Many people will quote the old lady down the road who smoked like a chimney, drank a quart of scotch a day, never exercised in her life and lived to be a 100. But they omit to tell you about the 50 others that fell by the wayside along the way. Many people do really well with their cats on 'rubbish' foods.
It's a very difficult and potentially contentious subject - pet foods have taken off in the last 25 years - the market is now HUGE and not enough adequate research has been done into the health effects and benefit of all these foods. The research that has been done is rarely independent and never long term. When we had my first cats they ate what was there, there were no dry foods, they hunted to supplement their diet (in fact that's what most cats were kept for - vermin control), there were no kittens or breed specific foods and yet most did well. Obesity and diabetes and kidney failure were rare. And yet all of those are on the rise in our feline population - as it is in humans.
And what is the contributing factor, what has changed for both us and cats? - DIET.
Cats can't digest grains/ carbs - but the makers of Felix and the like use a lot of grains/ cellulose fillers etc in their foods as it is actually cheaper than meat. So the cats struggle to digest it, what they do digest interferes with their biological systems and sometimes causes them to put on weight (as that is the bodies way of dealing with excess carbs), this then interferes with insulin production etc and you end up with diabetic cats (not all, just some). This is why cat poop on that diet stinks - they are getting rid of noxious waste. You pay for them to poop most of the Felix type food back out again and because the body doesn't like it it struggles to process it making it smelly in the process. Cats fed raw have almost odorless poops. Add in the fact that dry is a (imho) major contributing factor in UTIs, crystal forming, and kidney disease and you begin to see a bigger picture.
It's all about risk and minimising it. You can feed supermarket foods (and some are better than others) and your cat could live to be in its 20s, of that there is no doubting - but what if your cat is one of the other 50 that won't get to twenty and is more prone to weight gain, chronic kidney failure etc. You weigh up the risks and how to minimise them, you do your research, and then you make an informed choice. And if after all that you still want to feed Felix etc then do so.
