Is wet food necessary for the spoiled little bastard?
First off: IANAV My lay understanding of the whole wet/dry cat food issue comes down to this: all else being equal, wet is preferred to dry because cats evolved to thrive in arid climates, are used to getting MOST of their necessary water from the food they eat… they’re not really plumbed for digesting dry food, and a bowl of water doesn’t really replace the lubrication that wet food provides. There’s plenty more to say on this… but there’re my two-cents. Now, if you’re really interested in reading more about cat food, you should check-out the Feline Nutrition tribe over at TRIBE.net. The moderator certainly seems to have done her homework, and if you can get past her zeal, is a great resource — if only for a second, well-educated lay opinion. Good luck!
FWIW, my vet told me years ago to eliminate all wet food from my cats’ diet (too much ash). He recommended Hills Science Diet, which I’ve been using ever since. My cats are now 13 years old. Whenever I make tuna salad (maybe twice a month), I let them have the water from the can. That’s as close to wet food as they get. A real plus for me is that their litter box is easy to clean – their shit never smells bad, and is always pretty hard – even if they have an “accident” their shit never stains anything – it’s too solid.
With my cat I stick to the dry food, and only the stuff that is found in cat food stores. I have read that the stuff you find in ordinary grocery stores is subpar in terms of nutrition and/or source material (i.e. “made from 100% rat anuses that fell through the cracks in the slaughterhouse floor.”) In the past whenever I gave her the wet stuff she developed bad breath or loose stools, or both. To me the Fancy Feast-type stuff always seemed like the McDonalds equivalent for pets — perhaps tasty, but not the most healthy or nutritious thing going. If you were a human whose diet consisted entirely of McD’s and Burger King you would most likely be overweight and not in great health, although I’m sure there are people that pull it off. Likewise, the only times in the past where I have had a weight problem with my cat is when I was feeding her the grocery store stuff, which turned her into a fat little tubcat. This might be related to the fact that she’s an older cat and stays indoors, so
Vets do not spend much time in vet school learning about nutrition. Unless your vet is really into nutrition, take what they advise with a grain of salt. Case in point: the most recent evidence shows that dry food has next to no effect on tartar, and in fact is thought to be worse than wet food (think about how much of a dry cracker sticks to your teeth, rather than, say, oatmeal) – there was never any actual evidence that it DID help with tartar, as far as I know. As far as I’m concerned, the primary issue is quality. High-quality canned food (not Iams, not Science Diet) has many benefits: it has lots of meat and little or no grain (cats are obligate carnivores, therefore more meat is always preferable, cats do not need to eat any grain, and all dry foods contain grain to some extent, except for Innova EVO and comparable diets), it generally has no preservatives, and it increases the amount of water the cat takes in (which is always beneficial). I think cats are better off with at lea
