Wet V Dry food?

[sarah5]

What do you all feed your cats and kittens? I assumed you wouldn't be able to get dry kitten food but just noticed it in Pets At Home and so wondered what everyone else feeds their kitties.

I used to give my 8 year old (fat) cat just dry Iams, but now the kitten is here and having wet food, I have given him the treat of wet food hopefully temporarily as they seem to get so much more excited about wet "real" food.

Also wet food seems far more expensive than dry - is this your opinion too?

[Jess751]

I feed both wet and dry to my adult cats. They get one can a day sometimes two if Imin a mood to really spoiled them. My kittens are getting a little dry food but mostly just wet food for now.

Too much wet food can cause bad teeth. The soft food just sticks to their teeth and cause tooth decay. The dry food makes them crunch something crunchy and help remove food from the teeth. Its best to either feed just dry or a mixture of wet and dry.

[mable1718]

i feed our cats dry food because wet food made them to be sick and also like jess said it can lead to bad teeth

[Jane]

Patch has a bowl of dry food down at all times then has a few meals throughout the day of wet mixed with dry

[dandysmom]

I have always fed wet, with dry only as an occasional snack. My vet years ago advised against dry food when my Siamese boy had an attack of cystitis; also Leia had one spell of cystitis last year and I attributed it to too much dry snacks (she can be very persuasive when she wants a snack and I think I overdid it!) Also, I remember recently reading that dry food isn't all that effective at cleaning teeth: will see if I can locate the info on Google and post a link.

[MrsH]

Ours were originally given wet food at set times along with dry food that was available all day. After a while they started to ignore the wet food, even at breakfast when they must have been quite hungry.

We tried looking at other, ever more expensive wet foods to try to tempt them, but they weren't interested., so now they only have dry. Apart from the "stickiness" of wet food which others have mentioned, they mostly seem to have sugar added in one form or another, which further adds to tooth problems. I don't know why it seems necessary to add sugar to a cat's diet!

[dandysmom]

Here's a link to an article about dry food and cats teeth...interestIng...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_food#Dry_food

[MrsH]

Very interesting link Dandysmom. I wonder, does anyone on here clean their cat's teeth?

[dandysmom]

I don't know about anyone else, but I wouldn't dare!!! I cannot even pill a cat... :-D

[Jess751]

Good Article. I personally feel that their are always ifs and whats and this is better over that with pet foods and things that were safe before (or better) now are not. I feel that if your pet is doing geat on what they are eating then leave them to it. If not trying to find an alternative is a great thing and everything should be taken into concideration then.

[Fran]

I feed both wet and dry to my kittens and my adults I also feed some raw too. They have biscuits to graze on at all times and are fed a wet/raw meal twice a day for the adults, moreso for the kittens.

Eileen, I'll take a look at that link later, when I get a minute. Thank you for posting it up.

[Mags]

Cassie has wet food with just a few 'biscuits' in the evening. My vet advised me not to give a completely dry food diet. When you think though, if they were out in the wild they wouldn't get any dry food at all!

I have used toothpaste from the vet on my previous cat ...... you just squeeze about half an inch on their paw and they lick it off - somehow that works on their teeth!

[alexgirl73]

My two boys are on special vet food to prevent crystals forming. it's a dry biscuit which they have mixed with half a pouch of wet food each day. They get half of their alloted allowance in the morning and the other in the evening. Befor Broxi took ill they had dry down all day and halfa tin of felix between them. Teddie is on wet only as she has so far not been able to tolerate dry food of any kind, hopefully in the next few months or so I will try and see how she does with a little added to her food at a time.