Info Dry Food - PLEASE consider more than just carbohydrate content

Lisa dvm

Lisa dvm

Active Member
You old timers know that I used to frequently post the link to Opie's story and I am very grateful to all of you who have picked up the baton and continue to remind newbies that diet is NOT just about carbohydrates but it is also about WATER.

Opie's story - suffering from a urethral obstruction

Yes, I truly am shouting.

I can't think of anything else that causes me as much emotional pain as seeing a cat suffering/dying from a urethral obstruction which in probably well over 95% of all cases is caused by humans and their love affair with dry food.

It pains me to read about Young Again Zero Carb or any other low-carb DRY food that come about when people get so focused on only the carb content of the food........and they neglect to keep in mind that a cat's urinary tract is much healthier when there is plenty of water flowing through it.

A cat on wet food consumes double the amount of water compared to a cat on dry food when all sources (food + water bowl) are considered. More water in => more water running through the kidneys and bladder to flush out debris (crystals, mucus, blood, protein, white blood cells, etc.) that could potentially lead to an obstructed urethra.

Feeding a low carb dry food as a treat is no big deal. What I am talking about is when people think that ANY dry food is a healthy substitute for a water-rich diet of either canned or homemade.

I would be beyond wealthy if I had a dime for every time someone said "but my cat won't eat canned food" or...."but my cat loves his crunchies!" (Oh how I hate that word "crunchies" to describe a food format that often causes such tremendous suffering.)

Or...."but my cat drinks a lot of water" which neglects to recognize a cat's inherent low thirst drive and the fact that they do consume more water when on a wet diet.

And, no doubt, some people will throw rocks at me but I will also say that in so many cases (but not all....), the human has simply not tried hard enough...they have not implemented enough tricks or the right ones....and have given up far too quickly.

Believe me, I know that there are some die-hard dry food addicts on this planet having dealt with my own cats (7 back in 2002 when I started the transition) + some stubborn foster cats which were all awful dry food addicts that did not even recognized wet food as food. It was a nightmare to get them all switched but all I had to do was think about the screams in agony of a cat with a blocked urethra and that was all I needed to stay the course.

Please see Tips for Transitioning Dry Food Addicts to Canned Food

I want to make it clear that I am not unsympathetic to the stress that a diabetic cat caregiver goes through.....which is seriously compounded when faced with a dry food addict. Quite frankly, you all amaze me with your dedication when so many people simply euthanize their cats when hearing the diagnosis of "diabetes."

However, I also hate to see a cat caregiver add more problems to their cat's 'plate' by contributing to urinary tract problems due to being fed a water-depleted diet.

Opie's obstruction: His medical costs came to $4,350. Ouch. Urethral obstructions are not cheap ($2K is not uncommon) and, again, they cause a tremendous amount of suffering.

Other urinary tract problems are also expensive. It can cost ~$200 just to run a culture and sensitivity to prove that an infection actually exists for supposed "UTIs" which is an acronym that should never be used. People should state "UT INFECTION" (as proved by a culture & sensitivity) or UT INFLAMMATION" but never just "UTI" which simply leads to antibiotic abuse.

See Urinary Tract Diseases for more information.

I often hear people using the excuse that they are gone for 12 hours at a time as a reason for leaving dry food out. Canned food can be left out for 12 hours at a time. See my post below that discusses leaving out a good portion of the 12 hour needs in a frozen chunk to prolong freshness. I also do this every night in my house when I go to bed. 25% of their overnight needs are left out at room temperature or cold out of the refrigerator and 75% is left out as a frozen chunk.

Again, I want to thank all of you wet-food proponents for keeping at this mission to remind people that the water content of the diet is truly a critical component to feeding cats. I don't think you realize how much your help in this area is preventing further suffering of cats by keeping them from ending up with ruptured bladders.
 
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If I switch to an all wet food diet (which I am not opposed to at all, and my cat is a very non-discriminant eater so no problems there) can I just leave it out all day? My worry is that he'll just eat it all as fast as he can (he does that now, but I limit his wet food to about a can and a half a day) and then starve the rest of the day. How do I safely feed him to be sure he has food when he's hungry instead of just when he's a pig?
 
Frank's Mom said:
If I switch to an all wet food diet (which I am not opposed to at all, and my cat is a very non-discriminant eater so no problems there) can I just leave it out all day? My worry is that he'll just eat it all as fast as he can (he does that now, but I limit his wet food to about a can and a half a day) and then starve the rest of the day. How do I safely feed him to be sure he has food when he's hungry instead of just when he's a pig?
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Many of the members on here will use a timed pet feeder so that there is small amounts of food available during the times you are not home. Some of them have a space under the bowl where you can put an ice pack. Others will freeze small portions of food and put it in the feeder and it will still be fresh when the feeder opens.
 
Hi "Frank's Mom,"

First of all, we can't control everything in life....which, being the control freak that I am, I have to remind myself of periodically...

Next, use the frozen food trick. Feed him his usual portion in the morning and then put out another portion that has been frozen. Sure...the frozen part will thaw to a state where he can eat it within a couple of hours, if not sooner, but it will slow him down enough to provide a snack later.

Yes, you can leave canned food out all day. I am in warm So Cal and I routinely left food out for 12 hours at a time for over 550 foster cats and kittens that went through my foster room without a single problem. If it was a 'cold' day here in So Cal...and the food was still there at the 12 hour mark, I would leave it there for several more hours.

Regarding cats that like to overeat - I find that many of them will self-regulate and slow down on their rapid/overeating-in-one-sitting habit once they know that food is available 24/7. In general, I like free-feeding all cats (unless I am working to get a cat to lose weight and then I try to opt for at least 4 meals...or more....per day) including my diabetic patients.

Here is my bottom line: There is always a work-around to prevent a cat from eating a dry food diet.
 
Tux's mom - I know that this has been discussed before but has there been any recent (the past year or so) discussion of which brand of timed feeder works the best? There were some glitches with certain brands when we were having this discussion here on the FDMB a few years ago.

(Thanks for your nice words about my post on this important subject!)
 
Thanks. I've always free fed, but it was dry food. In Jan I started adding in wet food, because I thought he might be prediabetic and my hope was to treat the disease and underlying causes instead of just medicating. I'm still hopeful, as we don't really know what caused him to get sick last weekend. I'll start in home monitoring tomorrow, for a few days, then when I'm comfort able with that, I'll try switching the food altogether while monitoring. Thanks!
 
Also, he's not really an over-eater. Frank weighed about 12.5 pounds at his heaviest and was down to 9.2 on Tuesday at the vet. We'd like him to gain about 2 pounds, so I don't even know how much I need to regulate his eating right now. (He did, however, chew a hole in his new diabetic food bag and free eat all night Thursday...)
 
THANK YOU for this post, Dr. Lisa! As the mom to 3 cats who have had varying urinary issues, I can say that without wet food, I am sure I would have lost at least 1, if not all of them by now. We've had crystals, urinary tract infections (actual ones confirmed by culture and sensitivity) and many bouts of cystitis. While I worry constantly about them, I know at least that they have plenty of water since they eat a wet food ONLY diet and I add water to it...in addition to my water fountain. My girl with cystitis has flare ups fairly frequently, but I can only imagine how much worse it would be if she didn't have wet food...I still can't believe that I used to free feed only dry food!

I leave the food out all day, Frank's mom. My cats go back and forth to it and in the evening, it's usually gone. :)
 
Frank's Mom said:
If I switch to an all wet food diet (which I am not opposed to at all, and my cat is a very non-discriminant eater so no problems there) can I just leave it out all day? My worry is that he'll just eat it all as fast as he can (he does that now, but I limit his wet food to about a can and a half a day) and then starve the rest of the day. How do I safely feed him to be sure he has food when he's hungry instead of just when he's a pig?
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I feed my two cats FF and they get plenty of food and all without a timed feeder. I start the morning with 1/3 can each while I'm getting ready for work. Then as I walk out the door I leave them each with what's left in the can and 1/2 of another can each. They're by themselves about 9 hours , the food doesn't go bad and they've learned to regulate themselves. When I get home I give them each 1/3 can again then as I start getting ready for bed another 1/3 can each and before I go to bed I leave them with 1/2 can each to hold them over through the night. Sometimes they eat it all and mostly they don't. When I go out of town my pet nanny feeds them less. They get 1/3 each when she arrives, then leaves them 1/2 can each when she leaves and then come back about 10 hours later and does the same thing with just two visits per day. Now when I was testing and injecting the only difference was test, feed in the morning, still left food out for the day and after work test, feed still feeding several times and leaving food overnight. Hope that helps you...
 
Thanks for the reminder, Dr. Lisa. Because of your link about Opie which I read long ago, and other information I have learned on this forum, whenever I hear of a cat that is fed dry food, whether family, friend, stranger, co-worker, or neighbor, I always tell them about the dangers of feeding dry food. We'll keep spreading the news.
 
Thank you for continuing to make the wet food message clear Dr. Lisa. :) And for the updated food list. I only wish I'd known about it earlier - I am 100% sure that the vet-prescribed dry food that I gave my cats for years and years was a big contributing factor in the health conditions that my Rosa developed which ultimately led to her untimely demise. Now I know better, I recommend your site to everyone.

@Frank's Mom I switched from free-feeding dry food to free-feeding wet food for our cats. I do keep a small bowl of Young Again out for them too, but they only ever take a couple of pieces at a time...one small bowl will last 3 cats a week or more (and was doing the same for 4 cats), so I think they only take a bite of it for something different from time to time. When we adopted Roxi, she was being meal-fed and would swallow an entire can of food in 5 minutes...and then go looking for more. Since switching her over to the same free-feeding schedule that the other cats are on, she has learned that the food will always be there so she doesn't have to eat it all at once. Her eating has actually stabilized much more on a free-feeding schedule. As the others have mentioned, I don't use a timed feeder at all. I add a lot of water to the food, so it's kind of like a thick soup, to stop it drying out. And then it goes out and stays out for 12 hours...sometimes a bit more (we're in the not-so-warm Pacific NorthWest). If we're going to be out beyond feeding time, then I'll freeze a couple of bowls of food as well with the water already added and put those out just before we leave. It might thaw a little early (and one of ours will actually occasionally try to eat it still frozen), but it means they don't go hungry until we get home. In all honesty, there have been a couple of occasions where one of the bowls has been pushed under the kitchen table by one of the cats and I haven't noticed it when I'm picking up the empty bowls. I've caught all of the cats eating out of that bowl a couple of days later...so the food has been out for a long time at that point. And none of them has ever suffered any ill-effects even from doing that, which leads me to believe that the food is actually pretty stable at room temperature for a fairly long time. Food that's been out for that long isn't something I would encourage, for obvious reasons, but the thinking that any leftovers should be taken away after 30 minutes does appear to be a little unnecessary.
 
Lisa dvm said:
Thank you. I don't use a timed feeder either. I just leave food out for free-feeding. I put out frozen food before I leave the house and also before I go to bed at night.
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Is this raw food you are leaving out frozen, Dr. Lisa? I am feeding all raw and don't leave it out. Our cats are on timed feedings.

It would be nice sometimes to be able to leave it out.

Thank you for a great post!
 
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Lisa, My Ricky refused to ever eat canned food starting at the age of 6 weeks. He has an extreme aversion to it. There's nothing I can do now that's a 14 year old on insulin. I'm not going to give him insulin and then let him go days without eating because he refuses wet food. He'd pass out before ever eating the wet food.

All this might make you mad but it's real life. I don't have a love affair with dry food. This is just how things are. We all do the best we can with what we have on our plate.

Pam
 
WRT timed feeders. I used the Petsafe5 for several years for my acro. I fed him every 4 hours 24 hours a day. He would be waiting at the 4-hourmark for the feeder to turn. I never had a problem with this feeder.

I am currently cat-sitting a 'regular' diabetic and she uses a 2 compartment timed feeder. I put down a meal and then set the timers for 4 and 7 hours. The only problem is that the timers are not terribly accurate - ie within about + or - 30 minutes.
 
And yes, lovely to see you Dr. Lisa. I have sent many people to your page and just found your updated food chart. Thank you.
 
Thank you for the updates, Dr. Lisa - your site's information has been essential in helping us educate new members about food and general cat health questions.

For feeding wet food when you're not home: I used the PetSafe 5 Compartment auto feeder with Punkin for several years. In online reviews people complained that it sometimes doesn't open fully. We found that if you have the food tray fully seated into the base unit, it always opened correctly. It's something that can be double-checked easily each time you put the food tray into the base unit. We only put canned low carb food in it.

One more trick to keep the food fresh is to put an ice cube in each compartment.

Just fyi, PetSafe now makes a self-cleaning litter box based upon the same rotating base concept. Great for someone with many cats, or for someone with physical limitations that might make it difficult to clean the litter box as often as it needs. We've had good success with them.
 
Max was a dry food junkie when he had a blockage and either a vet pierced his bladder unblocking him or it happened on its own which I doubt. That led to surgery and a week of ER recovery and I nearly lost him. Even then my vets had me feed Hills CD and didn't care if wet or dry. Luckily he never blocked again. Many years later when pancreatitis hit at the age of 12, I was told to switch to any canned food. Wanting to feed lower phosphorus I didn't know to watch carbs and his Ideal Balance , fancy feast sliced, and Soulistic pouches were very high carb. That led to diabetes. I tell my story to agree with Dr. Lisa. My fosters are eating canned low carb and I'm starting to add gently cooked chicken thighs until I figure out what to feed permanently when they become mine after they get spayed.

Great reminder!
 
DreMeister said:
My vet gives us the Purina DM dry stuff for Snickers. So is this any good for her or not?
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Their own website lists it at 18% carbs, and it's recommended that diabetic cats have a diet under 10% carbs. Some cats are even more carb sensitive than that.
https://www.proplanveterinarydiets.com/products/dm-dietetic-management-cat/

Also, it's dry food which has a strong correlation to UTIs and other health issues since cats aren't good at getting the hydration they need when on a dry food diet.
 
Interesting thread reading how you all handle wet food only. I've fed my 4 cats dry and canned for 14 years. 2 of those 4 picked at the dry, one (now diagnosed diabetic) was a dry food junkie. When I learned dry food was very bad, I stopped it cold turkey, took it away.

Their routine for years was dry food 24/7 and I would divide 1 can in the morning 4 ways and 1 can divided 4 ways in the evening.

Now, I don't know how much to feed them at all. How much canned food does a cat need daily? The diabetic cat looked overweight at 14 lbs, but now looks underweight at 9 lbs, it's why I took him to the vet. I have one other cat on the heavy side and 2 that look skinny but healthy & they both beg non-stop. I could feed them 10 cans a day and they'd still beg.

So, I am hoping someone can answer this, because there is no answer anywhere online. How many canned ounces per day per cat should I be feeding?
 
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Cat mom said:
So what's a reasonable amount of canned food per cat, or better yet, how many ounces a day?
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There's no "one size fits all" answer

The general rule is to start with [weight in lbs x 13.5] + 70 calories per day and then weigh once a week....if they need to gain, add more food and if they need to lose, feed less.

There's a lot of calorie counts for quite a few types of food on this food list ....or you can call the manufacturer and they should be able to tell you (if it's not on the label or company website)
 
Djamila said:
Their own website lists it at 18% carbs, and it's recommended that diabetic cats have a diet under 10% carbs. Some cats are even more carb sensitive than that.
https://www.proplanveterinarydiets.com/products/dm-dietetic-management-cat/

Also, it's dry food which has a strong correlation to UTIs and other health issues since cats aren't good at getting the hydration they need when on a dry food diet.
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For whatever reason our kitty has been eating more of the dry DM than the wet. She may be getting tired of it. We were feeding Friskies pates but she was dropping very powerful poop bombs that stunk up the house so we cut the Friskies out.
 
DreMeister said:
For whatever reason our kitty has been eating more of the dry DM than the wet. She may be getting tired of it. We were feeding Friskies pates but she was dropping very powerful poop bombs that stunk up the house so we cut the Friskies out.
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Dr elsley's has come out with a 5% carb dry food that looks interesting. It's less expensive than young again zero and Evo.... Although I'm definitely sticking to ya because my cat likes it and it's 1%.... But an inexpensive dry at 5% carb may be worth looking into over the high carb dm food.
 
JanetNJ said:
Dr elsley's has come out with a 5% carb dry food that looks interesting. It's less expensive than young again zero and Evo.... Although I'm definitely sticking to ya because my cat likes it and it's 1%.... But an inexpensive dry at 5% carb may be worth looking into over the high carb dm food.
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Where can I buy this at?
 
I love the article - however - I have no love affair with dry food -
It is that wet food is not affordable for the many cats in my care.
I would love to be able to feed all of them wet food only. I have had quite a many of them die due to urinary blockage. For me to use wet food only just is not possible. There are 50 cats in my care. I do have quite a few of them on wet food only, due to health issues. I wish I could afford it for all of them, because it would probably cut down on health issues. I already am skipping bills to pay the vet and there is no money left for all of them to have wet food only.
So, this dry food use is so very far from being any love affair.
 
Cherryl said:
I love the article - however - I have no love affair with dry food -
It is that wet food is not affordable for the many cats in my care.
I would love to be able to feed all of them wet food only. I have had quite a many of them die due to urinary blockage. For me to use wet food only just is not possible. There are 50 cats in my care. I do have quite a few of them on wet food only, due to health issues. I wish I could afford it for all of them, because it would probably cut down on health issues. I already am skipping bills to pay the vet and there is no money left for all of them to have wet food only.
So, this dry food use is so very far from being any love affair.
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May I ask what you spend a week in dry food for 50 cats? .. I ask only because Wal Mart's Special Kitty Classic Pate ( less then 10% carbs) comes in 13oz cans, box of 12 cans for less then $8.50 a box so it may be worth looking into as a 12-16 lb bag of dry is $9+ per bag depending on the brand of dry you are buying and where you buy it from.
 
As Dr. Lisa said in her title: Dry Food - Please consider more than just carbohydrate content!!!

JanetNJ said:
Dr elsley's has come out with a 5% carb dry food that looks interesting. It's less expensive than young again zero and Evo.... Although I'm definitely sticking to ya because my cat likes it and it's 1%.... But an inexpensive dry at 5% carb may be worth looking into over the high carb dm food.
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It's STILL dry food! It still must be rehydrated using the body's water that's designed to be used for other purposes. It still take water from the colon, it still causes less liquid available to flush the kidneys. Doesn't matter what the carb count is...it's still dry food. And still isn't good!

Cherryl said:
I wish I could afford it for all of them, because it would probably cut down on health issues.
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Cherryl - if nothing else, mix the dry with water and rehydrate it before feeding. Canned food can also be mixed with it when it softens.

I had a perfect example happen here. Suzy-Q's story from May 2016:

Hard food is BAD for kitties! Really great example of hard food to soft food change has happened here over the last week. We adopted a little abandoned kitty who's been fed only dry food her whole life. When she arrived, I used a Cool Whip bowl for her water. The first couple of days I let her stay with the hard food. She would DAILY drink that bowl of water down to less than an inch left in the bottom. The third day, I began changing her to half hard/half soft. The 6th day, there was no more hard food, just soft. Even tho' the same water bowl is right there, she now doesn't even drink down half an inch!!! She's not getting dehydrated - the dry food is gone! There's no longer a NEED to drink that bowl dry. She pees the same amount, it was taking that much water for her body to rehydrate then digest that nasty dry stuff.
 
Squeaky and KT (GA) said:
As Dr. Lisa said in her title: Dry Food - Please consider more than just carbohydrate content!!!



It's STILL dry food! It still must be rehydrated using the body's water that's designed to be used for other purposes. It still take water from the colon, it still causes less liquid available to flush the kidneys. Doesn't matter what the carb count is...it's still dry food. And still isn't good!



Cherryl - if nothing else, mix the dry with water and rehydrate it before feeding. Canned food can also be mixed with it when it softens.

I had a perfect example happen here. Suzy-Q's story from May 2016:

Hard food is BAD for kitties! Really great example of hard food to soft food change has happened here over the last week. We adopted a little abandoned kitty who's been fed only dry food her whole life. When she arrived, I used a Cool Whip bowl for her water. The first couple of days I let her stay with the hard food. She would DAILY drink that bowl of water down to less than an inch left in the bottom. The third day, I began changing her to half hard/half soft. The 6th day, there was no more hard food, just soft. Even tho' the same water bowl is right there, she now doesn't even drink down half an inch!!! She's not getting dehydrated - the dry food is gone! There's no longer a NEED to drink that bowl dry. She pees the same amount, it was taking that much water for her body to rehydrate then digest that nasty dry stuff.
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I don't serve just dry... I do wet twice a day with extra water added and have two fountains and two water bowls out all the time.
 
Squeaky and KT (GA) said:
As Dr. Lisa said in her title: Dry Food - Please consider more than just carbohydrate content!!!



Cherryl - if nothing else, mix the dry with water and rehydrate it before feeding. Canned food can also be mixed with it when it softens.

I had a perfect example happen here. Suzy-Q's story from May 2016:

Hard food is BAD for kitties! Really great example of hard food to soft food change has happened here over the last week. We adopted a little abandoned kitty who's been fed only dry food her whole life. When she arrived, I used a Cool Whip bowl for her water. The first couple of days I let her stay with the hard food. She would DAILY drink that bowl of water down to less than an inch left in the bottom. The third day, I began changing her to half hard/half soft. The 6th day, there was no more hard food, just soft. Even tho' the same water bowl is right there, she now doesn't even drink down half an inch!!! She's not getting dehydrated - the dry food is gone! There's no longer a NEED to drink that bowl dry. She pees the same amount, it was taking that much water for her body to rehydrate then digest that nasty dry stuff.
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I add canned food, to the dry, once a week, but it is NOT affordable. It is when someone donates it. I spend up to $2000 a month, caring for 53 animals. There is no money for more canned food. And I will not waste money to feed dry, add water, most dont like it and will not eat it, as I have done it in past, and the food sours and is trashed. I wont bother to try to explain just what is entailed when being fully responsible for 50 cats and three dogs on the income that goes with this house. I will simply say, 30k in debt and counting, all on animals, and the worry of how to keep up the roof over our heads. The End :)
 
Cherryl said:
I add canned food, to the dry, once a week, but it is NOT affordable. It is when someone donates it. I spend up to $2000 a month, caring for 53 animals. There is no money for more canned food. And I will not waste money to feed dry, add water, most dont like it and will not eat it, as I have done it in past, and the food sours and is trashed. I wont bother to try to explain just what is entailed when being fully responsible for 50 cats and three dogs on the income that goes with this house. I will simply say, 30k in debt and counting, all on animals, and the worry of how to keep up the roof over our heads. The End :)
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can you become a 501c non profit and get donations?
 
JanetNJ said:
can you become a 501c non profit and get donations?
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No, I cannot become a 501c3. It would take thousands of dollars to get set up in the way the code is for our county, plus the money to become a 501c3, plus having the people that the 501c3 requires that you have on a board, which I have no one to even consider for such a thing. However, I have been getting very little donations since 2014. Just because one would become a 501c3, does not mean the donations will start pouring in hahaha It is like pulling teeth, just to get people to share your need, and pulling what, I have no idea, because even harder to get them to donate. Some get it, some dont. From my observation, you have to be part of the main 'clique' to get any help with sharing the need and larger donations. I am not of a 'clique' and will never be.
 
Lisa dvm said:
You old timers know that I used to frequently post the link to Opie's story and I am very grateful to all of you who have picked up the baton and continue to remind newbies that diet is NOT just about carbohydrates but it is also about WATER.

Opie's story - suffering from a urethral obstruction

Yes, I truly am shouting.

I can't think of anything else that causes me as much emotional pain as seeing a cat suffering/dying from a urethral obstruction which in probably well over 95% of all cases is caused by humans and their love affair with dry food.

It pains me to read about Young Again Zero Carb or any other low-carb DRY food that come about when people get so focused on only the carb content of the food........and they neglect to keep in mind that a cat's urinary tract is much healthier when there is plenty of water flowing through it.

A cat on wet food consumes double the amount of water compared to a cat on dry food when all sources (food + water bowl) are considered. More water in => more water running through the kidneys and bladder to keep debris (crystals, mucus, blood, protein, white blood cells, etc.) that could potentially lead to an obstructed urethra.

Feeding a low carb dry food as a treat is no big deal. What I am talking about is when people think that ANY dry food is a healthy substitute for a water-rich diet of either canned or homemade.

I would be beyond wealthy if I had a dime for every time someone said "but my cat won't eat canned food" or...."but my cat loves his crunchies!" (Oh how I hate that word "crunchies" to describe a food format that often causes such tremendous suffering.)

Or...."but my cat drinks a lot of water" which neglects to recognize a cat's inherent low thirst drive and the fact that they do consume more water when on a wet diet.

And, no doubt, some people will throw rocks at me but I will also say that in so many cases (but not all....), the human just has not tried hard enough...they have not implemented enough tricks or the right ones....and have given up far too quickly.

Believe me, I know that there are some die-hard dry food addicts on this planet having dealt with my own cats (7 back in 2002 when I started the transition) + some stubborn foster cats which were all awful dry food addicts that did not even recognized wet food as food. It was a nightmare to get them all switched but all I had to do was think about the screams in agony of a cat with a blocked urethra and that was all I needed to stay the course.

Please see Tips for Transitioning Dry Food Addicts to Canned Food

I want to make it clear that I am not unsympathetic to the stress that a diabetic cat caregiver goes through.....which is seriously compounded when faced with a dry food addict. Quite frankly, you all amaze me with your dedication when so many people simply euthanize their cats when hearing the diagnosis of "diabetes."

However, I also hate to see a cat caregiver add more problems to their cat's 'plate' by contributing to urinary tract problems due to being fed a water-depleted diet.

Opie's obstruction: His medical costs came to $4,350. Ouch. Urethral obstructions are not cheap $2K is not uncommon) and, again, they cause a tremendous amount of suffering.

Other urinary tract problems are also expensive. It can cost ~$200 just to run a culture and sensitivity to prove that an infection actually exists for supposed "UTIs" which is an acronym that should never be used. People should state "UT INFECTION" (as proved by a culture & sensitivity) or UT INFLAMMATION" but never just "UTI" which simply leads to antibiotic abuse.

See Urinary Tract Diseases for more information.

Again, I want to thank all of you wet-food proponents for keeping at this mission to remind people that the water content of the diet is truly a critical component to feeding cats. I don't think you realize how much your help in this area is preventing further suffering of cats by keeping them from ending up with ruptured bladders.
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Thank you for updates so timely for me! Diagnosed Oct '17, 12 yr old Mabel went into remission week of Easter cat_wings>o after an initial liver toxicity close call w glipizide, a trial of prozinc, a Lantus pen (it stung!), and finally Levemir. I'd given her subcu fluids as needed, founded both better dispensing needles & syringes, and gone thru many types of food. I found zero mature young again but to this day give lo carb wet food to keep her hydrated. I also give a little Origin kibble as treats. I am hesitating to reorder YA dry after a scare w a moldy bag awhile back. They replaced it NC w the new "flavor" pork only selenium only no tomato pomace but she eats too much of it on the free feed so I'm restrictin amount now. I've turned to FDMB again for info and the experience of so many & thanks, I'll be reading this and adapting. Mabel does remain in remission but not energetic.
 
Our kitty won't hardly touch the soft food anymore. She mainly eats the DM from the vet at 40 bux a bag. We give her Friskies and Nine Lives lo carb, but she barely touches it and somehow is gaining weight.
 
Thank you for this information. My cat actually quit eating his dry food and only wants wet. We are 4 days post diagnosis and he is not happy being on a 2 feeding schedule(he was a grazer). The vet said I could give him 1/4 c. per day "snack" of dry food if he wanted it(and I'm looking into a timed feeder to release it while I'm at work) Otherwise to keep him on wet(we use Fancy Feast) I am now looking into lower carb/high protein senior(he's 11) dry food. Chewy has a nice selection and we are going to try Nutro Wild Frontier. They sell a small bag, so no big worries if it's a bomb.
 
You can put wet in a timed feeder too. Many of us either do that, or leave canned food out for times we're not going to be around. You can even freeze the wet food with some water added if you want to be certain it's completely fresh when it's time for him to eat.
 
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