equine99 said:
Since shortly after snowflake's diagnosis, I switched both of my cats from only free grazing on dry food to free grazing on wet food, and feeding my non-diabetic cat midnight, as much dry food as she will eat while I stand over her in the mornings and evenings (she's incredibly healthy, a super picky eater, and I still like the teeth cleaning properties of dry)--maybe it totals 1/4 cup/day total? I won't feed them if there's still food in their dish, and it usually ends up that they go through about one 5.5oz can per day. They're both small cats--about 7 pounds each--and they're indoor only and sleep a lot. I don't know how much they ate before because I just let them graze and eat as much as they wanted because they did a great job of maintaining their weight on their own, but the cans all say one can per 8lb of cat, and so it seems they're eating about half of what they should. Should I be concerned? is this very unusual or sort of normal?
Thanks for your input in advance!
-Kathryn
Hi Kathryn,
I just wanted to give you a good site for info about food and in particular, the myth that dry food is good for the teeth.
http://catinfo.org/
Here's a bit of the info for you:
Dental Disease: Long-standing claims that cats have less dental disease when they are fed dry food versus canned food are grossly overrated, inaccurate, and are not supported by recent studies. This frequently stated (among veterinarians and lay people) myth continues to harm cats by perpetuating the idea that their food bowls need to be filled up with an unhealthy diet in order to keep their teeth clean.
The idea that dry food promotes dental health makes about as much sense as the idea that crunchy cookies would promote dental health in a human.
First, dry food is hard, but brittle, and merely shatters with little to no abrasive effect on the teeth. Second, a cat's jaws and teeth are designed for shearing and tearing meat - not biting down on dry kibble. Third, many cats swallow the majority of their dry food whole.
There are many factors – known and unknown - that contribute to dental disease in the cat such as genetics, viruses, diet, and the fact that cats do not brush their teeth like humans do. There remain many unanswered questions concerning the fact that cats often suffer from poor dental health but one very obvious answer lies in the fact that Man feeds the cat a diet that does not even come close to what they would eat in their natural state.
When cats consume their prey in the wild, they are tearing at flesh, hide, bones, tendons, and ligaments. This is a far cry from the consistency of dry or canned food.
Neither dry kibble nor canned food comes close to mimicking a cat’s normal diet of mice, birds, rabbits, etc. Given what a cat does eat in nature, it makes much more sense to be feeding part of the diet in the form of large chunks of meat (as large as you can get your cat to chew on) or gizzards (tough and fibrous) which a cat’s teeth are designed to chew. Raw meat is ‘tougher’ to chew than cooked meat so I prefer to use raw – or parboiled - meat to promote dental health. See Making Cat Food - Dental Health.
Notice the phrase “part of the diet” in the above sentence. It is very important to understand that plain meat (ie - without bones or another source of calcium) is very unbalanced since there is minimal calcium in meat. Remember that when a cat eats his normal prey, he is consuming the bones along with the meat.
She probably likes the non fishy foods better, which is why you have the wolfing/barfing problem with them. Bandit does the same thing!