Feeding Your Cat: Wet Food Verses Dry Food

As the owner of a feline companion, pet care is important to you.  Unfortunately, we are given tons of different advice from multiple sources as our pet grows up, and much of the pet care advice conflicts with what we have already been told.  One of the biggest areas in pet care where this happens is in the debate over wet cat food versus dry cat food.  

When you want to know that you are feeding your cat properly, you have to know what his or her needs are.  Proper pet care is more about ensuring that your particular animal is well fed, rather than following the advice of a website or recommendation, which may be biased. 

Still, there is certainly much to say for wet cat food.  A cat is a natural carnivore.  They need meat in order to survive, and in the wild, a cat is not going to eat plants unless it is literally starving.  Wet food is certainly the closest thing a cat has to its natural diet.  The downside is that it is messy and cannot simply be left out all day for a cat to graze on. It can also attract flies and other pests, making it a questionable choice for cats kept in small apartments without adequate ventilation.

With wet cat food, your cat is likely to experience fewer dental problems.  This is certainly a benefit for those providing pet care.  Unfortunately, dry food is often packed with unnecessary carbs and with filler ingredients that are not helpful to your pet.  All those pet-food ads that advertise their product as being ‘packed with healthy grains’ are fooling you… the kibble certainly contains grains, which are very healthy for humans… but your cat can’t digest grains, so grains such as rice, corn, maize etc are not healthy for your cat and may even have a negative effect on your pet’s health.  Not many people do enough research into their cat’s digestive system to realize this!  

Some people also find that their formerly-slim cats put on a great deal of weight when fed a dry-food diet.  This is because kibble or biscuit does not fill your cat up or satisfy them in the way meat does, so he or she will have to eat more than they need to feel full.  Dry food can also lead to kidney problems and dehydration, as cats don’t naturally drink a lot of water as their natural diet of 100% meat is so high in water content.

If you must feed your cat dry food only, always make sure you cat has access to a big bowl of fresh water.  When it comes to the dry food and water equation, remember that the key to making sure your cat drinks enough water is keeping the water clean and fresh on a daily basis.  Cats have an incredible sense of smell to protect them from diseased or germy water, and will turn their noses up at ‘old’ or stagnant water that has been sitting out for longer than a day, so get into the habit of changing your cat’s water at the same time you feed them each morning.  This should only take ten seconds to do.  Scrub the bowl with an old brush once a week and your cat will love your forever.

How do you know if you are not changing your cat’s water often enough? Well, if your cat is drinking out of the toilet that is a big hint from your cat that his bowl of water is old and tastes bad! You can also buy gravity-based fresh water dispensors from Petco and any other good pet shop if you really don’t have time to change water daily. A device like this will keep your cat’s water fresh for up to a week.

With all of this in mind, however, it is important to realize that balance is the key, and a mix of wet and dry food may be the best diet. True pet care is about finding a diet that is right for your cat, not adjusting your cat to a certain diet that is convenient to you.