wet vs dry (honest opinons please)

This might sound silly. But I do want honest answers. I have had Rven since October 10th. When I first got her I was offering her a lower quality wet food and her high quality dry. The reason why I had the low quality wet was because we had taken in a wanderer for a few days while we looked for her owners (and they were reunited) and that is what I had bought to feed her while she was here.
Anyway, Raven was never interested in the wet junk, she mostly ate her good dry stuff.
This is the silly part. I want her to be used to eating her dry food because when we go on trips which really is NOT often I want to leave out her pet bistro so when we are gone for 3 days I don't have to worry about her food.

BUT I know that wet food is supposed to be better for cats and closer to the food that they would eat in "the wild". Plus better because of the moisture content.

Should I try to reintroduce wet food to her? And can you recomend some good kinds? She is 14 weeks old this week, she is eating Nutro Natural care Indoor Kitten. We have a petco and that is where I buy her current dry food, other than that we have a petstore that only offers royal canin and the local grocery stores, walmart, and target.

Thank you.

Wellness is consider one of, if not the top wet brand for kittens. If it's not available locally, I've used petfooddirect.com with great success to get supplies.

In my experience some cats will just not eat wet (one of mine is not interested, another eats it and throws it right back up)
Wet food does however have benefits and if you can get her to eat it, I would. If you are using wet and dry, I would stick with a higher quality dry than wet as the lower quality dry foods are much worse than lower quality wet foods.

I feed Jack mostly canned food but also a small amount of dry Evo a day. He absolutely loves it, and I feed it for the same reason as you...it gives me the freedom to be gone for a night or two and not have to worry about him. I'm afraid to stop it altogether except for when I'm away because I'd spend my trip worrying that he was starving. As it stands now, I know he'll eat it because he loves and is used to it.

Jack currently eats 1/6 a cup of dry Evo and 1 can of either Evo or Wellness (I rotate the canned food) per day.

She's only 14 weeks old so shouldn't be too set in her ways when it comes to food - I'd definitely try her on some good quality wet food! My 2 hate the cheap stuff (occasionally get it due to waiting for food deliveries!) but will happily tuck in to a whole range of wets with decent meat content!

I feed 2 meals wet and 1 meal dry daily. The way I look at it is that wet is better for them but dry can be convenient, especially if you are going to be gone overnight and need to leave food out for them. I'd feed both, so she's used to the dry for when you have to leave some out for her, and wet for the moisture content.

I honestly think that a lot of cats who are very picky about food simply haven't been exposed to a wide enough variety when young - at that age, her mum would be bringing her lots of different prey to finish off and eat so she learns what she can hunt - so being her mum and introducing different wet foods now while she's learning about what's good to eat is a great idea.

If the convenience is a high priority to you, then don't be embarrassed about feeding a high-quality dry. Your cat will get complete nutrition from a premium dry food. That being said, when compared quality to quality, wet food is superior to dry food from every standpoint except convenience.

For many cats it's difficult to feed both wet and dry. Not only the problem of stomach upset, but also many cats just prefer dry because of the carbohydrates in the dry food create a "carb addiction" and because the outside of the kibble is coated to keep it fresh and make it tastier.

Since I added little Jack to the family (the day before thanksgiving, and he was 6 weeks old) I have been feeding Raven and Jack a wet breakfast every morning. They love it, she meow's for her breakfast every morning (and Jack is always hungry and meowing lol). I totally do not want to give up the dry food, I want them to eat it and be used to it so I will continue to feed it to them. I was thinking though, instead of leaving them to have free access to their dry food, maybe I should make that fed as a meal as well? Or should I add a second meal of wet food (in the evening) and leave the dry out all the time?
For those who feed both how do you do it?

And currently I am feeding them nutro natural choice complete care indoor kitten for their dry food and I feed them wet pouches of whatever is on sale (I like the variety). I have been feeding them meow mix or friskies or whiskas wet pouches.
Because someone said that a low quality dry food is by far worse than a low quality wet food I will continue to feed them the nutro for their dry. I have been trying to research the various kinds of wet and was wondering about fancy feast. Does anyone use it and is it okay? The website is NOT helpful at all and I could not find an ingredient list anywhere.

I feed both. I feed a variety of flavors of wet (a few different brands too). I also feed a mix of 3 kinds of dry right now. I think my cats like the variety (I think they like the texture of both foods). And if they don't like their wet (with 3 cats that happens sometimes) there's a measured amount of dry out to snack on.

Wet is better than dry but I have always done both... all my animals have to this pt have outlived "ave"

yes if you have to do lower quality do it in wet

Originally Posted by mom2raven

I have been trying to research the various kinds of wet and was wondering about fancy feast. Does anyone use it and is it okay? The website is NOT helpful at all and I could not find an ingredient list anywhere.

Click to expand...

Some people on this site call Fancy Feast "Kitty Crack". It's not the best choice.

I had an all dry eater that had to have all of his teeth removed and we had to convert him to wet. I tried virtually every wet food out there and found that his favorites are those that are the better quality foods: Wellness, Pinnacle, and Innova, with Wellness topping all of the others by far.

I free feed mine dry food then give everyone a meal of wet once a day. Its very important for them to look forward to their wet meals because it is so much easier to slip their meds into it than to try to pill them. I always have at least 2 of them on meds every day.

i'm feeding my kittens (6 months, 4 months, 3 months) nutro kitten, not the indoor one, the regular one. i put out what it says for them to eat on the side of the bag for the day and that's all they get. for wet, i'm still trying to find out what they like. max generally does not like the patte kind, he prefers the chunks. he really likes the nutro pouches and so far he's liked the wellness pouches. he will not touch any canned nutro or nutro max, he ate one flavor of nature's variety canned, he wouldn't touch authority brand. i'm trying to keep a list of what he will and will not eat so i know what to buy for him. the girls will eat the patte kind of nutro canned and they also like the nutro pouches, that's all i've given them.

My husband and I travel a lot so we were concerned with an all-wet diet because we wanted to make sure she would be fine eating mostly dry sometimes if we couldn't have someone stopping by twice a day to feed canned.

Now we feed 1/2 and 1/2 and it works great for us - we give half a small can in the morning and half in the evening, and leave a little bit of dry available during the day for her to graze on. Our kitty happily eats both, but maybe we were just lucky! When we have been out of town all day she does act as though she's starving and want canned as soon as we're home, but when we check her bowl we can see that she's eaten enough of the dry to make up for it so she keeps herself fed.

As far as brands of wet, we get the Iams canned chicken or beef. Not the ultra premium stuff but still has a decent ingredient list for wet, and kitty can't seem to get enough of it.

Heres how I do it. I use dry food, left out all day and its the vet/pet store stuff so its 28 bucks for the 30 pound bag. Then at night I get the wet stuff out, I found they like the stuff better from the vet, but they still love the store brand and its not a dollar a can there. That way they get both. With my kitten, he cant eat hard yet so I give him half the can in the morning, the other half at lunch and then a whole can at night. So even if I feed them 2 full cans a soft a day it equals out to only be a dollar a day to feed them both per cat!

We feed mostly wet food and a little bit of dry. Our vet told us that an all wet diet has significantly health benefits. It's really important for bone growth in kittens and development of good eyesight etc. Moreover, he said that dry food is directly bad for their teeth and can cause kidney problems and UTI. This was really surprising to me and we switched to an all wet (almost) because of his advice. They get as much canned as they can eat twice daily and then we leave out the dry at night and in between the servings of wet. They typically do not eat so much of the dry since they can have as much canned as they wish morning and evening. The reason they still get some dry food is in case we have to leave town for a few days. This routine works well for us, but my cats really love food

So yes, I would introduce it to Raven on a regular basis Some good brands are Wellness (especially beef & chicken) and Merrick, but they are obviously not very cheap. I've not heard too good things about Fancy Feast but I have not tried it myself.

http://thecatsite.com/forums/showthr...=grocery+foods

has better wets avail at grocery and big box grocery type stores...

target also has dr fosters and smith which to most is very high end

Originally Posted by sharky

http://thecatsite.com/forums/showthr...=grocery+foods

has better wets avail at grocery and big box grocery type stores...

target also has dr fosters and smith which to most is very high end

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I have not seen the fosters and smith at our target (not for cat's anyway, they only carry the dogfood so far), I wonder if I put in a request for it if they would carry it? If they offered the dry and wet I think I would feed that (both). I do not want to have to order my catfood and pay extra to have it shipped, that is NOT economical for me.

One of my boys gets an all wet diet and the other gets mostly wet with some dry sprinkled on top. If I need to leave dry food in an auto feeder they are both fine with it and will eat it. I think once they've accepted the texture of dry food they rarely go off it so will not starve if that's the only thing left out.

I feed both. A little wet once a day and free feed dry. There are arguments either way on the dry vs wet argument. I think both have their place.