Wishing I knew better

It is bad enough to downplay the red flags - not eating, not drinking, losing weight, etc. and forever regretting that mistake. Adding to the guilt, I learned here at TCS and elsewhere online feeding an all-wet diet  - especially Weruva's chicken-only meals - would have saved my two cats who died. How can I deal with this knowledge, thinking back that if only I had known better, both cats would still be with me today?

Specifically, I am referring to what they ate. I believed the myth that kibbles help clean teeth so I never thought about buying wet foods for my cats until a vet told me five years ago all wet is better than all dry and cats do not chew their food. That was a year after Emily died because a lifetime of dry food, mostly Science Diet, increased her risk of acute renal failure. One thing I learned here is if Emily had eaten wet food early in her life, she would have liked it a decade later. Another lesson is cats need the water from wet food even if they have a bowl on the floor for plain fresh water. So now I think Emily would be 18 and healthy if only I had known cats should eat wet food instead of kibbles in 1994.

We can only do what we know to do. Even though wet food is better genetics also play a role just as it does for humans. I have known of cats that ate low quality dry food all their life and lived well into their teens. I have also known of cats that got a premium diet and the very best vet care all their life and died relatively young. It's not your fault.

What Denice said.  We can only do the best we can with what we know.  We cannot change the past; only change how or what we do in the future.  You can play the "what if?" game in any area of your life and spend so much time looking back at what you didn't do the way you would now that you forget everything you did right and loved about that time.  All that can just make you depressed too.  I say look forward and do the best you can now.

Better maybe but considering so many cats so get fed worse or just garbage scraps with no vet care.  I fed my cats dry with wet as a treat and fairly recentley went all wet(except for the ferals bowl and special needs food-rx/not eating wet).

There are also many other factors into what will eventually take the cat

I don't think you can say they'd be with you now or not. . .genetics play a large part. My first kitties (who we got when I was 10) were fed dry Friskies most of their lives and got yearly vaccines for everything (including FeLV until they were 10. One of them liked canned food and got some as a treat now and then, the other one didn't like canned food at all. The one who liked canned food was always chubby, the other was always skinny. The chubby one was diagnosed with CRF (because she was peeing on everything) when she was 16, but my parents didn't want to pursue treatment for an old cat. So the only "treatment" she got was being switched to all canned food (Fancy Feast. . .and not because we knew anything about her needing moisture, but because if you have an old, dying pet, you feed them whatever they like best ). The skinny one did start eating more canned food as she got older, and also ate dry Nutro salmon. They both lived to be 21, never showing any illness until right before they died.

Would a better diet have made them live longer? Cats who eat canned food or raw food get kidney disease, too. And get old. There are situation in which a better diet makes a dramatic difference, and sometimes not.

I am surprised this thread was moved to The Cat Louge.

I always knew Wilbur would not live as long as Patricia, but had every reason to believe Emily would live at least 18 years. Like Patricia, she was an American shorthair I got as a young kitten.

We all can say that too. We all live and learn, the important thing now is knowing what you know and using that knowledge when caring for new kitties. I used to feed all dry too years ago. Didn't know any better at the time. I had one kitty live to 19 yrs. on a dry diet and other's that did not fare well unbeknownst to me that the dry diet had an impact on their overall heath. Not I know better.

Willowy said:

Would a better diet have made them live longer? Cats who eat canned food or raw food get kidney disease, too. And get old. There are situation in which a better diet makes a dramatic difference, and sometimes not.

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Quite true.... :nod:

Don't beat yourself up about it! You were doing the best you could at the time; it's easy look back in our lives and think how we'd do things differently with what we know now. Sometimes we just don't see the red flags until later when we can see the whole picture. 

How could you have helped your kitties back then with knowledge you didn't have? 

I feel guilty too about some of the things I did with cats I have owned int he past. But I did the best I could witht he knowledge and money I had available at the time. We can never say a particular cat (or person) would have lived to a ripe old age if only such and such had happened or not. There are too many factors to take into account, including genetics. We can only learn as we go, keep an open mind to new ideas and treatments, and do the best we can. If we don't learn from our experience and so repeat our mistakes, then is the time to feel guilty.