Is dry food really as bad as they say?

@madamenordica....  This chart will give you the calories etc for almost all canned foods ..  It is dated for 2012 but the numbers are probably pretty close to current ones ..

http://www.catinfo.org/docs/SortableCatFoodChartCatinfo.org2-22-13.htm

I didn't notice you were a fellow Maine-ah

I feed Friskies and also Special Kitty. I can get the 22oz Special Kitty cans of food in pate form, in Turkey and Giblets or Chicken and Tuna for $1 a can. One can will feed 6 cats easily. I go through two cans of that size a day. For my indoor kitties. Outdoor kitties get canned or raw food which I make for them.

I stopped feeding dry because my males started having urinary issues. Even the males in my kitty colony. I do think that an entirely dry food based diet is not good at all. Even one meal of wet food a day would help.

madamenordica said:

 
I didn't notice you were a fellow Maine-ah

Click to expand...

Oh , hey that is awesome .. Nice to meet ya ..

madamenordica said:

How much does your cat weigh, because I'm pretty sure on the back of my Friskies can it says to feed an ounce per pound of body weight. For my 16 pound cat, that would be close to 3 of those little 5.5 oz cans a day. Is this the size can you are referring to, or are you looking at one of the bigger cans?

Click to expand...

that is way too much for adult indoor cat, my big guy gets 6 oz and a few treats.

Indeed. I looked at Dave's and it said half a can for every 6-8 lbs of body weight, which makes much more sense. I'm done with Friskies. They never answered my email question either. Poo on them.

For adult cats, I usually try to aim for 170-220 kcal per day (I use canned food).

Kibble is extremely high in carbohydrates (useless and fattening to an obligate carnivore) and dehydrating due to being ... well, dry. I'd say the most common health problem in cats is something related to their bladder (urinary tract infections, crystal formations, etc.) or kidney (infection, failure, etc.), and that is almost always a direct result of dehydration (which we can link back to a diet lacking adequate moisture, usually kibble). Remember that nature made is so that cats would naturally stay hydrated through their food (blood and moisture found in flesh, organs, and fat from their prey), so they don't have a tendency to drink water regularly. It has been said many times that a cat that is going out of its way to drink a lot of water is already dehydrated because it takes being at that point already to make them seek water that desperately. I remember that when my first cat (who was on a diet of exclusively kibble) came down with kidney failure, she was lunging at the sink faucet whenever we would turn it on -- the only time she would actually move because she was literally dying.

I'm not going to sit here and give the whole "raw food" talk, however I will say that at the very least, wet food is EONS better than kibble in every possible way. And my final answer to the OP would be that yes, kibble is really as bad as they say. Worse than they say, actually.

I think if you're going to feed dry you need to feed high quality dry in combination with wet. IMO the only high quality dry is Orijen, or Ziwipeak air dried, but they are all pricy as they are fairly low in carbs, which is what you want if you're going to feed dry. You'd be better off feeding all wet with the suggestions everyone else provided. 

I'm curious here. How can we figure out the carb content (percentage of calories) in dry food? I'm mixing Goodlife in with my cats old dry, but I really don't know the carb percentage. It's less than ONE, I'm sure, but can't find out the exact amount.

misterwhiskers said:

I'm curious here. How can we figure out the carb content (percentage of calories) in dry food? I'm mixing Goodlife in with my cats old dry, but I really don't know the carb percentage. It's less than ONE, I'm sure, but can't find out the exact amount.

Click to expand...

Isn't there a macro-nutrient breakdown on the back of the bag somewhere?

Not carb amount, that I can tell. Says minimum protein is 34(?) percent, on both bags, but nothing on carbs. But I will look again.

misterwhiskers said:

I'm curious here. How can we figure out the carb content (percentage of calories) in dry food? I'm mixing Goodlife in with my cats old dry, but I really don't know the carb percentage. It's less than ONE, I'm sure, but can't find out the exact amount.

Click to expand...

Here is a carb calculator .  Just put in the %'s from the Guaranteed Analysis  and click calculate .  You may have to call the company to get the Ash % . Most cat foods do not have that on the package . 

http://scheyderweb.com/cats/catfood.html