Ok to feed my cat 100% dry food?

My beloved Yaesu kitty passed away 2 years ago. He was 14+ years old. Yaesu's entire life consisted of 100% dry food.

Now with a newish kitty (Malloy) I'm continuing to feed him 100% dry food. He's never had wet canned food ever.

Is it bad to only feed dry food to a cat? Yaesu being feed only dry food lived to 14+ years and was healthy until the last month of his life.

What do you all think?

I feel feeding only dry is not ideal

We used to feed wet and dry until the vet told us that wet offers good nutrition with obviously much more moisture, which cats need.  She also said the cats really didn't need the extra calories in the dry food so we ended up transitioning them to wet only.

Here's a good article about different options for feeding your kitty:  http://www.thecatsite.com/a/how-to-choose-the-right-food-for-your-cat

Dry food isn't bad (though, like all foods, some are better than others), but there are a couple of issues you need to be aware of.

The first one is hydration. Cats are desert creatures, and as such have evolved to have very low thirst drives. In short - they're designed to get around 80% of their fluid intake from their food. Obviously, dry food is just that - DRY. Left to their own devices, a cat simply won't compensate for this lack of moisture by drinking it separately. It IS possible to compensate for this, but you have to get a little creative.

The moisture content of wet food is far closer to that of the prey that cats evolved to eat. This by itself is a great reason why most owners choose to feed at least part of the diet as wet food - its the easiest way to help ensure hydration. Dehydration in cats can cause various problems, the most common of which are urinary tract issues (crystals - which can lead to a potentially life threatening blockage - and urinary tract infections). Keeping your cat really well hydrated is key to helping prevent these from occurring.

The other main issue is that cats are obligate carnivores. This means that they HAVE to consume animal protein to thrive. Some dry foods are relatively low in animal protein. Vegetable protein is cheaper AND it is almost impossible to make a dry food without starch of some sort. Some brands have more grains and starches than is ideal. Ideally, you want to pick a dry food that has meat in some form at the top of the ingredients list, and where grains and vegetables are lower down.

These articles may help you understand the pros and cons, and how best to manage a 100% dry diet to keep Malloy in peak health:-[article="0"][/article][article="30756"][/article][article="29707"][/article][article="31089"][/article][article="31120"][/article][article="31658"][/article]

Well, I think 14 is young for a cat. My 13 year old acts like one of the kittens still. I think once you do your research you'll want to switch your cats to at least some wet food. However, I feed some dry food and I feel that I'd rather feed some high quality kibble over all low quality wet food. My cats do all eat some wet food (some raw too) and high quality kibble that is grain free and without very many fillers. 

I fed 100% dry to my Tiger (RIP) boy. The reason being; he couldn't keep wet food down no matter if it was high quality.. he just couldn't handle it. And he was a healthy boy.

But he did so well on dry food and drank water frequently after he ate... so I didn't have to worry about his water intake.

Now, Miagi & Angel eat pretty much wet food. That's what they prefer. They munch on dry here and there but they are fed mainly wet food. And they rarely throw up.

While 100% dry isn't ideal... not every wet food diet 100% works for every cat. Some cats are kibble addicts. I just think it depends on the individual cat whether you feed 100%

wet or 100% dry. Or 50% wet and 50% dry. I would try to get some wet food in your kitty's diet if possible if he doesn't drink water a lot. I understand it can be expensive to buy both but do whatever works for your kitty. Since Miagi & Angel mainly eat wet, dry food lasts us awhile.

Wow, thanks for all the input folks! I have lots to digest (pardon the pun).

My kitty drinks a fair amount of water through the day. I monitor his water intake daily as well as his pee in the litter box. He gets bottled water due the poor quality of tap water in the house.

I'm going to do a bit of research into wet food ingredients. If I'm going to introduce some wet food into Malloy's diet, I want it to be beneficial.

If you stay with dry only, Malloy needs to be drinking approx a cup (250ml) of water/fluid a day.