General questions about food

OK so I've done a lot of research on my dogs food since having a bad spell with pedigree years ago but I don't know much about the needs of kitties. Right now I kind of go by what my sister's do with their cats but obviously the cercumstances are different. Some eat dry food while going outside and hunting. Others have to be on a sensitive stomach diet but they're all dry food. Sam is on natures recipe grain free salmon dry food although I may switch to chicken because he goes crazy for chicken but I've read different things about grain free being good or bad. Also that giving canned with dry is better because of moisture content, the canned food is a bit pricey at petsmart and not really affordable right now. I'm thinking of looking at 4health wet food at tractor supply and see what that costs. Could I make my own version of wet food? Just sort of a moisture fill in between meals? He does great with drinking water I just want to know I'm making the right choice for him.

Wet food really is a far better option than dry, if you can afford it. Basically, there are two main issues with dry food:-

Firstly, cats evolved as desert creatures, and as such are designed to get around 80% of their fluid intake from their food. Canned food matches this pretty well, but kibble falls very short. Left to themselves, a cat's thirst drive simply isn't strong enough to compensate for the dryness of kibble - even if they appear to you to be drinking well. If fed a 100% dry/kibble diet, a cat needs to be drinking around a cup(250mls) of water a day.

Secondly, cats are obligate carnivores. This means they need to eat meat to live and thrive. It simply isn't possible to make kibble (which is essentially a cookie, after all) without using a proportion of starchy, plant based foods. In grain free kibbles, the grains are replaced by vegetable starches - usually those found in roots (e.g. potato) or legumes (e.g. peas). Cats lack the digestive enzymes to get the nutrients out of these foods, and the result is often a cat that is hungrier and less satisfied. This in turn can increase the likelihood of their becoming overweight over time.

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You mention the possibility of making your own cat food. The answer is that, yes, it can be done, but you have to be sure to follow an appropriate recipe. Feeding imbalanced food can and will cause all kinds of health problems - even if you don't see them straight away. If you want to look into making your own food, these are a good place to start:-[article="31801"][/article][thread="263751"][/thread] Check out the raw and home-cooked cat food subforum too

So - where does this leave you? I do understand the financial pressures of feeding all wet food. It certainly is more expensive than an all dry diet. However, feeding all dry can leave your cats more vulnerable to health problems, and vet bills are never cheap either! Many people feed a combination of wet and dry, either to balance their budgetary or other restraints, or simply because their cat loves kibble! I feed mostly wet food, with a little dry on the side as a treat, and this works very well on the whole. Feeding wet food makes it extra easy to ensure hydration too, as it's a simple matter to add a little extra water to the wet food for a fluid boost.

The great news is that you don't have to spend a fortune on wet food to get the benefits - even budget canned food is a good choice, and it's surprisingly easy to find high meat/low carb foods for a reasonable price. As a general rule, pate style foods are more likely to be grain free/low carb, whereas gravied /sauced foods are more likely to contain grains or starches of some description.

I hope this helps, and that you're able to find a happy medium that suits both your cats AND your purse strings

There are lots of threads and articles on the site about feeding that might give you ideas on some of the questions you ask. Here's a thread with links to lots of helpful articles about feeding: http://www.thecatsite.com/t/248990/tcs-resources-thread-feline-nutrition-articles-and-threads

We feed our cats only wet foods of various kinds (raw, homemade, and canned). Our vet is a big advocate of wet food-only because cats are meat eaters -- the more meat and the less grains and carby fillers you can feed a cat, the better for the cat's health in general.

If you're interested in home-cooked food, there's an entire forum dedicated to raw and home-cooked, here: http://www.thecatsite.com/f/65/raw-home-cooked-cat-food. Unless you're only feeding small amounts of meat (less than 10% of a cat's diet), you'd need to add nutrients to the meat. I use EZcomplete supplement, which our cats love.

Columbine's post popped up just as I was about to post this one -- she's done a far, far better job than I have explaining all this!