Teeth and biscuit query

My neighbour had to take his cat up to the vets last week for a dental, and at her check up today, the vet nurse told him to feed her smaller biscuits as they will help reduce the plaque build up. This seems incredibly bizarre to me, esp when most of the dental biscuits are larger than normal. Anyone heard of this?

I can't say that I have. From experience, smaller kibble doesn't even get bitten in half before smallowing most of the time.

Very strange as the cat has to at least bite it to have any dental effect( most have little)

Nope - makes no sense to me either. They don't even bite the smaller pieces.

Decidedly strange!

Tibby doesn't even crunch Hills Oral, so smaller biscuits obviously go down without touching the sides!!

Doesn't really surprise me I'd take anything a vet or vet nurse told me about nutrition with a pinch of salt and only believe it if I could find confirmation elsewhere.

I am like that now, hence posting. I prob annoy my vet with disagreeing with her as I have read something on the internet and querying her!! It has been annoying at my practice as the vet and the vet nurse have different ideas of how much food Tom should have, so ended up deciding to go off what stops him trying to find his own and keeps the weight off!!

Rosie and Sophie were found to have a touch of tartar when i took them for their yearly checkup a couple of months ago.

My vet has told me i have to give them the Hills prescription t/d which are larger kibbles. She explained that if i got one of those kibbles to a smaller one and crushed them the smaller ones would be like dust compared to the larger ones, and she explained how the larger kibbles are harder so as to make them chew more.

I've been hard pressed to find any evidence that any size or kibble or any texture does any real "cleaning" Our cats don't have grinding teeth and as such don't "chew" their food like people do. Their teeth are designed to slice food small enough to swallow. All the dry food I've seen crumbles when bit or crushed and is then swallowed. Stab a fork into a piece of your dry dental food and see how much to the tine is touched by the food. The very tip and that's it. How many animals have you seen with tartar build up at the tip of their teeth? Anything they can sink their teeth into will help clean their teeth. My ferrets used to love chewing on the stem of a banana peal and that did wonders for cleaning their teeth. Just like floss. My cats don't like banana peels though and I've read that the peel probably isn't too good for them as it may have pesticides and sprays on them. But that kind of action is 1000% better than any dry food.