What kind of food is digestible to kittens?

[AnnieLu]

Hi,

What kind of food is the most digestible to kittens? I see so many different answers. Some says high protein based meat canned food is digestible and some says kibble works better.

My three baby girls are fed on Dr elsey wet food but one of them has diarrhea. They are all done deworming recently. Are those canned food too rich for kittens?

 

[rubysmama]

Here's a TCS article that might be helpful: The Essentials Of Kitten Nutrition | TheCatSite

 

[MissClouseau]

Ingredients matter, not that if it's dry or wet in my opinion. There are both dry and wet foods for kittens after all. I think it's better to feed with both dry and wet just so they can get use to both for the future.

How old is the kitten? Are you using a food specifically advertised for kittens? The one who has diarrhea might be intolerant to something in the food. Or she might have another health issue that isn't about the food.

 

[Azazel]

Unfortunately there are a lot of misinformed opinions out there. The problem being that some pet food companies perpetuate misinformation and many vets also don’t really understand feline nutrition.

The majority of today’s domestic cats are descended from desert cats in North Africa. They are also obligate carnivores. What this means is that they cannot properly digest plant matter and must eat raw meat to survive. This is because they require the nutrients and amino acids from raw meat because they cannot synthesize them on their own - the meat has to be raw because these nutrients die when they are cooked. Now, many pet foods cook the meat and add the nutrients back in. This seems to work fine for cats, so you don’t necessarily have to feed raw. Many of us do feed raw, however, because we like the difference in health it provides for our cats to eat fresh raw meat. If you do choose to go down that route you need to do your research (see the raw subfeeding forum).

Now, if we think about an obligate carnivore’s natural diet, it’s very high in animal protein, moderate in fat, and very low in carbs. It’s also very high in moisture. Being that cats are desert animals that eat primarily raw meat, organs, and bones, they have very low thirst drives. It is very unnatural for them to go to a water bowl as their main source of hydration. Rather, they obtain moisture from their food. So when you’re picking a food for your cat, you want high animal protein (not plant protein), moderate fat, low carbs, and high moisture. This means that canned food, being high in moisture, is more ideal than dry, which is low in moisture. Now the problem that people come across when looking for suitable pet foods is that it’s very difficult to actually find a food that ticks all these boxes and that actually uses a reputable source for their ingredients... hence why many of us make our own food in the homemade sub forum.

This is all to say that just because you will find differing opinions doesn’t mean that we don’t know that cats are obligate carnivores who have low thirst drives. We can deduce quite a lot about their nutritional needs from these 2 facts.

Kittens don’t really have different nutritional needs than cats except that they need to eat a lot more than adults. The problem is that pet food companies formulate kitten and cat food differently, so it’s probably not a good idea to give an adult cat food that is low in protein to a kitten. While the low protein isn’t ideal for a cat or kitten, the adult cat may be able to survive off of it better than a kitten.

By the way, since your question asks about digestibility, we actually do have some research showing that raw meat is most digestible for cats.

For more info, I recommend reading catinfo.org.