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FieryOpal -> RE: Dry food (3/31/2016 7:43:42 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Spiritedsub2
Feeding a cat or dog nothing but dry pet food is the health equivalent of a human eating nothing EVER except Cheerios. Are Cheerios bulked up with all the required vitamins and minerals and protein? Yes. Will a human be heathy and thrive on a diet of nothing else? Fuck no, obviously.
I feed mine food. Meat, including organ meat, bone meal, small amount of puréed vegetables, a few vitamin supplements. Real fucking food. Not processed crap, any more than I'd feed myself on processed crap.
It's not more expensive in the long run. Costs more at the grocery store and in cooking time, less in vet bills. And it makes them happy and feel good, who I think is the point of having them.
I have to agree with Spirited based upon my own experiences, with variety of quality foodstuff being the most important ingredient of all. OP, not providing fish or fish oil supplements in your cats' diets is depriving them of sufficient omega-3 fatty acids. This is brain food.
The first cat I ever owned was exceptional. (They all are, in their own ways.) While this Maine cooncat was still a kitten, he developed a preference for canned tuna, and nothing else would do. He didn't want treats, table scraps, shellfish, dry food, or any other flavor of canned catfood, not even salmon, whitefish or trout.
After him, I kept a rotating dietary menu of canned catfood according to meat category. I always left out dry food for them to snack upon all day long, and they didn't overeat because they never felt they were being rationed. Treats consisted of deli lunchmeats, cheese, yogurt, etc.
When I had a queen who produced a half dozen litters, I found that the baby kittens loved being fed babyfood rice cereal gruel (if preparing from dry, use warm 2% milk, preferably acidophilus which has good bacteria cultures that help with digestion and boost the immune system), then moved onto babyfood puréed meats. The mother cat loved eating these also.
One of the kittens became disabled in a freak accident at just 5 weeks old. She had jaw palsy, so was never able to eat dry food, only moist.
The boy kitty, and his sister we kept, is very strange indeed. He has a fruit fetish and tries to eat whatever fruit he can. He will not eat plain dairy products--they have to be fruit-flavored. When we bring the groceries in, the very first bags he tries to root through are the ones containing...fruit. I am not making this up.
He has never taken to moist catfood, unlike his sister who will eat pretty much anything (except fruit). He scratches at it and tries to cover it up like he's in the litterbox.
This is hard to admit, but he has never been weaned off of jars of babyfood meats either, and they're both over 3 years old. Since he still gets a small serving near-daily, I let his sister have a spoonful also, just to be fair. On the plus side, they have the most beautiful coats of fur, and are as healthy as can be.
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