The answer is meat, despite how adorable our pets are it is important to remember that they are carnivores and like to eat meat. The food that is the most similar to a their natural food, aside from feeding them fresh meat, is canned cat food and this is what I feed my cats.
It is important for a cat food to have a high moisture content because cats do not generally drink as much water as a dog does. Cats are quite picky about where and what they drink and we don’t want them to be dehydrated to any degree. Dry has a moisture content of about 10% versus wet at around 78% and will keep your cat much more hydrated.
This is commonly asked by many pet owners who feed their cats dry food and there is a simple reason for the problem. There are a lot more calories in dry food compared to wet food. I can personally attest to the weight related benefits of feeding your cat wet food because I always fed my cat dry food and he became very fat and started having digestive problems. When we switched him to a pure raw food/canned food diet he started dropping weight very quickly and is now a very reasonable weight. So if you cat is overweight one of the best ways to put it on a diet is to switch to wet food.
The most important macro-nutrients for a cat are protein and fat. Dry food has a much higher density of carbohydrates than wet cat food and is often what will lead to weight related problems in cats. Wet cat food has more protein and fat which are the nutrients your cat will need the most of.
The main benefit of feeding dry cat food to your cats will be convenience and cost. There is no doubt that feeding dry cat food is convenient, take a scoop from the bag, put it into the food dish – and done. Canned cat food requires tins being opened, spooning the food into the dish, covering the leftover food and storing in the fridge. Definitely more time consumer – but in my opinion it is worth it because I have seen the benefits of canned food first hand after my cat lost a huge amount of weight just from switching from dry cat food.
It is important to buy high quality food for your cat no matter if you choose to feed dry cat food for the convenience, or wet food for the health benefits. Cheaper food is much less likely to have a complete amino acid profile for the protein content, and will have much lower quality fats and carbohydrates.
