Dry Food, Wet Food and Raw Diets for Cats

How to Choose the Best Food for Your Kitty

Jul 24, 2008

When choosing food for your cat, it's important to read the label, meet all nutritional requirements and be aware of the risks posed by raw food diets.

Commercial cat foods are available in canned, semi-moist (often in pouches) and dry kibble. Canned foods usually have more protein than semi-moist or dry foods, while dry foods provide more calories.

Canned Wet Foods

A cheap canned food may have no more protein than dry food because nonmeat items are added as filler. Many cheaper foods don’t meet a cat’s nutritional requirements. In more expensive premium brands, meat is the primary ingredient and there are few if any carbohydrates, much like a cat’s natural diet in the wild.

A disadvantage of canned foods is that they go off quite quickly and shouldn’t be left out for long. Unused portions can be refrigerated, but they should be warmed to room temperature before serving because cats don’t like cold foods.

Semi-Moist Foods

Semi-moist foods are often filled with preservatives and artificial colours and flavours, as well as sugars, which are completely unnecessary as cats can’t taste sugar. With the exception of a few premium or specialty brands, semi-moist foods are not the best nutritional choice.

Dry Foods

The primary advantage of dry foods is that they can be left out indefinitely so that cats can eat when they want to. Also, they are good for bulking up cats that tend to be lean. However, they are not the best choice for overweight cats.

Cats that are fed only dry food tend to be permanently dehydrated, so unless the cat can be encouraged to drink more water, owners should provide wet food as well. Dry foods lose their nutritional value by approximately 6 months, so food should be replaced if it reaches this stage.

Choose Premium

With cat food, as with everything else, you get what you pay for. Most generic foods don’t fulfill all of a cat’s nutritional requirements. Ingredients are of a lower quality and often not as digestible. Many popular food brands are also nutritionally incomplete.

Premium foods are not only better for your cat, but because the cat doesn’t need to eat as much of them due to their higher nutrient density, you won’t have to buy as much food. Also, less of it ends up in the litter box.

Read the Label

The first thing to look for on the label is whether or not meat is the first ingredient. Many cheaper foods have some sort of grain as their first ingredient, which means that the bulk of the food is made up of carbohydrate filler.

Don’t trust the name on the front of the tin. A food can be called “Nuggets with Beef” but contain only 3% beef. Cat food should also have taurine and magnesium in the ingredients list (though cats with urinary tract problems may require a low-magnesium diet).

Also check the label for artificial colours, flavours and sugar, particularly when purchasing semi-moist foods. Ideally, the food will have none of these.

Raw and Home-Made Diets

Increasingly popular, these diets comprise raw meat, meaty bones, a small amount of vegetables and nutritional supplements. There are a number of risks associated with raw diets:

It is difficult to ensure the right nutritional balance.
Raw meats can carry bacterial diseases such as salmonella that infect both cats and people.
Raw meats may contain parasites.
Cats can get splinters from bones.

Feeding a raw diet requires a significant time and energy commitment on the part of an owner. When choosing this option, it is important to consult a veterinarian or veterinary nutritionist to ensure that nutritional, health and safety requirements are met. A veterinarian should also be consulted before implementing a home-made diet.