Is dry food good for your kitties? Even though studies are proving otherwise, many people and even veterinarians believe kibble is a fine diet.
It’s so easy to open a bag of dry cat food, throw it in the bowl and be done. Most cats love to crunch on the high carb, overly processed dried out little pieces of crunchy food. It’s no fuss for us and they like it so what’s the issue? Is dry food good for our cats? Let’s take a closer look.
Cats have a low thirst drive, which means they don’t feel the need to drink water very often. Cats should be getting most of their water from their diets. Feeding a dry food diet has absolutely no moisture in it and coupling this with your cat having a low thirst drive is not ideal. This causes our feline friends to go into a chronic state of dehydration. Sadly, you may not know your cat is dehydrated until a problem develops.
Should You Feed Dry?
Over the years of working with pet health, when I mention about cats that eat a dry food diet being dehydrated, the normal response is, “my cat drinks a ton of water”. Remember what I said about cats having a low thirst drive? Well, when they develop a high thirst drive this is usually a big indication something is wrong or brewing and it’s not good.
Dehydration can lead to many issues in cats including urinary diseases such as kidney disease, bladder inflammation and crystals, bladder tumors, etc.
The other issue with feeding a dry kibble is that the kibble needs a lot of carbs in order for it to turn into hard crunchy pellets. Carbohydrates are not necessary in our cat’s diet and should be eliminated or fed in a very low amount. Excess carbs in a cat’s diet can cause issues too such as obesity and diabetes.
So as you can see dry food is not the ideal diet for our cats. I would suggest only feeding a wet food diet. It’s best to not even feed any dry food but if you have to feed dry be sure to add some fresh, low carb, moisture rich food to the bowl too.
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