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My Pet World: A look at the dry food versus canned food debate

By Marc Morrone, Tribune Content Agency on

Q: A recent column of yours said canned cat food is preferable to dry cat food. My vet asks what I feed my cats at each visit but has never said to switch to canned cat food even when one of them had "issues" with vomiting. He recommended several things to try until finally, I found a dry food for sensitive stomachs that has helped. What are the pros and cons of dry versus canned cat food? -- Sue Shimeck, Savage, MN

A: Well like most things in life this answer is not quite that cut and dry. Neither dry food nor canned food can be considered "better" than the other; both have all the nutrition a domestic cat needs.

However, I do not feed my cat's dry food and it's only because of two observations I have noticed when I did feed my cats just dry food. Some cats I have kept on a dry food diet seemed to just eat most of it without chewing it. Then, many times, they would vomit the un-chewed pieces up in the middle of the night. At first I just thought they were hair balls, but when I actually broke the wads open I discovered that it was made up of undigested kibble. I tried giving those cats a smaller sized kibble but they still did not chew it and the problem persisted.

Then, when I put the cats on a diet of just canned food the vomiting stopped and never happened again. Obviously those cats just had issues chewing while other cats I had did fine on the kibble.

Another observation I noticed with cats on canned food was that their stool was much smaller. It seems that cats can digest all the ingredients in a can of cat food, while dry kibble has some ingredients added to maintain the integrity of the kibble that are not easily digested.

So, my conclusion, based on these personal observations, is that a canned food diet is better for us humans. I do not think that any scientific studies have been done to prove that it is better for the cats though. This all happened to me three decades ago and all my cats from then on have only eaten canned food. Two other observations since then have been that my cats on canned food do not shed very much and they are always the perfect weight. However, I cannot offer any theories on why this is so.

 

Q: I just bought a house in the suburbs and I have taken up bird watching. One of my great pleasures for the last three months was listening to the birds singing in the early morning. However the last couple of weeks I have noticed that the morning is silent -- no bird song at all and I wondered what happened? -- Greg Sanders, Chicago, IL

A: Do not worry, no ecological disaster here, it is just now mid-August and the baby birds have grown up and left the nest. Breeding season is now over and the parent birds are resting and molting -- losing their old feathers and re-growing new ones -- to get ready for either winter or migration.

Since there is no longer a need to attract a mate or protect a territory then they do not have to waste precious recourses singing. Late summer and fall is the time of the insects, in the same manner that you were able to listen to the birds singing in the morning, you can now listen to the insects singing in the evening, thus still taking pleasure in the natural world.

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(Marc Morrone has kept almost every kind of animal as a pet for the last half-century and he is happy to share his knowledge with others. Although he cannot answer every question, he will publish many of those that have a general interest. You can contact him at petxperts2@aol.com; please include your name, city and state.)


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