Thursday, September 16, 2010

If at first you don't succeed

One of the main reasons I'm still feeding my cats kibble is because there is small but noticable improvement in their teeth health when they eat their special 'oral care' kibble.

That is, until they went on a diet two months ago. They now think their two small rations a day is akin to torture by slow starvation; they scarf it down like inmates in a North Korean prison. I just noticed yesterday that this involves not actually chewing the damn stuff. Hence, defeating the only positive reason to feed kibble aside from convenience.

So, time to try yet again to home make the cats' food. It was probably only a matter of time, anyway, but this was the last straw. I'm going to try harder this time. And of course everyone says switching off kibble will help with the losing weight anyway (and reduce the risk of diabetes, and increase fluid consumption, etc, etc).

IMG_1996

4 comments:

Jess said...

My understanding of cats (don't own any, allergic) is that their little brains are messed up and they won't drink more water even when their food doesn't provide enough. Fresh food has loads of water. All of our dogs (total) go through about four or five gallons of water a day in the summer when it's almost 100F. I can't imagine how much they'd drink if they were eating kibbles.

admin said...

Yes, my cats' little brains are definitely messed up... in many ways.

I've read the same thing; apparently cats just don't have the same thirst response as dogs and humans. Both of ours seem to drink plenty of water (in fact the one in the picture above actually likes playing in water), so I've never worried about it before. Yet another reason to switch...

Jess said...

I've heard cats tend to imprint strongly on foods, too, and can be hard to switch. Do yours? The sire of our Halfghans was terribly leery of new foods and wouldn't even take most treats, he passed tendency that to some of his offspring.

admin said...

The cat pictured above, who spent his first 6 months as a stray, will eat anything. ANYTHING.

Our other cat is so picky she won't even eat tuna or sardines.