Cats and dry food? please help!?

Question

I have two kittens, 7 months. They are healthy and will eat wet and dry food. They love thier treats too, and we give them a selection of wet and dry now.

But they eat the dry food so fast.. they swallow it!!! are they not meant to cruch it? they just take it down??! is that normal?!

what do your cats do?? x

Answer 1

You shouldn't feed cats espoecially kittens any dry food at all


Nutrition since there are so many bad things out there is very important to your cat’s health
Contrary to what you may have heard; dry foods are not a great thing to feed a cat.
Please read the label on what you are feeding? What are the ingredients? Do you know what they mean? Is the first ingredient a muscle meat like chicken or meal or other things?
http://www.catinfo.org/#Learn_How_To_Read_a_Pet_Food_Ingredient_Label
Dry foods are the number 1 cause of diabetes in cats as well as being a huge contributing factor to kidney disease, obesity, crystals, u.t.i’s and a host of other problems. Food allergies are very common when feeding dry foods. Rashes, scabs behind the tail and on the chin are all symptoms
The problems associated with Dry food is that they are loaded with carbohydrates which many cats (carnivores) cannot process them. Also, Most of the moisture a cat needs is suppose to be in the food but in
Dry, 95% of it is zapped out of dry foods in the processing. Another thing, most use horrible ingredients and don't use a muscle meat as the primary ingredient and use vegetable based protein versus animal. Not good for an animal that has to eat meat to survive.
You want to pick a canned food w/o gravy (gravy=carbs) that uses a muscle meat as the first ingredient and doesn't have corn at least in the first 3 ingredients if at all. Fancy feast is a middle grade food with 9lives, friskies whiskas lower grade canned and wellness and merrick upper grade human quality foods. The optimum food to feed cats has no grains whatsoever, cats have no use for them and many have trouble processing them as well as the carbs. IBD is another disease that is rapidly becoming common amoung cats because of the inappropriate diets being fed.
Also, dry food is not proven to be better for teeth. Does a hard pretzel clean your teeth or do pieces of it get stuck? http://www.felinefuture.com/nutrition/bpo_ch4a.php

Please read about cat nutrition.
http://www.newdestiny.us/nutritionbasics.html
http://www.catinfo.org/feline_obesity.htm
http://maxshouse.com/feline_nutrition.htm#Dry_Food_vs_Canned_Food.__Which_is_reall

Answer 2

Do you only offer the dry food at certain times? Or is it available free choice? If they only have access to it at certain times of the day they may be bolting it because they have gotten hungry. Most cats will not overeat if food is left out all the time, and this may solve the problem. The majority of your kitten's food should be dry, not wet, to avoid dental problems down the road. Wet food should really be more of a treat than a staple. Just be sure to have plenty of clean, fresh water available at all times.

Some kibbles are small enough that cats will simply gulp them down, even when eating slowly. If it really bothers you, try finding a quality kitten food that has a larger kibble that they need to crunch.

Answer 3

It sounds like they are extremely hungry! Are you feeding them on a schedule or free feeding? Free feeding is best, that way they can eat when they are hungry, and just offer the wet food as a treat. Kitten chow is slightly softer than adult cat kibble, and yes they do chew. Make sure to check with your vet if they are wolfing their food down every time they eat when they are free feeding, as they may have worms.

Good luck with the kitties!

Answer 4

Very little of the dry food by us is 'crunched', it's usually swallowed whole. It's not a problem to the cat so it should be ok.

Answer 5

Cats - and kittens - do tend to swallow dry food whole so this is completey normal. And hence it's complete BS when people comment about (and companies try to make you believe) that dry food "cleans the teeth" - http://www.littlebigcat.com/index.php?action=library&act=show&item=doesdryfoodcleantheteeth

Answer 6

my old cat, snowy eat everything, including my other cat, gingers food. some cats are just greedy an want to get things down as quick as possible, but dry food helps their teeth and swallowing doesnt really help their teeth.

Answer 7

Well I have two cats, but one of mine only has two teeth and so he can't chew his food. But my other crunches hers. Some cats are just generally greedy!!
But be careful, my cat with two teeth often makes himself sick because he swallows his food so quickly so you may want to get them bigger kibble so they have to chew it or perhaps feed them less but more often as they may just be very hungry.
Hope I helped.
x

Answer 8

sometimes mine swallows everything whole without chewing. specially when i give him treats.

the problem might be that they are too greedy so i would try to give them smaller amounts many times throughout the day.

and do you feed both kittens out of the same bowl? if so, try to give them separate places to eat so they don't think they have to "out eat" the other one!

good luck!

Answer 9

What little piggys LOL, I have never heard of a cat who just swallows the kibble without chewing.
My cats chew.

Answer 10

Don't feed so much at one time.
The dry food will expand in their gut and may cause them to throw up. That is why don't feed large quantity of dry food.
Be sure water is available to them.