Hello. I'm Dr. Jane Matheys with The Cat Doctor Veterinary Hospital and Hotel in Boise, Idaho. Today I'm going to be answering a couple questions from the Facebook page of Pets Best Insurance.
First we have a question from Katie. She writes, "My two cats will not, under any circumstances, eat wet cat food, regardless of brand or flavor. One will drink the water from canned tuna but neither will touch the tuna itself. We let them free-feed dry food. Is that okay? One of them is a bit overweight but the other one is fine."
I see the most problems with cats being overweight and obese in cats that are fed strictly dry food on a free choice basis, meaning the owner just puts the bowl out and they eat as much as they want during the day. The dry food is higher in calories because of the higher carbohydrate content and we've made it so great tasting that many cats will just overeat and gain weigh. I prefer feeding twice daily with canned food, especially the grain-free varieties, but as you found out, a lot of cats don't really like the canned food, especially if they've eaten nothing but dry food since they were little kittens.
Cats can definitely become carbohydrate addicts and they tend to like that crunchy texture of the dry food, too. One of the best websites that I know of has a really nice section that talks about how to transition your cat from the dry foods to the canned foods. That website is www.catinfo.org. Check that out. It's written by a veterinarian and it can be very helpful to get your kitties to like the canned food.
The second question is from Linda. She writes, "Five months ago I adopted a cat who had been in and out of the Humane Society. She's bitten me a few times recently and shows jealousy around my other pet. I recently started giving her less food to control her weight. Could this be why she bites me?"
Decreasing her food probably does not really have much to do with her biting. It sounds like she has a long history of having gone through a lot of trauma in different homes and things of that sort, so probably the aggressiveness arises from something like that rather than her having less food to eat.
Cat bites can sometimes be very dangerous. People certainly do occasionally end up in the hospital from a cat bite, so her behavior is not something that we want to take too lightly. I encourage you to talk to your veterinarian about this behavior issue with her. Try and get that under control so that she doesn't cause damage to you. Once that is under control, continue to work with her diet and her weight loss because that's going to be very good for her in the long term, too.
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