Canned Food For Cat? Senior Maybe?
Posted by: Alan in Cat Health Problem, tags: Canned, Food, Maybe, Senior
My cats are primarily fed dry food, but are given canned a few times a week. Only seven of my ten cats will eat canned food.
I have two cats, brother and sister, that are about 6-7 years old. The male seems to have a very sensitive stomach and will occasionally vomit up his dry food. The cat has been taken to the vet numerous times regarding this problem, but the vet can never find anything wrong with him. I’ve changed my cats’ food at least four different times – finally since they’re fed higher quality now, the cat’s vomiting has decreased, but he still vomits at least once a week or so. This cat is very slender and skinny, but not malnourished at all. He’s in great health, besides this tiny problem.
Since I started giving my cat canned food of the same brand, the cat rarely ever vomits. It seems that maybe the canned helps his digestive system?
Which is better, canned or dry? Would it be alright to increase the amount of canned food this particular cat gets? Because of his age (6-7 yrs), should I buy him special senior or am I thinking way ahead of those years?
Again, the vet knows about this but I’ve never gotten any advice or any solutions to his tummy upsets… other than discovering that canned food seems to highly decrease the vomiting.
Any help would be nice, thanks.
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November 1st, 2009 at 9:47 pm
One big reason for cats vomiting after eating dry food is they eat too much too fast! So this could well be your particular cats problem with it, other than that the cat would be 100% healthy, hence the vet finding nothing wrong with it…
Yes it’s perfectly ok to feed canned cat food, the only downside to it is that it doesn’t give the cat the crunchy stuff that helps keep their teeth clean. One way around this is to keep a pot of dry food and feed it to all your cats (especially this one) as a bit of a treat. This way you can force the cat to eat it slowly a few biscuits at a time, so getting all the benefit and none of the nausea! You can feed as much as one small meaty meal morning and night to this cat, just letting it have access to dry with the others the rest of the time and you’ll probably find it stops vomiting, other than the odd hairball.
Senior food is probably not necessary as this cat is very slim, mostly senior food has less calories in it to save older inactive cats from obesity. Keep to the high quality canned and dry as it’s more easily digestible, again this will assist in keeping all your cats in good condition.
Remember a good diet tends to lead to good health, feed your cat well and you may save on vets fees in the long run!
November 2nd, 2009 at 12:02 am
Really, I would have to know what brand/recipe of food both dry and wet. If the cat has such a sensitive stomach, I’d actually suggest kitten wet food for a while, preferably nutromax or science diet. As for dry, avoid any ash or magnesium in the ingredients. The reason I suggest the kitten food is that it’s very potent and full of vitamins, fat and protein, and hopefully he/she can absorb some of it before it’s rejected. Also, some live wheat grass could help clean out the intestines and provide more of a chance of good metabolism. Liquid vitamins in the water would also avoid malnutrition. I hope something here helps!
PS: Lamb and Rice is very gently to a cat’s system.
November 2nd, 2009 at 3:16 am
I have never found a definitive answer on dry vs canned food for cats, everyone has their own beliefs on the subject..we had a cat that lived to be 20 years old,,in his later years (about 16) he was also vomiting his dry food, we switched him to senior, didn’t make any difference, one day my son noticed that the cat seemed to be chewing the dry on one particular side of his mouth, or even swallowing it whole..I looked inside his mouth and son of a gun,,,he had missing teeth, that’s why he was swallowing the food whole,,,we switched him to canned only, and he did fine for another 4 years until his death…natural causes…
November 2nd, 2009 at 9:34 am
If the wet food helps his stomach I would definitely switch to that. Newer researcher indicates that canned food is actually better for cats. They don’t tend to drink enough water and the added moisture is helpful especially for their urinary tract.
If he has no other medical problems I wouldn’t switch to a senior food as they tend to be lower calorie. With him being underweight I would feed a regular high quality canned.
Finally, just a bit of a pet peeve but, unlike what someone said, regular dry food doesn’t keep teeth healthy. Prescription dental diets like those made by Science Diet, Purina Veterinary Diets and MediCal do help reduce tartar but they are formulated differently than regular dry.
November 2nd, 2009 at 9:53 am
The information I have gleaned over the past year or more, pretty much gives thumbs up to wet food feeding for cats. They don’t disregard dry food, but wet seems to be better for them. If your cat is doing better on the wet than dry, then of course, keep feeding him the wet food. I have 9 cats as well, and my senior who is 9 yrs old, was barfing up a lot too. Now he is in the early stages of Reno Failure, but I am also finding that feeding him wet food is better for him, and has reduced the barfing episodes.
November 2nd, 2009 at 4:25 pm
i think wet food for a cat is a great idea. my 4 year old cat gets a can of wet food a night(its the smaller cans like fancy feast or half a can of friskies). i would also look at the ingredients, stay away from the first one being any kinda corn, they use that as a filler and it does not digest in their system. also if you change there food do it in small amounts with their regular food. cats need a good week of transition for it to not mess them up.
November 2nd, 2009 at 5:46 pm
I had a similar problem with one of my cats – she was a chronic “up-chucker” and the vet finally determined that she had a “motility problem.” We started her on Reglan and voila – no more problems. We also tried many things with her – and this was an easy diagnosis to check out. We tried the reglan – very little risk – and the problem went away. Stopped the Reglan and it came right back….
Talk to your Vet about this as a possiblity…..