Dry Cat Food: Why I No Longer Feed it To My Cats

by K Marie Alto January 18, 2019 2 min read

Dry Cat Food: Why I No Longer Feed it To My Cats

A family tradition

Growing up we always had a family kitty and that kitty was always fed dry food with the special occasion treat of wet food.

We loved our kitties and I always felt like my Mom had their best in mind. I guess when that’s the norm you don’t think much of it. I continued this routine when I became an adult and rescued my own kitties.

My journey as a cat mom

All 4 ate dry food and received special wet food treats on their birthdays. I chose more expensive dry food thinking I was doing even better for them.

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Sure my vet recommended wet food diets along the way, but I always thought back to my 18-year-old childhood kitty who lived a long healthy life on non-specialty dry food.

None of my childhood kitties ever overate and they were never overweight. They lived long healthy lives, so I thought, why change what works?

Even as my oldest fur baby Moosie started to gain weight, I always said, “more to love.” I didn’t think I was hurting him. In fact, I thought he was happy being chunky and being able to eat as much as he wanted.

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His regular vet visits yielded clean bloodwork and only an occasional stress-related Urinary Tract Infection (UTI) when we would move homes.

After a few years, I did watch his portion amount and switched him to weight management food, but he stayed pudgy.

A painful realization

It wasn’t until many years later when my Moosie developed Type 2 Diabetes that I knew a serious change was needed.

I had to prick my poor little man’s ear daily to check his glucose level and give him an insulin injection twice a day to control his blood sugar.

Not even considering the hundreds of dollars this was costing, I felt sick. I allowed this to happen. How could I confuse loving my sweet cow with allowing him to overeat???

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I learned everything I possibly could from my vet (and the web) about diabetes and quickly realized dry food and inactivity were our main problems.

We immediately started Moosie on the diabetic wet food prescription the vet recommended.

I needed to help my boy safely lose weight and prevent the same problem from happening to my other 3 fur babies.

This was really a wake-up call. Drastic changes were on the horizon. More to come… in the meantime check out our current giveaway.

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One more thing, if you are feeling like getting a little special something for your fur baby that is unique, made right here in the USA, 100% pup and cat safe, USDA certified organic and brought to you by a US company, check out Toe Beans online pet supplies store!

K Marie Alto
K Marie Alto

K. Marie is an animal lover, wife, kitty mom, dog auntie, writer, and co-founder of Toe Beans, a proud American family-owned online boutique pet supplies store focused on the improvement of the life of furry family members via pet parent education, better products, and advocacy. She has over 20 years of experience as a pet momma. She loves sharing her personal journey and experience as a pet parent via her blog and Facebook page where she currently has more than 40K followers (@furrytoebeans) and counting :-).

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