Feeding Your Cat

The best way to feed your cat is by using a good quality complete dry food. The following information will help to explain why. A good quality dry food is easier to feed and store. Good quality dry food does not smell strong and is more hygienic

Cats like to graze. Unlike humans and dogs most cats like to eat little and often when they want to. Putting down a large bowl of dried food is perfect for cats. It is always there for them. Cats like this. Most cats will just eat whet they need using this method. Alternatively if you have a cat that likes its' food (or a greedy cat) you can measure out precise amounts and feed them little and often to avoid them getting fat. Dry food is perfect for this. Leaving out tinned food or sachet food is unhygienic, as it smells, starts to deteriorate and dry up.

A good quality dried food is overall cheaper to feed on a daily basis than wet food, even though the cost of a whole bag seems expensive.

A properly formulated dry food will help to keep your cat's teeth clean.

Make sure you buy a good quality dried food. The cheaper dried foods have their limitations.

We use Hill's Science Plan VetEssentials at Daisy Street because we think is is a very good food, possibly the best food for cats. There are other good quality foods on the market though. The next section will describe the good properties of Vet Essentials and the points raised should help you in choosing your cat's food.

1. It is a life stage food. Cats require different balances of nutrients when they are young, middle aged and old VetEssentials meets these requirements.
2. It is specially formulated to help keep cats teeth clean. Look out for the tooth symbol on dried food.
3. It is formulated to help to control body weight.
4. It is made from high quality human grade ingredients.
5. It promotes urinary tract health. Older and cheaper dried cat foods can upset the urinary system leading occaisionally to bladder problems.
6. It is easy to digest, producing small, firm and non-smelly poos (relatively anyway, as all poo smells a bit).
7. The kitten stage food helps the immune system, the mature cat food supports the internal organs especially the kidneys.
8. It helps to promote a good coat and skin due to high levels of essential oils.

When chosing a catfood make sure it adresses the above points. If you want to use VetEssentials food then we have it in stock for all life stages. Just ask for some to try when you are next in.

A Few Dont's

1. Don'y buy cheap low quality foods.
2. Don't buy large bags of food that will take your cat months to get through as the food will go stale and not provide the nutrition that your cat needs. Even though it is more expensive it is better to buy small bags of food that are consumed in a few weeks.
3. Don't give human food as it may upset your cat. Milk can sometimes cause diarrhoea. Little bits are OK.
4. Don't change your cat's food suddenly. Change the food gradually over time.
5. Don't restrict the water. Make sure there is always plenty of fresh water to drink when feeding dry food.

Daisy Street Vets in Blackburn February 2015

30 years ago..... (David Higginson MRCVS remembers)

We rarely talked about a cat's diet. Cats were generally fed on canned food of dubious quality or seriously dangerous diets like nothing but fish or liver!. Many cats were overweight Bagpuss style, smelly, had irregular motions, a poor coat and awful teeth, and we accepted this as normal! We hadn't yet realised that most of these problems arose for poor quality diet. It wasn't until the late 80's and the introduction of Science Plan and Iam's diets that British vets realised just how much we could improve a cat's health by quality feeding.