Diet

Dry food or Wet Cat Food Dry cat food is best for Cats, because it will help clean their teeth and prevent the teeth from decaying in their later years. The other big plus of dry food is that you can leave it out without fear of it spoiling.

This is fine but there are many cats and kittens out there who will not touch dry food, so feed them small amounts wet cat food such as fresh fish, chicken, turkey and this is a favourite of mine, wafer thin slices of ham chopped up. If you are having problems with allergies then fish and chicken are a reasonably safe bet.

Canned cat food is more expensive, and once you open it, it lasts about a half hour before your cat decides it is no longer fresh enough! Canned cat food can be great for nursing ill or older cats. My recommendation would be a basic diet of dry cat food, with small amounts of canned cat food for variety and interest. Kittens, are not fully mature till about a year old, and will continue to ´fill out´ until they are two years old. All this growing burns calories. So, keep the dry food out at all times for your kitten.

Semi-Moist Cat Foods Semi-moist cat foods are lighter and easier to store and are very tasty to most cats and kittens. They can however be expensive, and often contain a lot of preservatives, artificial colourings, binders and sugar - ingredients that give the food its meat-like texture. Though capable of providing nutrition, semi-moist food is, in my opinion, the least desirable of all the commercially available cat foods. I prefer to stick with dry and canned cat foods for my cats.

Food Temperature
It is very important not to feed cats and kittens food that is either too hot, or too cold. If you cook fresh chicken or fish let it cool down before giving it to your cat. Room temperature is ideal.

Canned Cat Foods to Use and Avoid
You can try ´fish´ flavoured canned cat foods, since the fish flavours have a very distinctive smell that cats will recognize. Don't feed your cat or kitten straight tuna that is meant for humans, since a steady diet of this will deplete their bodies of vitamin E. You can feed your cat the tuna flavoured cat foods occasionally because they are supplemented with additional vitamin E to prevent this, but it might be best to avoid tuna altogether.

Quality vs. Price - Premium Cat Foods
How much can you afford to spend on food for your kitty is your decision. In all my years with cats, I have seen what quality food can do for them. Large, established pet food companies have a large investment in maintaining the quality of their products, so you can trust them to give your cat or kitten the vitamins and minerals they need.

The best brands, that more vets and breeders prefer are: Iams, Eukanuba, & Science Diet. If these are out of your price range, then Kal Kan and Purina are good alternatives. However, if you feed your cat healthy cat food, the fewer visits to the vet you'll have to make because of cat health problems.

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