{Further to this post.}
I've suspected this...
My cat food provider equates one cup of dry food to two cans of wet food, a cup being defined as 100 grams, and the can as 170 grams. So ~ at least, in terms of Medi-Cal's Reducing Formula ~ 100 grams of dry cat food is the nutritional & caloric equivalent of 340 grams of wet cat food.
My other kitties disdain the kibble, surviving with monastic discipline on only their own portion of paté plus whatever they dare filch from each other; once in a while, they may eat dry food that has wet food sticking to it, but more like as not they'll just lick the wet food off it...
And my zaftig feline beauty scarfs all their leftover kibble.
{forehead smack}
No wonder there's so much of her to love ~~ she's getting three times as many calories out of the same bellyful.
~
I've been garnering reference material on the care of kitties; and, as in human nutrition, there seem to be two schools of thought on feeding practices.
On the one hand, one ought to carefully controll the amount of food to which kitties have access, and feed two or three small meals a day. The idea is, cats in the wild "catch when catch can"; so, in order to best accomodate the feline metabolism, one should strive to mimic their natural feeding habits. According to proponents of this approach, kitties with unlimited access to food are likely to consume unlimited amounts of food.
On the other hand, one ought to have food available at all times so kitties can graze at their own leisure. The idea is, cats with restricted food intake are unnaturally dependant on you for nourishment, which gives them a famine mentality; they will bolt their food, they will compete with each other at feeding time, and they will try to eat things just to find out if it's edible. According to proponents of this approach, kitties with unlimited access to food are likely to self~limit their consumption of food.
And the middle way, of course, is to leave out dry food for snacking, and put out wet food for meals, which infuriates both the no~snacking~between~meals! crowd and the no~tempting~with~desert! crowd.
If only somebody could contrive a dispenser that provided kitties with access to fresh wet food at their behest...
I remember those, says a ghostly and wistful feline voice from a much earlier generation, we used to call them house mice...
Posted by edgar at September 11, 2003 09:08 AM