Dry food as main food and wet on the side?

[BasinHaircut]

We are currently feeding DCAT katkins and giving gocat as a dry food.

We were previously doing katkins and dry food natures menu so his diet was completely grain free, but DCAT had a heart issue which I read up about and found that it could have been caused by lack of taurine, so switched dry to gocat as it is not grain free (and it’s the grain that has the taurine) and TBH something had to give as the cat’s food costs a fortune!

DCAT is not really eating his wet food at the moment and hoofing down the crappy gocat, so considering switching to dry food as a main food with wet as a treat. Does anyone do this? Are you supposed to?

If so, which foods do you use as I know gocat isn’t considered to be a great choice and wouldn’t want to give it as his main source.

should I go grain free complete fry food such as natures menu and then any old wet food with a bit of grain in?

I found that cats will eat whatever they will eat. Mine has go cat. Terrible food …. But I tried all the others and he refused to eat them and just went off and ate somewhere else.

mine has wet food for breakfast. I’m then out for most of the day ( four days a week) so I leave dry food down. But he only eats it occasionally. Then a wet pack when I’m home. And then one just before I go to bed or he pesters me for food all night. Mine is 14 years old. I found it hard to get him to eat what he really needed to as he just went elsewhere or ate mice.

Nature’s variety not menu!!

I wouldn't feed GoCat to any neutered male - it can cause issues with urinary blockages (speaking from experience).

We feed ours Harringtons Dry.

Mine have thrive dry and vets kitchen dry which are grain free and then have a mix of wet foods that aren't grain free

Please don’t feed go cat it is the worst! Taurine is natural found in meat and organs not grain, I would switch to a high complete wet food or even raw.

P.s. taurine is found in meat not grains and cat foods tend to have it added anyway.

We use royal canin as their main dry food. They have a pouch each of sheeba a day, not ideal but they’re so fussy with it.

I’m either confused now or was confused then about the taurine! 😂 Maybe it wasn’t taurine then.

yeah I know the gocat was an impulse decision based on limited choice in the shop I was in but he fucking loves it. Wasn’t meant to be his main food but he is choosing it over wet food.

I’m sick of throwing the £2 a day wet food in the bin. No point in buying the best stuff if he isn’t eating it.

will check out some of the dry foods mentioned above.

Our vet always said that any wet food is better than no wet food when it comes to neutered males.

All cat food has taurine as an added ingredient. Go Cat included. https://www.sainsburys.co.uk/gol-ui/product/go-cat-adult-dry-cat-food-chicken-and-duck-2kg-2789286-p

Our cats each have a wet pouch (Felix As good as it gets) in the evening, then in the morning they have a portion of Go Cat. They are very healthy 🐱 according to the vet!

Mine won't eat wet food at all after I tried to put his worm tablets in it.

All cat food has taurine as an added ingredient. Go Cat included.

GoCat is still a particularly bad food to give - especially for neutered males who are already prone to urinary blockages.

Our cats (2x neutered males, aged 12) only have dry food. We buy Science Plan Urinary and Dental and mix them together.

One of the cats had a blocked urethra when he was young (caused by his refusal to go outside to wee as he was traumatised by some building work we were having done). There was much toing and froing from the vets and they eventually amputated his penis as a last resort! He’s been fine ever since and the Urinary dry food has been great.

Not saying it doesn’t, i was saying it wouldn’t be found in grain and still doesn’t change the fact Go Cat is one of the worse things to give.

Op have you thought of seeing if you can trial some raw? It’s done wonders for all my cats over the years

My vet always says please dont feed Go cat,its worse than McDonald's.
I never have done but we were talking about high quality cat food

We feed dry applaws most the time. He has dry down 24/7. It’s grain free, pretty good value for the big 7.5kg bags and it’s a ‘wet’ dry food so not hard hard and a lot more moisture in it

I then put down just one small tin or sachet of wet per evening as he wasn’t eating it twice a day. He mainly only eats fillet type which isn’t complete so better he eats more dry.

Thanks all. There are so many options!

DCAT has his 6monthly check at the vets tomorrow and so am going to discuss food with the vet.

Am considering the Canin one for fat cats as he is a big boy, but want a view on whether this is wise or not as I am a bit overwhelmed with the array of foods.

And he is deffo coming off the GoCat. At the time he wasn’t really eating and dry food so wasn’t too worried, but now it’s all he wants!

Ours get adult Chicken hills cat food a tin of tuna once/week minimum and chopped cooked chicken once/week. Dreamies once/day at bedtime. They are very healthy almost 5 year old cats.

I wouldn’t feed gocat.
There are plenty of decently priced dry foods you could use. I use purina one and purina delicate digestion then I give wet food twice a day to keep their fluids up.
Jollyes own brand does well in tests and harringtons is decent too ( mine won’t eat it)

My cats refuse all processed food that doesn’t look like meat, they love blink cat foot and Applaws dry. They won’t eat the dark meat chunks in ‘gravy’ of any food, unless I mash it up with chicken. They also love applaws chicken and rice which works well mixed with cheaper more complete foods

Personally I wouldn't feed Royal Canin unless there was an actual medical issue that needed addressing, like urinary crystals or pancreatitis.

Cats are obligate carnivores and shouldn't really be eating foods that are mostly filler.

Mine won't eat anything that smells like cat food. We feed Applaws wet food twice a day, just half a small can or pouch and he has dry food the rest of the time. We feed Hills Oral or a senior dry food, always a decent quality. In the summer he supplements with mice.

If tou change from go cat, mix it initially and gradually reduce the ratio of go cat to decent food.

I'd not heard of the grain free link to heart disease in cats until another post on here the other day so had a look into it myself.

From what I, in my none expert self, can gather, this seems to be quite an American based phenomenon, and that the issue seems to be less about being grain free so much, but grain free diets where the bulk of the what would have been grains have been replaced by peas, lentils and/or other legumes.

Looking at ingredient lists on some American sites, it does look, generally speaking, like the meat content on the grain free diets is still low but is being bulked up on things like pea protein instead. Which from a 'cats are obligate carnivores so why are we feeding grain?' point of view somewhat defeats the point! Whereas in the UK if we are taking about grain free dry food diets, we a typically thinking about those which also have around 80% meat content - so grain has largely been replaced by meat and animal proteins.

It looks as though it is something in the higher legume content that is depleting or hindering absorption of taurine, causing taurine deficiency, and so the heart issues. So in reality grains have nothing to do with it, so adding them to the diet isn't actually beneficial. What it suggests you want is a diet without (or minimal) legumes. And plenty meat as that's where your taurine is naturally found :)

What proof do you have to support this assertion?