eating habits

Question
Our Siamese cat doen not chew her kibble. Is this a common problem? And how can we get her to chew her food?

Answer
Becky,

It's not uncommon for some cats, especially those with dental disease not to chew kibble. Honestly I don't recommend feeding kibble, I know it's more convenient, but it's not really what cats are designed to eat. Kibble is very dry and cats are unique in that they don't tend to have a very big drive to drink water because they evolved from the Egyptian deserts where water was scarce - essentially their bodies are designed to gain most of the moisture that they need to survive and be healthy from their food. My recommendation would be to look at www.catinfo.org - this website was created by a veterinarian to help educate pet parents about the unique nutritional needs of their feline companions. Dr. Lisa Pierson has recommendations for high quality commercially produced canned foods as well as information on how to feed a properly formulated homemade diet - our family veterinarian recommended catinfo.org and Dr. Pierson to us when we nearly lost our eldest cat as a result of the Menu Foods fiasco in 2007. Obviously, just like many pet parents we lost faith in the safety and quality of most commercially produced pet foods and we wanted to educate ourselves about how we could safely and properly feed a homemade diet to our cats. Personally I think that Dr. Pierson's approach is fantastic - she puts things in terms the average person can easily understand (which isn't the case with most pet food labels, trust me!). If you have any further cat related questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me again at any time, I'm more than happy to help you and your cat out to the best of my ability.

Kind regards,

Ali