No simple answer on canned food versus dry food

Q: A recent column of yours said canned cat food is preferable to dry cat food. My vet asks what I feed my cats at each visit but has never said to switch to canned cat food even when one of them had “issues” with vomiting. He recommended several things to try until finally, I found a dry food for sensitive stomachs that has helped. What are the pros and cons of dry versus canned cat food? — Sue Shimeck, Savage, Minnesota

A: Like most things in life this answer is not quite that cut-and-dried. Neither dry food nor canned food can be considered “better” than the other; both have all the nutrition a domestic cat needs.

However, I do not feed my cats dry food and it’s because of two things I noticed when I did feed my cats just dry food. Some cats I have kept on a dry food diet seemed to just eat most of it without chewing it. Then, many times, they would vomit the unchewed pieces in the middle of the night. At first I just thought they were hair balls, but when I actually broke the wads open I discovered that it was made up of undigested kibble. I tried giving those cats a smaller-sized kibble but they still did not chew it and the problem persisted.

Then, when I put the cats on a diet of just canned food the vomiting stopped. Obviously those cats just had issues chewing while other cats I had did fine on the kibble.

Another thing I noticed with cats on canned food was that their stool was much smaller. It seems that cats can digest all the ingredients in a can of cat food, while dry kibble has some ingredients added to maintain the integrity of the kibble that are not easily digested.

So, my conclusion, based on these personal observations, is that a canned food diet is better for us humans. I do not think that any scientific studies have been done to prove that it is better for the cats, though. This all happened to me three decades ago and all my cats from then on have only eaten canned food. Two other observations since then have been that my cats on canned food do not shed very much and they are always the perfect weight. However, I cannot offer any theories on why this is so.

Q: I just bought a house in the suburbs and I have taken up bird watching. One of my great pleasures for the past three months was listening to the birds singing in the early morning. However the past couple of weeks I have noticed that the morning is silent — no bird song at all and I wondered what happened? — Greg Sanders, Chicago

A: Do not worry, no ecological disaster has occurred. It is just now midAugust and the baby birds have grown and left the nest. Breeding season is over and the parent birds are resting and molting — losing their old feathers and growing new ones — to get ready for either winter or migration.

Since there is no longer a need to attract a mate or protect a territory, they do not have to waste precious resources singing. Late summer and fall is the time of the insects, in the same manner that you were able to listen to the birds singing in the morning, you can now listen to the insects singing in the evening, thus still taking pleasure in the natural world.