Quote Originally Posted by Jessika
But with wet food you have to be very careful to pay special attention to their dental care. I will always recommend dry food over wet food for many reasons, the main being dental care. But if your cat is REFUSING to eat dry food, you may want to look into reasons why -- are they in pain? Are their gums tender? Do they have a loose tooth? A broken tooth? Cavities? Those are reasons to feed wet food... also obviously it has more water, but even with dry or wet food kitties don't generally drink a lot of water so I would always recommend feeding dry food over wet food unless there is a medical reason for it, or you are very good at caring for their teeth.
Claims that cats have less dental disease when they are fed dry food versus canned food are grossly overrated, inaccurate, and are not supported by recent studies. Many veterinarians are coming to the realization that this is a myth that needs to be dispelled. First, dry food is hard, but brittle, and merely shatters with little to no abrasive effect on the teeth. Second, a cat's jaws and teeth are designed for shearing and tearing meat, and cats that eat dry food grind it in a way that it ends up between their teeth. There it ferments into sugar and acid, thereby causing dental problems. Third, many cats swallow the majority of their dry food whole and thus receive minimal benefit from chewing motion. There are many factors that contribute to dental disease in the cat such as genetics, viruses, and diet. There remain many unanswered questions concerning the impact of diet on dental health, but feeding a high carbohydrate, species-inappropriate dry kibble diet is a negative factor, not a positive one.

I can attest to this fact, because Cocoa was fed a dry only diet for his first 9 years and last year he had to have 4 teeth pulled due to severe dental disease. So the myth of dry food keeping teeth healthy is just that, a myth.

I have not started home testing Cocoa yet. I am just getting used to the fact of having to give him insulin injections twice a day, but perhaps in the future that will be something I will do.

I have been trying to get him to be more active, he has lost all interest in toys as it was becoming very hard for him to move much. He and his brother Bandit both never did go for the laser type toys. They figured that one out from the start. Why chase something when there's nothing there to catch, lol.
But he always did enjoy going out for walks on his leash. Hopefully the weather will start getting better and I can once again start taking him outside for a little each day.

Emeraldgreen I hope you are able to help your Paddy with his weight. Do you feed him canned food? If not, I highly recommend you give it a try. Eagle Pack Holistic makes a good canned food too. If you would like some help choosing some let me know and I'll help. Giving Cocoa canned food has greatly reduced his desire for his kibble and he was an kibble junkie before. In fact I am now feeding some canned to all my cats everyday and I can see positive results in them all.
Freedom, thanks for the links, I will read through them as I am on a mission to find all the help I can for Cocoa.

Thank you to everyone for your concern and support for me and Cocoa. I'll keep you posted on his progress.