Food and Nutrition

What should I feed my cat? What kind of food? Which brands? How much? How often? Wet or dry? Or both? Scheduled or free-feeding? What about all these special diets—senior cats, indoor cats, hairball management, urinary tract management, "lite" formulas—do they really work, or are they mostly hype to get us to get us to spend more money? Is organic better? What about raw and homemade diets? And supplements? Can I feed kitty milk? Human food? Are there any human foods that are dangerous to cats? What if I have multiple cats? Where does cat food come from, anyway? How is it made? What are all those ingredients?

Questions about what, how, and when to feed kitty are pervasive and seemingly never-ending. This is not surprising when you think about it:

• Cats' nutritional needs are quite different than humans.'
• It's practically impossible to fully simulate cats' natural diet—the diet eaten by wild cats for the last 25 millions years or so—when feeding the cats who share our homes.
• There are a myriad of cat food brands and varieties, and they are changing, and expanding, all the time.

The following articles discuss various aspects of feline nutrition and diets, both from kitty's perspective ("What do I need, what do I like?") and from a more practical angle: Given the available array of products, and common time and money constraints, what are workable yet healthy and palatable approaches to feeding the (often hungry) cats in our lives?

• Original and Modern Diets; Basic Nutritional Requirements
• Types of Formulations; Equipment; Feeding Schedules
• Wet and Dry Food
• Reading Labels
• Alternatives to Standard Diets

We hope these articles make this broad, sometimes complicated, sometimes highly individualized subject easier to "digest" and help you to help your cats be as healthy as they can be.