Cats on a dry food diet intake more 'dry matter' and intake less water than when on a wet diet

It might be common sense to many people but when a cat is fed on a dry food diet all the time, their 'dry matter' intake is greater than when fed on a wet food diet i.e. canned food. In effect this means that they eat more; they ingest more solid foods.

The phrase "dry matter" means wet cat food reduced to dry matter so that it can be compared to dry cat food.

And secondly, when cats are fed on a wet food diet they ingest (intake) more water even if they don't drink any water because wet cat food is about 80% water.

And it won't surprise you to know that when cats eat dry cat food they drink more water than they would if they were on a wet food diet. However, as mentioned in the above paragraph, they still intake more water on a wet diet than on a dry cat.

I hope I haven't confused anybody. The point here is that dry cat food is perhaps, in general, more appetising because of the fatty flavour enhancers with which dry food pellets are sprayed. These can make dry cat food pellets very attractive and almost addictive to some domestic cats.

Wet cat food of a low quality can be less than attractive depending on how hungry the cat is. Which tells us that, subject to affordability, a high quality wet cat food is the best and this should contain as much genuine "meat" as possible. It shouldn't be padded out with grain another nonmeat constituents.

The information comes from a study from as long ago as 1981: Feeding behavior of the cat fed laboratory and commercial diets. Link: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0271-5317(81)80053-X

---------

P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.