Kitten Food

Mother's milk is the best food for a kitten during the first eight weeks of life, but after that it's time to offer a nutritious kitten food formula to your pet.

About Kitten Food

Why should you feed kitten food to cats who are less than a year old? Perhaps you already have one or more adult cats, and you're thinking it's more convenient to feed the same adult formula to your new addition. Well, it may be convenient, but you might be sacrificing your kitten's nutritional needs if you do.

You see, kittens have very small stomachs, so they tend to pick a few bites and go, rarely eating a full meal in one sitting. Combine this eating habit with the type of rapid growth kittens experience in that all-important first year of development, and it's easy to see why they need a formula that's packed with optimum nutrition in every bite.

Nutritional Advantage

Kitten food differs from adult cat food because higher percentages of protein and fat are used in the formula.

The following is only a general comparative analysis, and these percentages may vary from one brand to the next.

Now let's take a closer look at a few of the main components in kitten food and learn why they are so important to your kitten's overall development.

Protein

Proteins are necessary for the growth of healthy muscle tissue and cartilage. Getting plenty of protein in its formative years may actually help your cat to avoid painful degenerative conditions later in life.

Fats

Fats, such as the Omega-3 fatty acid complex, are essential for delivering fat soluble vitamins to your pet. Fats also provide extra energy, something all energetic young kittens need as they pass through this year of rapid growth.

Minerals

Minerals promote the growth of strong bones and teeth. Calcium, phosphorous, and potassium are critically important to your kitten's development.

Wet or Dry?

For years, conventional feeding wisdom has lead us to believe that a dry food formula was better for our cats because it provided some teeth cleaning action during chewing.

While this may indeed provide some dental benefits, the fact is that dry cat food is largely made from carbohydrates, an ingredient that can contribute to feline obesity if your cat over indulges, as some cats tend to do.

By comparison, a quality wet cat food formula is divided nearly evenly between protein, and fat, with the correct percentage of vitamins and minerals in the mix. Since this is much closer to the natural diet cats would receive in the wild, it is digested much more efficiently.

Recent studies seem to point to the conclusion that cats fed a strictly wet food diet do not have a significantly higher rate of dental disease than cats that are only fed dry cat food.

So should you feed dry or wet kitten food? It's your choice, but perhaps it's best to have a bit of both worlds, and have dry kitten food available throughout the day, while offering a premium blend wet cat food for the evening meal.

Summary

Your kitten's nutritional needs are much more demanding than those of an adult cat, so wet or dry, choose a quality kitten food blend that will help your baby grow into a healthy and strong cat.

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