A dry food tale

Hi - I'm very new to this forum, but I've been reading alot of posts on here & I've seen alot of questions about dry food for cats - Now I have a tale to tell about dry food - I have 7 kitties ranging in age from 12 to 15 - I've always fed them twice a day wet food & let them eat dry food whenever they wanted it - I have one cat that throws crystals on me every now & then & because he won't eat the urinary special food, a vet told me to try Purina Urinary Tract Health Formula which all the kitties have been eating for years - I also added in purina's one beyond dry with it for different tastes - About 8 weeks ago I couldn't find Dry Beyond one anywhere, went to their website & found out they were changing their formula - I decided to try & find somethingelse & found what I thought was a really good dry food - Chicken #1 on bag plus cranberries & no junk(like corn, wheat, soy, etc.) Thought I had really found something good, but within 6 weeks I started having all kinds of problems with my kitties - 2 had upper resp. infections, 1 started getting crystals again, 1 girl got a bad UTI, 2 boys started getting listless & poor little Barbie got a real bad UTI & it seems she might have diabetes - They all started drinking tons of water & the litter boxes were almost running over with the urine output - I stopped using this dry food as soon as sypmtoms showed up, but they were already sick - The vet came & everybody seems to be on the road to recovery, but I've really have been overstressed with little sleep, putting antibotics down throats, shooting water down throats & testing Barbie's BG levels in case I do have to put her on insulin(So far so good levels have been between 84 & 195) - I wrote this so everybody could see what dry food can do to your kitty - I sure don't want to see anyone go thru what I've been thru - I now feed mine every 6 hours, wet food only - I feed what was recommended to me by people on this site (Fancy Feast - Chicken - Turkey & Giblets - NO FISH) - People on here are very helpful & smart please listen to them about NO DRY FOOD!!!!!!! - And that's my tale about dry food!!!

 

thanks for sharing your story about dry food. i have 11 cats and i never really knew how bad it was. since one of mine got diabetes and i was so lucky to find this group, i am slowly changing them all over to wet only food. i can't believe what i have learned about dry.
thank you and i hope your gang is all better soon. take care.
nadine