My roommate's cat was diagnosed with diabetes - apparently this is quite common in cats. The vet told her to feed it less dry food, which tends to be high in carbs.

Okkkk but why are there all those carbs in cat food to begin with?? If the ppl at Purina know that cats are obligate carnivores which of course everyone knows, then WHY are they putting corn & rice in all their food?

I know it's cheaper but it's irresponsible. It makes me mad & upset.

This is a subject that I'm pretty passionate about.

I think the bottom line is just like healthy people, there's no money to be made in healthy cats. Dry food is cheap and convenient and we end up at the vets.

I have 3 cats.

One of them, the oldest (He'll be 18 in October) had been packing on the pounds since about his age of 8. My other two are both 9 years old. I started feeding the oldest 'diet' cat food upon recommendation of the vet (both dry and canned). After years of frustration I did some research.

I found out that the worst canned cat food is a million times better than the best dry. Most 'natural' cat food has a high water content. And yes, cats aren't designed to digest much grain of any kind. . . perhaps just the small amount that may be in the stomach of it's kill. Upon switching my cats to a canned food that did not contain any grain of any sort I very happily watched an old failing cat become much more healthier. There are some good brands out there with no rice or grain filler. Upon further research and effort I began making raw cat food. You don't see a cat barbequing the chickadee before it eats it. It was amazing how much health returned to my oldest cat (and he dropped a few pounds effortlessly) and enjoyed a renewed sense of health with the younger two.

But alas the old cat is not able to have the raw any longer as he is having kidney trouble. The protein content is too high for his kidneys to handle. He now only eats a lower protein canned food - never dry - and is still enjoying fairly good health. I am sure he would not have survived this long if I would not have changed his diet.

I wish I had known better when the cats were younger. I would have never have fed them dry food. I would have started them out on raw and kept it that way. And happily you can get commercial raw cat food too - it's frozen.

Sometimes they all natural chicken hearts and gizzards and my local health food store. yum yum

I feed my cats about half and half between raw meat (and bones) and Newman's Own Organic wet food.