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QualifiedKitten@lemmy.world

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • I believe the logic is that dry food is better for their dental health, because the firm texture is better at scraping away plaque, although there’s definitely disagreement on that, and there are other ways to address dental health.
    The argument for wet food is that it does a much better job at keeping them hydrated, which is important for a number of bodily functions, including urinary health. Studies say that while cats fed primarily dry food likely drink more water, their total fluid intake is still lower and they’re often still chronically dehydrated (which is also not good for dental health). Moistening kibble can help, but it’s still not as effective as wet food for ensuring your cats are well hydrated.

    My oldest strongly prefers kibble, but after his urine test at his 1 year check up indicated early signs of urinary troubles, the vet said to either switch him to 100% wet or to a prescription kibble. It took some trial and error, but he’s on 100% wet now, and only gets crunchies as treats. His urine tests have been great, and the vet also said his teeth look good.


  • To add to your coments about calorie content of foods, in the realm of wet foods, pates tend to have the most calories per ounce, while “extra gravy” foods often have the fewest calories per ounce, since the “gravy” is mostly water.
    I’m sure there’s some exceptions to this, but I’ve spent a lot of time creating a spreadsheet comparing foods on a variety of aspects in an effort to find the most affordable foods that work for both of my cats’ needs & preferences. If in doubt, the cans should list both kcal/ can and kcal by weight.


  • How many cats do you have? Are they overweight? Can you provide more details about your specific situation?

    If you have cats vomiting due to eating too much too fast, maybe try slow feeders? There’s also microchip feeders available so that your slower eaters can come back on their own schedule, and it’s more difficult (but not impossible) for other cats to steal their food. And finally, there’s automatic feeders that will dispense food on a schedule. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen anything that combines even two of these into a single product.

    In my case, I have 2 resident cats, and frequently foster. My Tabby is a slender grazer, and although he prefers kibble, the vet said he needs to either eat wet food or prescription kibble (urinary). My Void LOVES food and will devour almost anything, and would gladly be a total potato if he could.
    I use a microchip feeder for Tabby, and feed him twice per day, leaving the food out for about 2 hours at a time, which seems to be enough time for him to eat enough to maintain his weight. Void currently eats from a basic/standard bowl. He also eats twice per day, and usually finishes his food in less than 5 minutes, but has only vomited when there was an urgent medical condition, so I haven’t actually tried a slow feeder for him yet.



  • If you live somewhere where the 2 day shipping actually gets to you in 2 days, you live close enough to a brick and mortar store where you can get whatever you need even faster.

    I’m always looking for ways to avoid Amazon, and if I had a car, this might be true, but because I live in the downtown core where parking is extremely expensive and transit covers most of my needs, I don’t have a car, although a significant portion of the retail stores near me have shut down in the past few years. So, if I want to buy things from a brick and mortar store that’s not a grocery store or random boutique, I have to spend 45+ minutes each way on a bus to the stores in the suburbs. And since I’m on public transit, picking up bulky items, heavy items, or a large quantity of items is not very practical. A large selection of Amazon’s items are available to me via same day or next day shipping (and they show up on time ~97% of the time), so they actually do get to me faster than figuring out how to get the same items from a brick and mortar store. I have most definitely wasted 2 days running around to various stores only to return empty handed, and eventually order it from Amazon anyway.



  • I let my cats sniff almost everything, and they usually walk away. For example, today I let them sniff some both raw chicken that I was preparing for my own dinner, and both gave it a few good sniffs before walking away. Most recently, I discovered that my youngest enjoys peanut butter! I believe it was the same cat who has also tried to eat my dried mango on multiple occasions. It was either my oldest or a friend’s cat who repeatedly took me up on the offer of banana chips.


  • Last time I tried Linux was about 10 years ago. I installed multiple different combinations until I found one I liked (I forget which though). I was attending university at the time (chemistry) and had it dual booting so I could switch back to Windows as needed. I really tried, but everything on the Linux side was just so buggy or complicated.
    I was using Open Office or something similar, mainly for spreadsheets, and I just kept needing to switch back to Windows so I could spend my time getting the actual work done, rather than trying to figure out how to make the computer work. It was so long ago that I don’t remember the details, but I vaguely remember it repeatedly freezing up on me for relatively simple spreadsheet tasks… the kind of stuff they teach in beginners or maaaaybe intermediate Excel tutorials with 10-50 rows of data.
    Eventually, I gave up on trying to do any of my work in Linux and figured I’d come back to it when I had some free time. When I finally had some free time, I decided to wipe the current Linux install and try something else. I had gone through the installation process so many times before that I thought I remembered the steps. Well, I didn’t, and I managed to delete something super critical and couldn’t even boot to Windows anymore. After much trial and error, some kind internet stranger offered to help walk me through it… the only problem was that they were only familiar with Arch (?), so that was the distro we were going to use to get me back up and running. We got it fixed so that my computer dual boots, but I have to supervise the boot process every time since the default boot is Arch, and I’m just not ready to deal with that.
    I’ve casually looked a few times to see if I can figure out how to change the boot order, but I’m too scared I’ll end up worse off, so I’ve just left well enough alone since then.

    I have an Android phone and rooting it is always the first thing I do, so it hasn’t scared me off tinkering altogether, but I hardly touch a PC outside of work anymore, so there’s just no motivation to try again.