He's not missing something in his diet, but he may be missing something in his mental stimulation or enrichment. It's a very natural behavior for cats to hunt—that's really what they're built for. And when you think about cats in feral situations or in the wild, most cats will eat anywhere from 10 to 20 tiny meals a day. And they spend almost their entire waking time hunting because some of those hunting adventures are not always successful. When we think about cats getting some enrichment, if you have a cat that goes outdoors and can do so safely, then hunting is an excellent opportunity for them—provided they're not significantly affecting our local wildlife populations, especially songbirds. That's something to keep in mind. But we can also mimic this sort of enrichment with certain toys and puzzle feeders and things like that in the house or other safe environments.

If your cat has a health problem that your vet recommended a prescription diet for, then yes. Otherwise, prescription diets are suited for specific medical conditions. And so there's no health benefit to your average, young, healthy cat to eat, say, a kidney diet or liver diet. They may become unhealthy in those circumstances because certain nutrients are limited in those diets. And so we wouldn't want to feed them without a true recommendation from your veterinarian.

I wouldn't say it's more nutritious. There are some advantages to it. Wet food has a higher moisture content. It is also often higher in protein and lower in carbohydrates, which is more similar in makeup to small rodents and other things cats might eat in a more natural environment. I think that many kitties can maintain weight better on wet food diets, and they also get higher moisture and therefore stay better hydrated. But in terms of just baseline nutrition, a cat should be able to maintain a dry food diet if that's what is best for your lifestyle or your cat's lifestyle.

Sadly, no. Cats are what are considered obligate carnivores, meaning that they need to have a meat-based diet. That's different from dogs that are considered omnivorous, so they have a lot more variety in their diet. Cats need to eat a primarily meat-based diet. That being said, we also need to keep in mind that it needs to be a balanced diet, so just throwing some meat chunks at your cat every day is not going to work out. And we'll talk about that more later, but we want to look for a meat-based diet balanced by a veterinary nutritionist and comes from high-quality commercial pet food.

Unfortunately, yeah. Roundworms and hookworms are what we call zoonotic, meaning that they are passable to humans. This is typically through what we call the fecal-oral route, which means you get some sort of fecal particles on your hands, perhaps when you're cleaning the litter box or even petting your cat. And then you forget to wash your hands before you have a snack or pull a piece of cat hair out of your mouth; you could potentially transfer roundworm or hookworm eggs into your mouth and, therefore, your body, as gross as that is.

Other potentials that are less common are that hookworms in the environment can migrate through small cuts in your skin in your feet and can start to migrate through your body that way. It’s not super common, especially in our environment where it's really cold a lot of the year, but it can happen. And then the less common intestinal parasites like coccidia and Giardia are also contagious to people. Thankfully, we don't see those as much in cats, but we'd always want to maintain good hygiene whenever there are concerns with intestinal parasites.

Once you suspect that your cat has intestinal parasites, isolate them so that they're not sharing a litter box because cats sharing litter boxes are potentially exposed. And if you have a dog like mine that likes to check out the litter box for some afternoon snacks, then they could be exposed there too. Once we have diagnosed worms and have gotten the deworming in place, you would still want to maintain that separation for at least a few days. And if you have cats that have been sharing a litter box in the household that have been diagnosed with roundworms or hookworms, it's not a bad idea to deworm all the pets in the home to be safe.