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.

So there's no true prevention. In a lot of ways, there's no one way just to say, "My cat's never going to get parasites." But regular deworming can prevent them from becoming a problem.

The best thing to do to prevent tapeworm is to prevent fleas. Even for indoor cats, I recommend a regular topical application of a product like Revolution Plus. And the nice thing about Revolution Plus is it protects against fleas and ticks and therefore prevents flea infestations. But it also deworms for at least roundworms and hookworms each month, which will keep us at a good baseline.

They can because fleas get in the house. They can potentially get tapeworms from getting fleas. But just like I said earlier, the dirt on your shoes from coming inside could bring in roundworm or hookworm eggs that could then expose your cat.

The most common types of parasites - roundworms and hookworms - are pretty ubiquitous in the environment. You can find them almost anywhere. And their eggs are super hardy. There have actually been a couple of crazy people that have seeded yards with roundworm eggs and then used a flamethrower to completely destroy the yard, and the roundworm eggs were still viable at that point, so that gives you an idea of how hardy they are. You can find them everywhere. Walking around outside or even being exposed to the dirt on your shoes can cause potential exposure to these sorts of parasites.

Other worms, like tapeworms, are only transmitted through flea infestations. When your cat is grooming themselves and ingests a flea that has tapeworm larvae, that's how that they would potentially become infected there. Other less common intestinal parasites like Giardia or coccidia are typically transmitted pet to pet or through contaminated water sources. And one thing to think about with kittens specifically is that hookworms and roundworms can be passed through the placenta while they're in the womb or can even be transmitted through milk. That’s why it’s vital to do regular deworming of queens as well as kittens.