what is the best approach to feeding a cat? dried food such as iams or royal cain mixed with some fresh meat or should you also include tinned food in their diet?
A home made diet needs to be researched very carefully to make sure it's balanced - fresh meat alone is not enough. It's ok if it is fed as a treat and other complete food is provided (either wet or dry) but it shouldn't be more than about 10% of the diet otherwise your cat won't be getting a balanced diet.
I definitely prefer feeding a mostly wet diet. It contains more moisture which is important as cats don't tend to drink much water.
Radar was weaned onto dry only, and when we first brought him home he bugged us any time we had food in front of us, so I introduced wet food and he loved it, and doesn't bug us for our dinner so much now!
Because he is still growing (he's now 5 months) he always has some dry food available - this is useful for us as we are not home 24/7 and dry food can be left out for longer than wet, and so he always has something available this way. He gets Hills Science Plan kitten.
We also feed 2 single serving pouches of wet food a day, one in the morning and one at night. I find pouches useful having only one cat, as we don't have to keep open cans of cat food in the fridge. I particularly like the Hi Life pouches. Ingredients - meat (60%), jelly. No wheat or fillers!
He is the right weight for his size and age, has good muscle tone, lots of energy, and his fur is lovely, thick and soft, with the black patches of fur looking nice and glossy. He looks to be a good healthy kitten on this diet.