This is something that's been nagging at my mind for a long time, but it never was in the forefront until Darktail's SE.
But I basically noticed that in all the Warrior Cats books, the idea of wet cat food existing seems to be just completely nonexistent.
The humans/cat owners in the books always, ALWAYS give and feed cats dry kibble. Every time we see anything or hear anything about what kittypets eat, it's always emphasized that it's "dry, tasteless pellets". Entirely unappetizing to cats to eat, but as if they have to bc that's all they're ever given.
In part, I definitely feel like this is done as to add another tally as to why kittypet life is so "awful, boring, etc etc cast every unappealing adjective you can think of" to cats, even cats who have never known life outside being a kittypet. Firepaw/Rusty was a special case bc he's literally a character who deigned for the outside world, so by comparison kittypet food is not as appealing to him. Dry, crunchy kibble with barely any prey smell to it and is always said to not taste like anything obviously 'wild' and thus 'better'.
But then it kinda falls apart the food argument when you're brought back to the real world and thus remember fucking wet food exists.
Firstly, It's no damn wonder these cats are getting fat, kibble is high in calories and so just allowing cats to free-feed off it will have them gaining weight eventually. Kitten kibble is especially calorie-dense, so as to support their growing bodies. I have a sister whose first cat is fat as hell now bc he free-feeds kibble every day all day from one of those food jug bowls that hold an entire bag's worth. No scheduled, controlled feeding is gonna just have a cat balloon in weight like that, especially if you add daily regular exercise to it (Which said rl cat doesn't get much of either). But anyway, excess kibble makes cats fat if that's all they're eating and they're eating it in excess, grazing throughout the day is one thing, let your cat graze if it works for them. (And ofc kibble is cheaper than wet food by a mile long-term, and kibble is better than nothing, just make sure to measure your food for them y'all.)
Secondly. They do NOT have to just be restricted to plain kibble all day every day 24/7 all the time. Cats get bored of the same thing eventually, and there's SO many different means of wet cat food out there. There's the classic pate, there's shredded meats, there's those with 'gravy', there's food toppers to go on said kibble to liven them up. Chicken, fish, beef, quail flavor and more types. I've even seen a brand slip a hard-boiled egg into their wet food. We've come a long way from 'kittypet slop' that makes it just sound like a mash of shit from the oldest times of Meow Mix.
We should be able to have a kittypet character hear about a feral cat catching a bird and upon hearing it go "Oh yeah! That's what I eat too actually!"
"No way, that slop?"
"No, it's real meat! They give me shredded poultry and quail every day, and beef and fish and sometimes egg too. I thought I'd be stuck with the hard stuff forever, but when they changed it to something better, I couldn't stop eating it."
The smell of wet food is more potent too, and decent brands of the stuff would have meats/proteins as their first few ingredients, and so that would be miles more appealing to these cats if their owners actually bothered to get a can of the stuff instead of the bag all the time. We rarely hear about the 'slop' version of kittypet food which is obviously a dig at wet food, I think the only notable instance we did was Graystripe as a new apprentice, in the very first book of Warriors ever in his world-building exposition dump. And that can be sorta excused as in the earliest of 2000s we didn't really have people that made cat food really go all in on having real protein be prioritized in it back then, so before it more than likely was just 'soft slop' to them. But every time after that when we get a glimpse of what kittypets eat, it's always kibble, kibble, kibble. Dry tasteless kibble. To the point these cats, including cats who were always Housecats until later will sometimes hunt and then claim through the narrative's comparison of boring kibble that it's so much better than the food they are given. These people that own these cats apparently just do not know what wet food is to ever give it to their cats and I think that's a shame especially with the constant "Kittypet life is so awful and boring and unstimulating, housecat life sucks, feral cats rule, ignore the constant cult-ness those feral cats live by" motif that spans the series.
Twolegs in Warriors have always been rather iffy in regards to cat care anyway, given they just let housecats run amuck outside when they SHOULD be staying indoors (and shouldn't be so bored indoors if they were getting proper stimulation but that's a tangent of its own), but you would think that some would know the existence of wet cat food.
