I adopted an adult kitty a few years back and he had horrible dental issues which resulted in having most of his teeth extracted (I ended up with significant discounts per tooth because most of them basically fell out once any stress was applied.) After a few weeks of wet food he went back to eating mostly dry. Per my vet, cats mostly swallow pieces of dry food whole and the crunching occasionally heard is more the result of pieces of food getting caught between teeth while repositioning in the mouth to swallow.

I still give the little guy a fat tablespoon of moist food every morning as a treat, but aside from that he just eats dry without a problem.