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My kitties will eat nothing but Purina Brand - and love the pouch #1, and specifically prefer Friskies (reg) and Fancy Feast. They will tolerate the Purina Pro, but are much happier with regular canned and pouch. And one kitty will not touch anything fish. Ugh, pooey, she hates it - will walk away from it and not go back. But then my kitties are spoiled, I've been told. They share a small can of Fancy Feast when they return in the morning from their potty duties. Then at lunch, they share a pouch. After dinner, it's in for the night with half a can of reg Friskies. My kitties HATE the new stuff in those plastic containers, they won't touch 9-lives with a 10 foot pole, and think the "indoor" cat food is pretty gross. They'd rather eat real grass in the yard.
My Charlie is a bit finicky, especially now that she only has one fang left. We normally feed her a rotation of the Wellness grain-free and Natural Balance LID (BB 7Avoderm sometimes when they have it) wet foods... all but the beef recipes since she doesn't like them much and a tiny house cat wouldn't go hunting a full grown cow I still leave her some Wellness Core kibble (extremely low carb) for free feed, but she doesn't seem that interested in it anymore.
When we first switched her, I started adding just a tiny bit of wet food to her dry food and adding a little broth to soften everything just a little... every few days I'd up the wet and cut back the dry until she was only getting wet in her bowl. High quality wet foods don't smell has highly as the cheaper ones because those have digestive broths on them to make them smell yummy. You can sometimes find the powder separately at speciality stores (it's not bad for them) and put a little in the good food to get them interested, or use clam juice or salmon oil to give it a bit more smell.
One thing that has helped me break her finickiness a little is the daily rotation between different flavors and brands, even putting in some homemade or raw now and then. She doesn't seem to have the poopy stinkies anymore that her system has gotten used to the changes. Our Petco still gives us the case discount if we buy 24 of 5.5 oz cans of the same brand, regardless of whether they are the same flavor.
In the Merrick line, so far my cat will tolerate the following wet foods:
- Turducken
- Grammy's Pot Pie
Anything with seafood she makes her worst 'yucky' face and looks at me with scorn.
Hee Hee. My finicky boy looks mournful when I put something down he doesn't like. He just sits there and stares at it as if it's the most depressing thing he's ever seen.
Well my cat rejected all the Merrick wet food (variety pack) after the 1st nibbles at it. This is after starting her on Evo wet cat/kitten food and then transitioning to Evo 95% chicken/turkey formula when she was a little kitten.
Around 8 months old she got finicky. Then she got really finicky and stubborn too.
Now she will eat only 1 tiny serving of wet cat food, and only if it's a chicken/turkey formula (no seafood), and only if she's really hungry, and only if it's a newly opened can, and perhaps only if the moon is in the right phase, then that's it.
Hour(s) later she wants no part of her wet food. A day later, no interest (after being packaged, refrigerated, and warmed up to dead mouse temperature).
I even tried defrosting/warming some of the leftover raw chicken formula dog food I have left since my dog passed away (Steve's Real Food). They are little frozen nuggets. I took out 2 little nuggets, defrosted, warmed, and then mashed them to make it easier to take bites. Not interested! (She still likes the dog's dry kibble, though. Evo red meat formula/low carb. She only gets 2 or 3 pieces of the dog's kibble as a treat).
She only wants her dry cat kibble and some mysterious mystical perfect wet food that apparently no one makes. The ones made for mortal cats disinterest her. She meows when I'm in the kitchen, I open up some cat food, put some on a small plate, she sniffs, looks at me with disdain, and walks away. Her kibble is upstairs and she nibbles on that throughout the day/night (Taste of the Wild formula and Instinct formula, mixed together).
sigh.
Last edited by lottamoxie; 08-28-2010 at 06:09 PM..
Her kibble is upstairs and she nibbles on that throughout the day/night (Taste of the Wild formula and Instinct formula, mixed together).
sigh.
That's part of the problem. Don't allow her to nibble on the dry kibble day and night. How can she have a good healthy appetite when she's munching 24/7?
That's part of the problem. Don't allow her to nibble on the dry kibble day and night. How can she have a good healthy appetite when she's munching 24/7?
This is true. Shadow would only eat kibble. I broke him of the junk food he was eating when I got him and switched him to Wellness dry. He would barely eat any wet at all. When I took him to the vet, he had gained 3.5 pounds and had elevated functions in his urinary tract so the vet told me to switch him to all canned. Once I took the kibble away (slowly), he had no problem adjusting to the wet. Now he gets Wellness Core dry only occasionally and pretty much eats wet the rest of the time. Cats raised on kibble seem reluctant to give it up, but you can switch them to canned with a little diligence.
Well first of all, the dry food I have my cat on isn't 'junk.' I use two premium non-grain formulas.
Nature's Variety 'Instinct' Grain-Free Chicken and Taste of the Wild Grain-Free 'Rocky Mtn Feline Formula' (salmon & venison). Yes, I mix them together and she gets some of each.
Nutrition-wise those formulas are excellent. Not as perfect as a raw food diet, of course, but certainly orders of magnitude better than the regular junk out there.
That said, I do want her to eat wet food in addition. She used to eat the Evo formulas along with some kibble, then rejected Evo wet a few months ago. I even gave her plain boiled chicken & rice (using up the leftovers from when I had my dog). She has occasionally eaten some of that and just as often rejected it (I have some small containers of it in the freezer).
Whatever the strategy towards more wet food, I do not want her staging a hunger strike or being stressed out. I don't need her to be on wet 100%. 50/50 seems like a good balance.
She's in excellent health, her coat is glossy/shiny, she has a lot of energy (1 yr old cat), she eliminates regularly, drinks water appropriately and whatever keeps her feeling/looking good is what I'll do.
Well what do you know...tonight my cat is eating the Trader Joe's (wet) turkey & giblets food with what appears to be gusto! I picked up a couple cans just to try it out.
All ours eat Wellness wet. It was a looooooong slow process to get them completely off of dry.
Don't know if this has been mentioned yet... but this site (written by a DVM) has VERY helpful info about wet feeding and more! www.catinfo.org
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I still leave her some Wellness Core kibble (extremely low carb) for free feed, but she doesn't seem that interested in it anymore. 
