Canned Cat Food Heaven!

[catnapped]

Originally Posted by Time Bandit

Hi catnapped! Once a cat is hooked on fish, its a nightmare getting them back off, isn't it. I tried for weeks mixing fish canned with non-fish canned, and that wasn't yielding great results...once I'd get her to an almost all non-fish diet, she'd snub it completely...then it was back to more fish just to get her to eat. Finally, I actually had to transition her from fish, to dry food. I fed her Wellness Indoor, while we did the switch, and once she was ok with eating the dry only, then we worked on getting some non-fish canned in there, until she was eating all wet again. It definitely takes a lot of patience and time, and I can't guarantee that this will work for your kitty. I wish you the best of luck!

Thanks! It really is a nightmare. I started feeding her it to get her off dry, not realising how bad it was until it was too late! I think I will try your technique once her appetite recovers, since she does still like dry food and she's completely resistant to anything perfectly nice and healthy being mixed in with her fishy FF - even other fish. I'm on the verge of donating a bunch of unused tins we've tried to the local shelter but I might hang on a few weeks and see if this could work.

[Time Bandit]

Best of luck to you catnapped! I really hope you can break yer cats fish obsession soon.

I found yet another awesome local-ish pet store. I drive about 40 minutes to my job one way, and this place is like 5 minutes from my work. It's the first store that I've seen around here that actually sells the Merrick Before Grain 100% meat cans, in all flavors and I am going to grab a bunch of those (I can't wait to try out the rabbit and quail cans on the girls!).

[Susan]

My girls were hooked on fish last year, before I knew of the problems. I also ended up moving them to dry and then back to non-fish wet, although in my case that was done by accident rather than design. Still, it worked in the end!

[Time Bandit]

Susan, glad to hear the switching to dry worked for you too. It's obviously not ideal, but whatever it takes to break a fish addiction, right?

With the recent food changes for my girls, we're also working on better meal manners. Rochelle used to be fed separately in the bathroom with the door closed. This past week, we've been working really hard and now all three cats eat in the kitchen, maybe a foot apart. All three are incredibly comfortable with each other being that close now, and they're even learning to wait till the other girls are done before nosing in on their dishes (Alice still has a little work to go here, heh).

Just wanted to give a quick update on how the search for better canned is going.

So far Merrick (the regular cans, we haven't tried the Before Grain yet) and Nature's Variety Prairie, get huge paws up from all my girls.

Feeding Wellness has been a bit tricky. Alice and Rochelle love the canned, but are on the fence about the pouches. Samantha loves the pouches, but is kinda "meh" about the canned (I actually had to add some kibble just to get her to eat her whole breakfast...). Maybe I just have to find the right flavor for her...good thing is Wellness has lots.

One more note about the Wellness canned. I have never ever seen Rochelle eat any food like she does this stuff. Usually she leaves a little food in her dish, and she never licks it clean. The Wellness got her to not only finish all her food and lick her dish sparkling clean, but she also cleaned up both Alice's and Samantha's dishes too. And she even made a little growl (never heard one out of her before!) at Alice when she tried to nose in on her dish. I was really happy to see her eat like that, so Wellness will have to stay a staple in this house.

[Time Bandit]

Ack, double posty! XD Well, I had some errands to run this morning. I stopped at yet another local pet store I just discovered...this one is much closer than the other two, yay! They have a limited selection of premium canned foods, but the main reason I stopped in, is because they actually sell premade raw, and I wanted to try it out. I picked up a sampler each of Primal (4 different kinds of raw) and a Nature's Variety Chicken. And after, I went people food shopping too, and I got a nice big tub of chicken livers while there (the only organ I can find reliably). Half raw/half canned diet, here we come!

I just spent about an hour portioning, weighing, and bagging all the frozen raw I bought. Is it weird that I actually had fun doing it? I've been getting so into cat nutrition lately, that all I seem to do when I've got free time is research online. My boyfriend jokes that I pay more attention to what the cats eat, than to what we eat, haha!

The kitties got their first chicken livers today as a snack. They were so interested in me preparing their raw meals, that I couldn't say no to them. Rochelle had a small problem with it, in that she wouldn't eat it whole...but once I cut it up smaller for her, she ate about half. Alice and Samantha, however, tore into those things like they ate them all the time. I was actually pretty impressed with how they just knew to grab it whole and start gnawing on it. I love watching them eat! I think Rochelle may give me a bit of trouble with the raw, but all in all, I'm glad their first introduction to organ went pretty well.