Wet food?

My new girl Lily who I only got the day before yesterday won't eat much of her wet food... I went out and bought her a big range of stuff so I could figure out what she likes best, but gave her the same dry that she was receiving before.
So the first day I gave her salmon stuff... she didn't even think it was food!
Then I gave her tinned stuff, tuna and seafood and egg... She licked up all the gravy stuff, and left the solids.
Same with the chicken,
and she's barely touched the beef in gravy I just gave her. I bought her the most expensive and good brand there too! Memphis LOVES it when he gets spoiled like that!
Any ideas on getting her to eat? She eats more than enough dry food and gets heaps of water, so I'm not worried about that. She needs the nutritional content of wet food though.

Would it be okay to give her a very expensive and good brand (ingredients, not costliness) of dry food and cut wet? Or would it be better to slowly add the wet food into the dry...?

I rarely give my cats wet food (sometimes for a treat) and they are very healthy. I think wet food is overrated. A good quality dry has everything they need.

If you just got her, she's probably just nervous about things. When we bought Charlie home (6 hr drive with no food) I thought he'd dive right in. But no - took him a few days to really get into eating. It was more fun to check things out and get adjusted.

You might try a quality dry food and leave her free feed the next few days and then offer a little canned at a time.

Or if you don't want to do the dry, then just put out a teaspoon of canned food at a time; let it down for 1/2 hour, then offer it again an hour or two later and see if she eats it.

I thought she was just nervous the first night, but she's walking around like she owns the place now, and eating her dry like crazy.
I'll try to introduce the wet slowly. There's a chance she's never even had it before - I emailed the woman I got her from but haven't gotten a response yet.
Thanks =]

To date I have tried 100+ different wet foods and have found only a handful that my picky crew will eat.

Each cat has very individual tastes when it comes to foods (and most things I guess). What one cat scarfs up like it is ambrosia another cat won't touch. Sigh.

Have you tried the pate style, or just the stuff in gravy? Both my cats will lick the gravy but not eat the meat, but they eat the pate stuff.

If she will not touch wet food, she would be fine on a high quality dry food. Some cats just absolutely hate wet food! Especially if she is a older cat and the previous owner only fed her dry.

Some cats are more picky about what they eat than others. One of our cats will not eat wet food. He will take a few licks at it, then he's done. He will literally jump up and down for his kibble though. It's certainly not a requirement to feed wet food. There are benefits and downsides for a wet food diet, just like there are for a dry food diet. It's the ingredients and the quality that are most important. Will she eat kibble? If she does, find a high quality dry food that she likes.

She loves her dry food! She eats so much of it, which is so weird because Memphis sort of looks at it and then looks at me like "Where's the wet stuff?"
I tried chicken and seafood last night and she ate half of it. I think she likes it, just not in small quantities. I buy single servings though, so I'll have to give her half a single serving and dry food. That being said, Memphis is a VERY big cat, and she's about half his size... So I probably shouldn't feed them the same amount

I went to the grocery store today and I bought a massive range of different brands and flavours... I figure, what she doesn't like, Memphis will eat!

I buy my kitten Fancy Feast and he likes Ocean Whitefish and Tuna Feast, Savory Salmon Feast, and Cod, Sole and Shrimp Feast. Each of which are the pate style. Anything else, he'll just lick up the gravy.

I buy those three because they have a higher protein content than most other brands out there. When buying wet food, the protein content is very important. That way they are eating less filler and get more meat. So don't get sucked in by the fancy sounding flavors, look at the ingredients so you aren't basically feeding your cat junk food that isn't really good for them.

He also eats Meow Mix dry food (the kitten brand lil nibbles). I give him a can a day of the wet food and the rest of the day he eats the dry food.

My two get dry kitten food that is available all the time. Dh feeds them half a can of wet food per day just before I get home from work. And every morning before I leave for work and every evening, they get 4-5 kitty treats. They are so spoiled. They know when it is treat time and will hit dh up everytime.

When it is time for their "special" (wet food) dh will prepare it and then call "babies" and they will come running. They can be sound asleep and when he calls they will still come running.

Its good to know I'm not the only one.. my cat will eat a little wet food -- but she doesn't really get excited over it..I've never had a cat like this before.

I went out and bought her some dine, fancy feast, whiskas, and some refrigerated food (kangaroo meat and salmon).
She doesn't seem to be interested at ALL in the pate type.
But I'll keep trying, just little bits at a time. I guess it can't hurt to just give her a good quality dry and wet every few days.

I found our cats didn't like the "pate" type wet food, but the kind with chunks in gravy they really love. We give them a little treat of it morning and evening. Other than that, we free-feed dry food.

By the way, among all the cats over which I have any control or of which I have any knowledge, they all eat mainly dry food. All of my brother's cats have lived their whole life on Purina Cat Chow. None have ever had any health problems associated with dry food. We have never brushed a cat's teeth, and we've never had a cat lose any teeth.

So, to some extent, I approach the wet/dry argument much as I approach any "fad diet" argument. In theory, a cat would probably be healthier with two wet meals per day, which would come much closer to matching what they would eat in the wild. But feeding dry food seems to work just fine for a lot of cats.

And, to be honest, I'd rather seen a cat rescued and fed the cheapest store brand dry food by someone who has a very small budget, than have the cat euthanized by the shelter.

Originally Posted by mrblanche

And, to be honest, I'd rather seen a cat rescued and fed the cheapest store brand dry food by someone who has a very small budget, than have the cat euthanized by the shelter.

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I very much agree with this!