How to help a picky cat gain weight?

tuftytail

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My cat, Tuft, is 9 years old, but ever since we adopted her at 3 she's been "picky" about what she eats, and never eats very much. Now that she's older, it's really starting to scare and upset me.

A little bit of background: our previous cat eventually died from diabetes, which she possibly got from the prednisone she was prescribed to treat chronic mouth infections. Since then, we've been reticent about feeding any cat a dry food diet - the specialist who treated our cat for diabetes told us that dry food is basically like "cereal" and can cause health problems. So both our cats are on a wet food diet (Tuft eats Fancy Feast - she only likes one particular flavor so that's what we give her).

Tuft will shy away from her wet food for a couple of days and then return to it. She's a small cat but she weighs about 7 lbs which is very low. I took her to the vet for a basic check-up and they did a full blood panel and chest/abdomen x-ray and found nothing wrong with her. The vet recommended a full abdominal ultrasound, but told us to try changing her diet and see if that helps. The vet prescribed mirtazapine, which is an anti-depressant and appetite stimulant. We give it to her when she stops eating and it seems to help for at least a few days.

When we offer her dry food, she craves it and eats more of it than she does wet food - but still less than we'd like to see her eat. The problem is, now that we've given her dry food, she shies away from the wet food even more than before. We were hoping to use dry food as a "last resort" rather than as a regular feeding option. Also, our other kitty gets upset when she is fed dry food instead of wet food, and will sometimes go after Tuft's food. We've tried feeding Tuft chicken - she seems to really enjoy it but then gets sick and vomits more frequently. Not sure what is causing that.

If anyone has any tips on how to feed her a diet that she will enjoy eating but is not unhealthy like a pure dry food diet, please let me know! I will probably end up getting the abdominal ultrasound done soon, but since this problem has been going on for years, I suspect that it might not show anything.
 

Willowy

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I wonder if crushing up her kibble, adding it to her canned food and then adding water, would work. I always do that when I have a sick ferret.
 
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tuftytail

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Willowy, that's a good idea but it seems to be the texture rather than the flavor of the dry food that she likes. We have mixed it with the wet food and she goes through and picks the little kibbles out. So I guess if I can find something crunchy that is healthy she would like that.
 

vball91

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I'm not sure if they're crunchy enough in texture, but what about freeze-dried meat only treats and freeze-dried raw like Stella & Chewy's? There's also Ziwipeak air-dried raw which isn't quite crunchy, more jerky-like in texture.

The best true kibble that I have found is Wysong's Epigen 90.
 

night wing

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My 15 year old male Manx breed cat has been a dry kibble addict all his life. He's not a big cat. More like a medium sized cat  since he has a very short body between his front and back legs. He weighs 11 1/2 pounds.

Since he's a kibble addict, he likes grain free Nature's Variety in three flavors. The Chicken, the Rabbit and the Limited Turkey Diet. The Limited Turkey Diet is the best for him since the only two ingredients in it that aren't to my liking are peas and salt. The Chicken and Rabbit have more vegetables in them and they are higher in protein and fat, percentage wise, than the Limited Turkey. In the link below you can see all the different flavors.

http://www.naturesvariety.com/Instinct/cat/kibble/all

I have to watch his weight since he's sleeping more now during the daytime than when he was younger. I expected this since he'll be 16 years old on June 13th. I buy Nature's Variety from my local Petco store.

He'll also eat Blue Buffalo Wilderness kibble, but Nature's Variety is his favorite kibble of choice.
 
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