Cat Suddenly Won't Eat His Favorite Food?

tulosai

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I'm putting this in nutritiion not health because I don't think it is a health issue, though health advice if anyone thinks it's necessary is also welcome.

I feed my cats a rotation of grain free wet foods, some expensive, some less so, and some healthier than others.  Fancy Feast classics are in the rotation, and they are hands down my cat Bingley's most loved food in the universe. Today I tried to give him the Beef Classics and he would have nothing of it.  The expiration date is a full 2 years away and it looked and smelled fine to both me and my other cat Darcy, who happily chowed down.

Initially I was quite alarmed at his refusal to eat, but when I offered him a Fancy Feast Chicken Classics he was all over that and happily lapped it up.  He also happily accepted a few treats afterwards, so I don't think he is off food- just this one kind of food.

Eating (other than refusing the one food this morning), litterbox habits, energy/playing are all normal otherwise.

Has anyone else ever had something like this happen abruptly? Is it possible this was a one-time thing or will he likely be off this one food forever?

I have never had anything like this happen before- my cats are pretty much the opposite of picky eaters.  Bingley rejected one other kind of food once, but that was on the first try and I never tried it again, and it was also years ago. Pretty much for them, if you can eat it, it is good... dry, wet, raw, cheap, expensive, grain free, too much grain...they've loved it all in their lives.
 

mosimom

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Yes! I order my cat food from chewy.com. I ordered her a case of her usual Wellness cubed chicken. She has been eating this with gusto for at least 10 months. I opened the first can and prepared it and she sniffed and walked away. She was hungry but refused it. I opened another can and she still refused it.
I called chewy and they sent me a new case without charge. Told me to do whatever with the rejected case. She ate the new case as usual.

They make canned food in many batches throughout the day and some can be tainted with bad meat or other ingredient. Your cat knows best.
 

betsygee

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They make canned food in many batches throughout the day and some can be tainted with bad meat or other ingredient. Your cat knows best.
I think this must be true.  Our four older cats eat Friskies pate, with Soulistic pouch food as a 'topper'.  The last two days all four of them have eaten the Soulistic but not the Friskies. In fact, we planned to trip to the pet store today to get new food.

.
 

lilin

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My kitty just did this to me! She loved her raw food, and suddenly wouldn't touch it. She'd nibble at the chicken, but wouldn't go anywhere near the rabbit.

I gave her some back-up Fancy Feast canned that I had laying around just to make sure she wasn't refusing food in general. She ate that with no problem.

I don't know if there's something wrong with this batch. Maybe she's just asserting her ownership over me.


But I plan to get a fresh bag of raw food to see if she'll eat it. If she does, I'm going to go ahead and assume there was something wrong with that batch, and as someone else said, sometimes kitty knows best. If not, I'm going to get some higher quality wet foods and just carry on with that for a while.

As long as she's eating appropriate amounts of some kind of food, I wouldn't worry about it health-wise. Either she's messing with you as cats sometimes do, or something's up with the food.
 
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tulosai

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Thanks all! This was  a new batch of the fancy feast so I am discarding the remaining just in case.  I will probably call/write to the company because it does sound like I'm  not the only one this is happening to.For now I think I'll just take that kind out of the rotation and perhaps in a month or so try to add it back in. It was all just really shocking   to me because a big part of the reason I leave the fancy feasts classics in the rotation at all is just that they LOVE them (it also doesn't hurt that they are more affordable than a lot of the rest of what's in the rotation, won't lie).

Thanks again. He continued to eat normally other than the one incident last night and this morning, and still acting normal so I do think it's unfortunately some kind of issue with the food... if not it being bad, maybe they have slightly changed the formula or something.
 

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Interesting.  I feed Fancy Feast.  New kitten I have only had a couple of weeks.   I started her on Fancy Feast as soon as I got her.  So far she is eating it fine but good to know if she starts sticking her nose up at it.  I also feed Friskies and Sheba in the rotation.  All pate types.  
 

mrsgreenjeens

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Callie pretty much will only eat Fancy Feast, and she usually likes the Beef, but she also ate only a tiny bit of it this time, and then proceeded to throw it up
.  Something was definitely wrong with the can we had.  I could tell from the get-go, but thought it was just me
 

fishlips23

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Registered on this website just to add in my experience! We bought new cases of Fancy Feast classic (chicken, beef, and turkey) on Saturday. We have two cats around 1 year old. On Sunday, the male (Figaro) was acting weird...hiding under the bed, running away from us, and not finishing his food. Never have we seen him act like that. Our female is more of a dainty eater, so we didn't think much when she didn't finish her bowl (Fig usually eats his AND finishes hers before she can). Monday, he was acting more normal, but he did have a few instances of hiding. I called the vet and they advised us to bring him in Tuesday. The vet couldn't find anything wrong with him except his stomach/intestines were a little sensitive to the touch. Last night (Tuesday), I opened up another can (we still hadn't connected the dots). They both flat out refused to touch it. That's when my husband suggested it might be their beloved food. We found an older can in the back of the cabinet, and they finished that one off nearly instantly. I opened another can from the new batch, and lo and behold, upturned noses again! So we bagged up all 70-something cans we had bought last weekend and returned them to the store. I called Fancy Feast which they said they hadn't issued a recall and there was no formula change. "Perhaps your cats are just trying to tell you they want a different variety of Fancy Feast?" HA! Both of them at the same time with one of them acting strange? I don't think so.

They are both acting normal and now we are tasked with finding a new canned food they will accept. Honestly this really scared us from Purina brands and while we would love to feed them raw, we just don't have the freezer space for it. So we figured now is the time for us to move to higher quality food. We bought four brands- Innova, Authority, Blue Buffalo, and Wellness core. Nala liked Blue Buffalo and Innova; Fig kinda liked Innova. Neither would touch the Authority. We are going to try Wellness core this evening. I can tell that Fig has his appetite back but he's not sure about this whole change. Nala is thankfully more adventurous. They have dry food available throughout the day (Wellness core) to supplement the canned food, and I saw both of them eat that last night.

Anyway, just wanted to share my experience. Please report this to Fancy Feast if you are experiencing similar issues!
 

mosimom

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Welcome fishlips!

Chances of running into the same batch number at a different store is almost nill. You may have to mix
their regular fancy feast in with the new brands till they accept the new kind fully.
 

night wing

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I feed Fancy Feast in rotation with Nutro Natural Choice and Soulistic.

My 16 year old cat likes the Fancy Feast "Grilled" line. I think it's his favorite brand since he eats more of it every day than when he's on NNC or Soulistic in rotation with these other brands.

He has no problems with six flavors, but one flavor makes him vomit it back up a few minutes after he eats it and that flavor is Tender Beef & Liver Feast in Gravy. I thought it odd since he has no problems with the Beef Feast in Gravy. It could have been a bad batch. Needless to say I don't buy the TB&LF for him anymore.
 

fishlips23

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Welcome fishlips!

Chances of running into the same batch number at a different store is almost nill. You may have to mix
their regular fancy feast in with the new brands till they accept the new kind fully.
Actually we had bought one case from Petsmart on Saturday, and two cases arrived from Amazon on Friday or Saturday. We tried cans out of all the cases and they wouldn't touch any of the new ones. That was when we tried the "old" can and they ate it. This makes me think there is something wrong with the food that they haven't caught yet, which really scared us away from FF (and reading about Purina recalls in the past, I'm glad we didn't have to learn this the hard way).

After many hours of research yesterday, we decided to try Tiki cat (chicken varieties). Needless to say, our cat food budget just increased nearly 3-fold, haha 
 But they have both already taken to it and I feel good about the quality of food they're now getting!
 

lisahe

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After many hours of research yesterday, we decided to try Tiki cat (chicken varieties). Needless to say, our cat food budget just increased nearly 3-fold, haha 
 But they have both already taken to it and I feel good about the quality of food they're now getting!
Our cats love the chicken Tiki varieties, too. I wish it weren't so expensive but at least it's real, solid food! 
 
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tulosai

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Just wanted to update and tell anyone who is having an issue to please call them with the UPC number.  They send a report at the end of each day to their quality assurance people and if they get enough complaints about a batch they do investigate it, so despite some people feeling there's no point in calling or they will only send you free coupons or food and not do anything else, they actually do do something with the data.

They assure me that there are no recalls and have been no quality issues identified despite some of the recent internet postings but also assured me they do take complaints seriously when UPC numbers are provided and look into them.

(This is fancy feast I am talking about just to be clear).  So basically, help them catch it @fishlips23   @mrsgreenjeens  
 

kz59

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i'm a little late to this thread.  Beatrice has been eating Tiki Cat food for the last year, and is suddenly turning up her nose at the cans of chicken.  it's a good quality food, and actually IS real meat (not chunks of frankenchicken).  she's done the same thing to me last year with Tiki salmon, so i now buy salmon+chicken, which she does like. 

i mix Tiki with Purina One (not the best, but she really likes it).  if it's side-by-side, she'll eat the Purina, but leaves the chicken.  if you mix them together, she won't eat.  i doubt she's bored, because i rotate 4 flavors of Tiki and she only gets plain chicken maybe once a week (she's ok with the other flavors - chicken mixed with fish).  is this rebellion?  tainted lot?  change in food processors?  any ideas?  i'm kind of stumped.  this isn't a huge deal, because i can always feed her the other flavors, but what worries me is that cats have a keen sense of smell and she is detecting some toxic component in the food. 

thanks so much! 
 

bonepicker

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i'm a little late to this thread.  Beatrice has been eating Tiki Cat food for the last year, and is suddenly turning up her nose at the cans of chicken.  it's a good quality food, and actually IS real meat (not chunks of frankenchicken).  she's done the same thing to me last year with Tiki salmon, so i now buy salmon+chicken, which she does like. 

i mix Tiki with Purina One (not the best, but she really likes it).  if it's side-by-side, she'll eat the Purina, but leaves the chicken.  if you mix them together, she won't eat.  i doubt she's bored, because i rotate 4 flavors of Tiki and she only gets plain chicken maybe once a week (she's ok with the other flavors - chicken mixed with fish).  is this rebellion?  tainted lot?  change in food processors?  any ideas?  i'm kind of stumped.  this isn't a huge deal, because i can always feed her the other flavors, but what worries me is that cats have a keen sense of smell and she is detecting some toxic component in the food. 

thanks so much! 
Maybe Purina one is off, most problems with recalls arise with dry food.
 

kz59

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she doesn't eat much dry food, i give her Purina One canned.  never had any problems with that one, she also likes Fancy Feast (very similar texture), but it isn't very high quality.  i looked on the website and i don't see any recalls.  i figured half Purina - half Tiki, and she's eating half-healthy ;) 
 
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