Need Some Advice

Hi, TCS.  I'm hoping to get some advice on my new kitten, Hunter.  I've taken a week off of work to get him settled in and he's doing great but I'm a bit worried about his diet.  I've been working on switching him on to a combination of wet and dry food.  While eventually I would like him on wet only (or at least primarily), at this age I'm not comfortable leaving him alone for more than an hour or two without food and am not worried about him overeating.  Additionally, I'd like to leave open the option of dry food in case he needs a prescription diet or we need something easy to feed while traveling when we eventually move.  I spoke with my vet, who strongly advised us to teach him to accept both, as it's hard to guarantee he'll never need to eat dry.

Before I got him, he was being fed exclusively kibble, as his breeder has had some issues with diarrhea from wet food.  She advised us to free-feed him kibble and, if we wanted to use wet, to monitor the amount as many of her kittens do not do well on wet-food only.  We've pretty much figured out where his limits are through trial-and-error and will try again when he's a little older.  We did introduce canned food slowly, increasing the amount he got each day but stopped when he first got diarrhea and have since stuck to an amount he seems to do well on, which isn't too far from were we wanted him anyway.

Our biggest concern, however, is that he really, really likes the wet food and seems pretty indifferent to the dry.  He'll give in and eat eventually but, when he's hungry, will first bug us to give him more wet food by crying in front of the refrigerator.  We're not giving in when he begs, because we really don't want to reinforce the behavior, want to get him on a routine we'll be able to keep up when I'm back at work and because we really don't want him getting sick again.  We've already switched him over to a new brand of dry but he didn't show much more interest in the old when we offered it to him.  Do we need to be concerned  that he may not be eating enough?  Should we be listening to him when he's telling us he's hungry?  Would switching brands again help?  Maybe trying a "kitty buffet" and seeing what he likes?

Treat-wise, his favorite is turkey, but he'll accept a small amount of chicken as well.  We've been giving him a few treats every day, as we're trying to get him started on clicker-training (mostly just for fun but he seems to enjoy it and we're hoping to, at the very least, teach him a few practical commands like sit and come.  We've already taught him to follow the clicker handle, which is helpful as he sometimes forgets how to get down from his cat tree and does NOT like being picked up).  Is this alright or if we should be saving treats for rare occasions like vet visits?  Also, are there any commercial brands we should try or anything else he might like that is safe for us to feed?  He seems very interested in cheese, but we are not letting him have any as we're aware he's most likely lactose intolerant.  He does not respond to catnip yet, as he's only 3 months old.  We don't think playtime would work well as a bribe, as we already play with him whenever he's in the mood to stop him from making his own fun.

Notes: I cannot give him raw food as I work around immunocompromised people and am not comfortable taking the risk.  Yes, I have looked into both sides of the debate.  I will try homecooked for him if he has trouble with commercial but I'd prefer to stick with a high-quality commercial if he does well on it as I would rather spend that time playing with him and giving him some extra exercise.  I also will not give him anything fish-based as from what I've read the risks seem to outweigh the benefits and it's pretty easy to avoid.

If it's relevant, Hunter is a registered Ragdoll, with associated health concerns.  He has been tested and found HCM -/-, FeLV and FIP negative and free of common intestinal parasites.  He is indoor only and is only exposed to other cats at the vet's office where he kept in his carrier when not being examined.  He is not yet neutered, as we wanted to use our own vet, but we will not receive his TICA papers until he has been fixed (we're planning on five months but will bring him in earlier if he shows signs of hitting puberty as we do NOT want to live with an intact tomcat).

How often are you feeding him canned food?  I feed my cats twice a day with one kibble snack.  They're almost six though.  You don't have give in...but as a kitten he may need to eat more frequently throughout the day.  With kittens, I tend to be more lenient in terms of food as they need the nutrition

Will smaller and more frequent servings of canned food trigger diarrhea?  I mean, is his diarrhea predicated on a cumulative total?  And I don't know how many brands you've tried but yes, a very slow intro to other brands and proteins may help you pinpoint what he can/can't eat.  I learned quickly my cats are extremely lactose intolerant.  The slightest lick of yoghurt or milk will result in vomit.  They also have the same reaction to red meat.  Early on as I was trying to figure out their intolerances and stop the vomiting, I fed my cats limited ingredients food.  And that seemed to help.  Since it worked, I've stuck with California Natural kibble for my cats.  I do bring home sample size kibble bags  and they seem to be okay on them so I think their tummies have settled down a bit since kittenhood.  They still can't handle diary and red meat.  They are also sensitive to a lot of treats.  I stick with Trader Joe's brand as they love it and they don't get sick from it.  Long story short, it's all trial and error.  If you want your cat to eat kibble, you may have to experiment to find something he likes.  Luckily, lots of kibble brands come in sample bags.  You can pick them up at stores and I'm sure if you contacted the companies, they would be happy to send you some to try.

I wish my cats preferred wet to dry.  Canned food makes up the bulk of their diet but it takes a lot of work, discipline and occasional begging on my part to get my one fussypants cat to eat canned food.  Her idea of heaven is probably laying on top of a kibble mountain.  Personally, if I had a cat who preferred wet food, I would embrace it.  I fall into the camp that kibble isn't much good for cats.  My compromise is to give my cats 1-2 tablespoons a day at most.  They do get more when I travel.

Kittens should eat as much as they want as long as they don't get fat.

You might want to look into a good probiotic to help with the diarrhea problems.

Sorry for the very late response!  Good news is, his tolerance for wet has improved greatly, so I think he was probably just having normal difficulties with transitioning.  He's up to eating 4-5 cans per day.  We're on a mix of brands, mostly Royal Canine, Wellness and Evo, although when I find something else I think he'll like, I bring it home to try out.  The only brand of wet he's refused is Blue Buffalo.  I think we had the same reaction to the smell (a resounding "yuck").  I still leave out dry food, and he snacks on it sometimes, but I've pretty much given up on getting him to really enjoy it.  I'll probably take it away altogether eventually.

I'm still a little worried he doesn't eat enough during the day, as he always seems ravenous when I come home.  I've increased his meal size to two cans per meal, as he is still hungry after one, and am now feeding him an additional can whenever he asks.  He is gaining weight fine, quickly enough I can see a difference from day to day, but I wish he would eat more when I was at work.  Anything I can do to encourage him or should I just continue giving him cans as requested when home?  I've tried literally five different brands of kibble, including 4Health (what I got him on), Iams, Hills (Perfect Balance, not Science Diet, not my favorite but a friend said it worked for her picky kitten), Wellness (which he wouldn't eat, no matter what I mixed it with and was the first thing I tried) and Royal Canin (which I hoped he would like as he goes nuts over their wet).  He's currently getting Iams kitten, as that's the one he seemed to prefer when given a choice of several brands and mixes.  I'm not thrilled with the ingredients but given how slowly he goes through it, it's not worth it to switch him to something else he will also barely eat and I don't want to risk him going off dry entirely.  While I'd love to have him on a premium brand, I just want him to eat something at this point.  I think he'd actually be a really good candidate for raw in another home, but, as I've said, it's not an option.  I've worked with both controlled substances and bacteria before, so I have a pretty good idea of how contamination spreads (ie I'm not some idiot who panics at the words "E. coli"), and if his food were to be infected, I would almost certainly become an unwitting carrier.

I do have one more observation/concern, however, which I may pose to the health forum as well depending on what my vet says when I ask her this weekend during his next appointment.  I've been a little worried about his development and am wondering if it ties back to the food.  He came to me at 11 weeks and only 2.3 pounds.  Since then, he has been gaining weight at the normal rate of a pound per month (although it's only been a little over a month so far) and his vet is not concerned.  As he was pretty uncoordinated when he first came to me and had some trouble grooming himself, I wondered if I had been lied to about his age, but he was definitely fully socialized and I have a picture of him standing on his own, with eyes open and ears fully erect, at 3.5 weeks.  Is it possible he wasn't eating enough of the dry food at the breeder's house?  Or is he just a late bloomer?  He's perfectly healthy otherwise and my vet said for his age his weight is fine, but I know Ragdolls are a larger breed (although slow to develop as a rule, which may also play a role).  I don't think I actually have the wrong age, as he doesn't suckle, uses the litterbox perfectly and inhibits his bite while playing.  The breeder gave us a gender breakdown of the litter on his supposed birthdate and seemed pretty reliable, minus the kibble issue (although I was pleasantly surprised by the brand she was using, not great, but better than most).  I couldn't visit as she lived too far away, but really wanted to go through someone who did genetic testing for HCM and raised the kittens underfoot.  She did a great job with him, whatever she did, and at this point it doesn't really matter as I'm keeping him no matter what, but I am curious.

In good news, the turkey's proving to be a major boon.  He's coming very reliably when called, thank god.  He managed to dash out the door today but came right back when I called for him.  Plenty of treats and petting followed.  I was very, very grateful to have taught him a good recall and will be much more careful in the future.  I think he heard my voice outside and was ready to bolt.  I live in an apartment building, so he couldn't have gotten too far, but it still freaked me out.  (For the record, he is not neutered yet, but will be come July.  Given his general maturity level, I'm not too worried about him spraying before then and, as he's not around any female cats, he won't be making any kittens.  I'd like him to get a little bigger before putting him under anesthesia and my vet prefers operating on males at around 5-6 months.)

Hi and sorry for the late response. I've been travelling (still am), part of the time to rather remote areas of southern Illinois.

I don't know about the development timeline--perhaps you should post in the Cat Health forum about that. But a suggestion for feeding would be to get a timed feeder for wet food. While on vacation some people have the sitter take out a frozen portion of cat food in the morning. By the time it thaws it's dinnertime. So maybe you can thaw frozen cat food a little in warm water before you leave and then it'll be ready by mid-day?

No problem at all!  Thank you for the advice.  I'll give it a try and see if he'll go for the thawed food.  I saw his vet today and she gave me one more brand suggestion to try for the dry so I'll also give that one more shot.  She says that as he really likes the Royal Canin wet, he may be a fan of their dry as well.  I'll try it and if it works it works, if it doesn't he'll be wet only, not the end of the world.

And good news!  He's definitely really sixteen weeks, as I was told.  He hit 4.1 pounds today, right on target for a 4 month old kitten, so I think his growth is just erratic at this point.  And I figured out why he was trouble with climbing.  We had his claws trimmed today and the vet showed me how to do it myself so I can just do it at home from now on.  Good news is, he's really tolerant of having his paws handled already, as I've been massaging them during petting.  Bad news is, without his claws he is once again falling off everything.  Hopefully he will adjust, as keeping them untrimmed isn't on the table.  He's indoor only and, while he doesn't scratch the furniture, just general monkeying around can still cause some damage.  As I don't want to ban him from climbing the furniture, and soft paws sound like a nuisance, he'll be getting clipped regularly.  I'm sure he can learn to climb another way or he'll compensate by jumping once he's a bit older.