Newbie here with questions about my rescue kitty's eating issues

Hello, everyone! It's so nice to have found a place where people love their cats as much as I love mine! I've perused the forum threads but I didn't see any question quite like mine, so I figured I'd start a new thread.

Here's my kitty story: five months ago, our family adopted a male, neutered rescue brown and black tabby kitty, whom we named Tigger. We think he's 4-6 years old, and he is amazing!! I've had cats on and off since my childhood, and Tigger is my first rescue, so everything has kind of been on a learning curve. He is incredibly loyal and affectionate, and he has some small abandonment issues, but my husband works out of the house and I'm a homemaker, so we're home with him almost all day, and we're dealing well with his not liking being alone in a room. What is confusing me is a brand new food thing that he's started. We give him a pate blend wet food several times a day, and he has dry food in a bowl available always. Suddenly, about two weeks ago, he just stopped eating his wet food entirely. All this time, he is acting perfectly healthy and is playing, running, sleeping, pooping and peeing normally. Then, I catch my hubby giving him handfuls of Greenies treats, and I immediately wondered if that was causing Tigger to stop eating his wet food; I read that cats can try to outsmart you and will hold out for treats over their wet food. We stopped the treats, and Tigger is starting to pay more attention to his wet food again, but barely. He started waking us at night for food, which he had not done the first 4.5 months we had him, and would act like he was starving when presented with the wet food... but he still is barely eating it. I switched brands, which has only minimally helped. More than anything that's given him gas, hee. I reintroduced the original pate, but so far, he's not jumping for joy over that. He doesn't look on the shelf where the treat jar was anymore, but I just find it so odd that he acts so hungry but won't eat the wet food.

What do you guys think? Thank you so much in advance for any input!

I'd stop free feeding him any dry and stop all treats. Offer meals of wet food only with maybe a small (ie. 1/4 cup) meal of dry at night before bed. Scheduled meals will keep him on a better diet. My dry food addict was a PITA to switch to wet until I pulled all his food and put him on a schedule. Cats like consistency in their routine and aren't grazers by nature. Even my kibble addict now demands a wet meal each day or he becomes confused (and whines) as to why his dry is down when it's time for wet food.

I also recommend rotating brands and flavors to keep things interesting. My boys have about 14 different wet foods so each day is something different in the bowl.

CHWx said:

I'd stop free feeding him any dry and stop all treats.

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I completely agree with CHWx's suggestions! I also rotate between lots of canned foods to keep our two cats eating (more or less) consistently: they get bored easily so I give them an assortment of shreds and pates with chicken, turkey, lamb, and beef. I also feed them freeze-dried and frozen raw food, which they generally love.

Our cats were skinny and underfed when we adopted them in December as 10-month-old kittens: they ate everything but were especially focused on their dry food. I weaned them off the dry food earlier this year; I think it took about a month. I started by giving them just a small dish (maybe 2-3 T each) of dry food at night then gradually reduced the amount to a few kibbles on top of their bedtime serving of wet food. By that point we all forgot about the dry food within a few days.

Good luck eebee65!