Want to hear your cat's favorite food!!

Chopper, my oh-so-fickle eater, is driving me crazy.  I cannot tell you how many different foods I've tried with him, since we rescued him a year and a half ago.  I am hellbent on finding a canned food that he will eat.  He showed up at our house two  years ago as a two or three month old kitten, and fed with the small feral colony I take care of.  They, because of budgeting constraints, were being fed Friskies dry and canned foods.  Once we took Chopper in (he was EXTREMELY friendly, even though he was born feral), we tried to feed him a much better diet.  We have tried many, many different brands.  If he even likes something, he only likes it for a hot minute, and then he gets tired of it. 

He seems to favor dry to wet, for some reason, but I want him to have benefits of a good canned food. I'd love for everyone to post their cat's ALL TIME FAVORITE, FAIL-PROOF, COME-GET-YOUR-DINNER canned food, so that I can try them, if I haven't already.

Okay....GO. 

Nutro Natural Choice: minced chicken, sliced turkey, or chunky chicken.

What have you already tried? I know the list is probably long (alas, most of us have similar ones!) but it might be helpful for us, to avoid duplicating Chopper's list of rejections!

Am trying to remember all of them!

• Halo's Spot's Stew (can't remember which flavors - several)
• Tiki Cat (several)
• Natural Balance (Reduced Calorie, and Chicken/Peas)
• Instinct Diet Turkey
• Whiskas Purrfect Chicken
• Sheba
• Fancy Feast Primavera
• Wellness Minced Chicken

There are a couple of other ones that I cannot remember. I have been all over the board.  I absolutely want him to eat the best things possible, but out of desperation, I have tried some of the lesser brands of canned.

I have managed to wean him off the Friskies dry, but it was difficult, and went through several brands of high end foods.  Finally found Nutro Indoor Chicken, and he actually really loves that, so that's what he gets, along with canned, which he often rejects after a couple of bites.

Merrick duck or chicken pate. Red barn tricky chicky,Fussie cat tuna and prawns, against the grain chicken & pumpkin samba,pride rockstar rabbit,Iams purrfect DELICACIES turkey & liver. Add purebites freeze dried chicken treats on top if he won't eat it!

Thrive Complete chicken & turkey and Nature's menu chicken & turkey - they actually got my 13 year old committed junk food addict onto good quality food. Not sure about US suppliers though.

Speedy likes Fancy Feast in gravy, either grilled or sliced.  I will buy her all different flavors and she has a different one everyday.  Funny though, she does not like ANY of the other Fancy Feast, including Gravy Lovers or Broths.  

She also, will eat a few bites right out of the can for a quick minute, then will leave, then come back and in total will eat about 1/2 the can.

She also has good luck with Purina One with gravy.

my snick absolutely adores taste of the wild rocky mountain feline formula canned cat food. she's my extremely picky eater, but always eats her TOTW canned without fail. another one she's very much liking is against the grain, the captain's catch and the shrimp daddy flavors -- she'll eat those every time too.

but also, my girl loves variety. any wet food she likes, she'll become bored with or refuse to eat after a short while if she's served that every single day. i have a wet food rotation, a very large one, of about 20 different flavors -- some from the same brands, but different flavors. i switch out brands/flavors that she seems not as interested in anymore, on a fairly regular basis, and she gets the excitement of trying new flavors/brands. this rotation also gives snick a better variety of proteins in her diet. snick eats very well with this method.

i sometimes buy the small 3 oz cans of cat foods for some brands/flavors, especially if i know my girl only kind of likes that flavor. i do have a male cat, jasper, who'll eat most every brand/flavor, so that's a big help because he'll finish off what snick doesn't want/won't eat.

Thanks for the list, @AZTrish! Your mention of Tiki reminded me that both our cats absolutely love Tiki's Gourmet Carnivore liver flavors, with various combinations of chicken, beef, and liver. They're not really unanimous very often about loving (rather than just liking or tolerating) their canned foods!

mickNsnicks2mom said:

 
but also, my girl loves variety. any wet food she likes, she'll become bored with or refuse to eat after a short while if she's served that every single day. i have a wet food rotation, a very large one, of about 20 different flavors -- some from the same brands, but different flavors. i switch out brands/flavors that she seems not as interested in anymore, on a fairly regular basis, and she gets the excitement of trying new flavors/brands. this rotation also gives snick a better variety of proteins in her diet. snick eats very well with this method.

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And we do this with a rotation of canned foods, too. I'm not sure how many foods are in the wet food rotation but there are at least 10 or 12, plus the cats get raw food three times a day. They get fed a lot of small meals and they're very particular about not getting the same thing very often! (With the raw foods, we mix it up in various proportions for them, it's easy to adapt.)

Good luck!

Honestly the only brand that is a guaranteed run-for-the-bowl winner for both cats is Fancy Feast (pate), best when slightly heated. Second place is Friskies Chef's Dinner, also slightly heated. Our cats might eat more expensive foods like Wellness and Nature's Variety (including their raw), but they need a lot of persuasion... usually mixing them into a cheaper food. They both like my homemade raw, but Fancy Feast and Friskies still take the cake as favourites.

LisaHE said:

Thanks for the list, @AZTrish
! Your mention of Tiki reminded me that both our cats absolutely love Tiki's Gourmet Carnivore liver flavors, with various combinations of chicken, beef, and liver. They're not really unanimous very often about loving (rather than just liking or tolerating) their canned foods!


And we do this with a rotation of canned foods, too. I'm not sure how many foods are in the wet food rotation but there are at least 10 or 12, plus the cats get raw food three times a day. They get fed a lot of small meals and they're very particular about not getting the same thing very often! (With the raw foods, we mix it up in various proportions for them, it's easy to adapt.)

Good luck!

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Which flavor is their favorite, I might buy 12 cans of carnivore?

bonepicker said:

Which flavor is their favorite, I might buy 12 cans of carnivore?

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Hmm, I'd say it's probably the beef liver with chicken. (I even wrote a Chewy.com review!) I think second place goes to chicken and liver, which also has pieces of gizzards and hearts: it's much soupier (lots of liquid) but the cats really love slurping up the broth. The beef liver with chicken does make one cat a little gassy but not enough to be a problem.

I got them started on Gourmet Carnivore with a variety pack: the only downside of that is that it has three fish flavors and I don't feed much fish at all. Even so, I liked the variety pack because nobody sells the food locally and the pack made it easy to try all the foods. We donate to our local shelter anyway and they usually want fish for hesitant cats.

My cats (one who has stomach issues/food sensitivities) love Wellness Signature Selects Shredded Chicken and Beef cans.  They also like Soulistic Tuna in Pumpkin Soup (sounds gross but they love it).  The other one they gobble up is Simply Nourish Tuna with Potato.  

Good luck!

Thanks, everyone!! This is all extremely helpful.  It's also nice to know that I am NOT the only one with this problem!  This will give me a good list of foods to select from when switching things up - seems like he gets tired of stuff pretty fast, like some of your cats.

Which one has most gravy?  We are having a hard time with our two around 15 year olds eating the gravy and licking each piece and wasting it.

What a great idea to add a bit of water and the kibble!  Does it make more gravy?  My two almost 15 year olds only want the gravy.  I need help!

Thank you!  Will try some of these. 

I might be mistaken, but I could swear I saw a product that literally was only cat gravy got sale. Maybe you could mix it up with a pate food. I'll post a link if I find it.

My 7 year old cat gets Nature's Variety Instinct canned in rabbit, lamb, venison and duck (though duck isn't his favourite) and NV' homestyle stews in turkey (his favourite), lamb, and duck when I can find it. He occasionally gets Almo Nature in Chicken drumstick or Breast, rarely the mixed seafood and Weruva foods that are not fish or beef. My other cat gets Natural Balance 'Limited Ingredient in chicken, duck, venison amd salmon, Holistic Selects, Go! Chicken Stew, Wellness Turkey or Chicken and some Rx foods llike Hill's k/d, g/d, RC Reducing Protein, Renal LP, Senior Consult or Hill's a/d if he is being extraordnarily picky. The first cat isn't picky but I like to give him variety.