Wet food war zone.....

So, my cat family started with a neighborhood stray who zoomed through my front door on New Year's Day last year when I opened it for a pizza delivery 

I had encountered her outside previously when taking out the trash and she was friendly.   She came inside that day and didn't want to leave, so we just let her stay.    Turns out she was pregnant, and she had two kittens in March of last year.   I had done a lot of reading about cat food, since I had never lived w/a cat before, and saw that they did best on 100% wet food.

I had been feeding the mom cat Friskie's pate and KMR whenever she wanted it.   I started buying better food - Nature's Variety, Wellness, Merrick - and she seemed to like them all.   I started the kittens on the Wellness kitten pate.   I did leave out Wellness Core kibble overnight for everyone, but they honestly didn't seem to eat that much of it - at that time, they definitely enjoyed their wet food more.

So that system went on for some time - I had a rotation of Wellness, Nature's Variety, Merrick (they seemed to stop liking the Merrick after the label change several months ago), the green and orange Soulistic cans - I even got them to eat some of the frozen Nature's Variety raw from time to time.   However over time, it seems they stopped liking each of these wet foods.  First, they stopped eating the Merrick, but like I said I think that when their cans changed labels several months back, maybe their formula changed also.    They used to love the Grammys Pot Pie and Thanksgiving Dinner, but they started refusing it.  They also used to love the Wellness canned food, then they started refusing it.   They refused the Soulistic, the Natures Variety, the Natural Balance flavors they used to eat.....So I started getting Fancy Feast to get them enthused about wet food again.  I only got the Classic Pates.   They ate a large variety of those flavors for a long time, but eventually started refusing those also.   I also threw in other "better" supermarket cat foods - Newmans Own, I and Love and You - and they ate those for a time, but eventually stopped.   I'm getting really frustrated because I only ever wanted them to eat good quality pates, and that's what I started them all on from kittenhood (the mom cat is still a little more flexible in what she will eat - i guess thanks to her street cat history haha)

So in order to keep them still eating some  kind of wet food - since they are now refusing any pates (high quality ones, low quality ones like Friskies, I've tried Sheba and Lovesome pates too) I tried giving them the cuts/shreds type wet food and they will kind of eat that - they lick up all the liquid but leave most of the meat cuts - they may or may not eventually eat the meat cuts if I leave it out for several hours.   They will definitely eat most of the meat cuts if I press kibble into them.   I really don't want to feed this kind of food because I know wheat gluten is not good for cats.   So, I feel like I'm kind of starting from scratch here as they are eating pretty much all kibble (at least I got them on a really good kibble - Orijen cat & kitten kibble).   I don't know how I can get them back eating a good quality wet food if I don't even have a single type of wet food (even a bad one) that they really really enjoy eating!!   I have water bowls and  a Drinkwell Platinum pet fountain, so hopefully they are getting enough water.  I worry about the 2 kitten boys mostly (well they are like 16 months old now) because I know males should not be eating exclusively dry, even a good one like Orijen.   I've tried parm cheese, FortiFlora, Bonito Flakes, Wysong, PureBites, freeze-dried treats as toppers and they either straight up reject it (parmesan) or just lick all the other toppers up and leave the wet food untouched!!     

I can get one of the boys to eat some Primal Raw freeze-dried, but the other two won't touch it.    They also won't touch the frozen raw at all now.

The only thing I can get them to eat consistently is Orijen kibble, and the gravy liquid from Fancy Feast (they won't even eat the Fancy Feast classics now - even the Chicken Classic that every cat is supposed to love!!)    Using these two food items - kibble and gravy liquid lol - and knowing that they will just lick off a topper without eating what's underneath - what do you think my next step should be?

I've exhausted all the canned food varieties from PetCo - I stopped in a PetPeople and got some Tiki Cat, Wild Calling rabbit, Weruva Nine Liver and Paw Lickin Chicken, Earthborn holistic - all were rejected, but I could get them to eat a little of the Earthborn if I loaded it with kibble on top.   The only cans they are interested in are the crappy ones from the supermarket (Fancy Feast, Purina, etc - they don't even really like the Sheba Cuts) and then all they do is just lap up the gravy.   I don't understand it since I started them off from their infancy eating high quality good - and they used to like all of it!

At least they like good treats - they won't touch stuff like Temptations or Pounce - they like the Natures Variety freeze dried chicken or duck treats, the Wysong cat treats, PureBites freeze-dried chicken - and since all of them really like those freeze-dried treats I thought they'd dig the Primal Raw - but only one of them likes it.    They don't like fish, so they won't eat sardines or tuna, but they will drink the tuna water sometimes.   I tried giving them straight up chicken broth (unseasoned) but nobody really liked that either.   What to do???

edit:  I no longer leave ANY kibble out overnight.   They are on a timed feeding schedule - and I thought I could use hunger as my ally - but even if they're really hungry, if it's a pate of any sort, they won't touch it - they'll only eat whatever I smash on top of it.......

You know a lot more about nutrition than I do but I wanted to reassure you by telling you that I have had cats live well into their senior years while eating Friskies shredded or chunk canned food almost exclusively.  They would only eat beef, chicken or turkey.  They wouldn't touch the pates and they hated the fish flavors which was curious because when I ran out and fed them human grade tuna fish, they gobbled it right up. 

Good luck with your search for a high quality canned food.   I've often read that the best cat food is one your cats will eat.  It seems if they like Friskies, that might not be such a bad route to take.

Margd said:

 
You know a lot more about nutrition than I do but I wanted to reassure you by telling you that I have had cats live well into their senior years while eating Friskies shredded or chunk canned food almost exclusively.  They would only eat beef, chicken or turkey.  They wouldn't touch the pates and they hated the fish flavors which was curious because when I ran out and fed them human grade tuna fish, they gobbled it right up. 

Good luck with your search for a high quality canned food.   I've often read that the best cat food is one your cats will eat.  It seems if they like Friskies, that might not be such a bad route to take.

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Thank you!   My husband is miffed and tells me he doesn't see what the big deal is - that his childhood pet cats all ate nothing but kibble and they all lived to be nearly 20 years old.   He feels like I am wasting time and money - and I'm starting to feel that way also, since so much of these cans go untouched....but they don't really go to waste because there's a couple ferals outside who gladly accept these rejects as opposed to their usual 9Lives lol

And his opinion doesn't hold much weight either as he doesn't understand why I am opposed to declawing all the cats, since his childhood cats were declawed and "it wasn't a big deal"  aargh....  I guess as long as they're lapping up the gravy, they are still getting additional water into their diet, even though it's certainly not ideal -  I just feel like I've tried all the tricks and none have really worked.   It would be different if there was even ONE type/flavor of pate they enjoyed eating, so I could start mixing the "bad" cans in with the pate cans, but there isn't one that they like.  Even the "bad" gravy cans, they really only want the gravy out of them.  It's annoying    And the one cat who will eat the Primal raw won't eat it if I mix it with water - I just break up the dry nugget and give it to him that way, and he will eat about half of it.       I just don't understand what happened since they started from kittenhood eating the good pate cans, and now we have devolved to this........

I fed a female cat exclusively on kibble who lived till about 16 with no health problems until the end but I now think I dodged a bullet.  The cats I most recently adopted had been raised on kibble so I continued it.  Within 2 months, the female, Chula,   came down with a UTI that was very hard to get rid of.  My vet recommended wet food and everyone here says the same thing.  I don't think a little bit of kibble mixed in with the wet is a problem,though, as long as your kitties are drinking the gravy. 

Good news that you are holding out against declawing.  That's something you want to avoid if at all possible since it actually involves amputating the last joint.  I suspect I'm preaching to the choir but just wanted to give you some reinforcement for your position. 

Yeah, they will never be declawed as long as there is breath in my body   and my hubby really isn't trying to be cruel, and he also loves the cats very much - one of the kittens in particular is HIS baby boy lol - he just honestly doesn't get what the big deal is since he grew up with declawed cats and he said they seemed fine.  And I said even if they weren't "fine" how would you even know, it's not like they can plead their case to you...... the only other thing I can think to do with the food is try a couple homemade raw recipes - they love baked chicken (never gave them raw tho) and raw hamburger meat.... if I were going to go that route, do you just regular old ground meat from the grocery store?  Does it need to be the fancy shmancy organic grass-fed-only beef/organic free range pastured chicken, etc?  Is it safe to get plain old ground hamburger meat or ground chicken from a regular old grocery store (like the meat I would get for myself?  don't get me wrong, I'll get the organic stuff for us if money's not too tight, but usually it's just conventional meat for us....)  I know you have to add vitamins and stuff and I know where to look for recipes, I just wanted to know if you absolutely must get organic meat as the base ingredient - if so, these cats are going to be eating WAY better than us haha!

Unfortunately I know nothing about the ins and outs of raw feeding.     Hopefully someone who does will pipe in and answer your questions.  I'm curious to know what kinds of answers you get since I am curious about raw nutrition myself.  Good Luck!  Our babies don't make it easy for us, do they!

I'd just like to add this thought: The best food is the food that your cats will eat!

It doesn't matter how great the food is if it doesn't get into the cat. All commercial pet foods sold as complete and balanced have to be just that. Don't beat yourself up because your cats don't want to eat the food you think is best. Kibble is ok so long as you take extra measures to keep the cats drinking -  [article="30756"]Tips To Increase Your Cat S Water Intake​[/article]  

If you really have your heart set on switching them onto a wet/raw diet (which is my preference too), then this article might help 
[article="31129"]Transitioning Free Fed Kibble Kitties To Timed Meals  [/article]

jolie0216, have you tried Nutro Natural Choice on your cats? A lot of people on The Cat Site report that their cats like it and it's pretty decent food, with no grains or carby fillers. We feed our moderately picky cats Nutro's minced chicken, sliced turkey, and chunky chicken, all of which have no carrageenan, either. In terms of format, the minced and sliced style foods are a little like the foods your cats will eat... but there's no wheat or corn gluten.

One other thought: have you tried using the Primal freeze-dried as a topper, at least for the cat who will eat it? Our cats eat a lot of Primal freeze-dried and I sometimes use it to entice them to eat canned foods they don't like or are tired of. Our cats, too, got pickier when they allegedly grew up: they were underfed when we adopted them as ten-month-old kittens so they'd eat anything then, but now they think they're entitled to endless variety in their diet! We've found that as long as we keep feeding them a variety of foods, in a big rotation, they seem to eat pretty consistently.

You might want to ask your question about meats for raw food in the Raw & Home-Cooked part of the Nutrition forum!

Good luck!

Hey there!  I think I have tried the "chunky loaf" Nutro cans in the past - but I have to run to Petco tonight anyways, so I'll grab those flavors you mentioned, it's worth a shot!

I did see some new types of Fancy Feast last week (well, new to me - the "Marinated Morsels" variety) and those were actually a hit with everyone.   I'm glad to find at least one food they all seem to like, I just wish that it wasn't one with wheat gluten in it....... I just don't understand how they hate the pate varieties now since that is what they were raised on from kittenhood and used to love?!

I'll try the primal raw as a topper at least for the one boy - he's never finished a plate of it, he'll eat about half of it and then go on about his business.  I wanted to find a topper they really-really liked, and I have, but usually they just lick it off and leave the rest lol......I thought they hated the bonito flakes (I got the Catmandoo bonito flakes off Amazon) but the 2 boys are eating them now - I swear these darn cats have become the pickiest cats ever!!  They reject something one day but eat it the next!   Maybe it's my own fault because I have spoiled them - I'll always break off a little bit of my hamburger patty or my chicken nugget or some cheese off a pizza, etc, for anyone who comes begging while I'm eating (not a huge portion or anything, I mean just a little pinch of my own food) I used to give out turkey deli meat as a treat and they absolutely LOVED it - but now they won't eat it.   They will eat the Wysong and PureBites treats though - which I'm sure is better for them anyway.    I've just done a lot of reading about cat health issues and it seems like esp for male cats, urinary blockages are common and it seems to be related to the food they eat, so if there's any way I can prevent that from happening to them, I'd like to do it.    That's why I only got pates for everyone from the start - I guess they just got tired of the texture (since I did rotate several brands and flavors, I'm guessing it's the texture they got tired of).   I read on here about someone who gets baby food and waters it down for her cats - I'm going to try that over the weekend and see if anyone will eat that as an occasional treat/meal.  

I noticed after breakfast today, someone had barfed up like 3 pieces of undigested kibble - what does that mean?  Did someone eat too fast or is the kibble not agreeing with them?  This is the first time I've seen that - I don't think it's a huge deal since it was only 3 pieces, but is that something that I should be concerned about if I see it happen again?   I'm not sure who threw up since I wasn't standing right there while they were at their bowls.....

Vomiting very soon after eating is almost always simply because they've eaten too fast and/or overeaten. This is easier to do with kibble anyway, as it swells in the stomach as it absorbs fluid. Its really no big deal. If it happens consistently then you might want to look at using slow feeder bowls, which make it harder for the cat to inhale their food.

Regarding getting them to eat the wet food - have you tried mixing some of their favourite toppers in with the wet food? You might need to be pretty generous with it at first, but you amy find that a mixture works where a topper doesn't. I've recently been transitioning Asha onto frozen raw (as opposed to freeze dried raw) food. If I sprinkled it with a topper she'd just lick the topper off, but if I made coated "meatballs" or mixed the two more thoroughly then she'd eat every scrap. Once she was eating it without suspicion I was able to reduce the amount of topper used. Might be worth a go?

Good luck with it all - I know only too well how frustrating it is getting fussy feeders to eat!

Yes, I figured it was something like that - it was just 3 undigested kibble pieces engulfed in spit 
And this is from last March when they were born!  We still have mom cat too - I originally thought she was a boy since I'd never seen a lady orange cat before!

What adorable kittens they were and what gorgeous cats they are now. I love ginger tabbies - my rainbow cat Milo was a ginger tabby. Those are great photographs. They look so happy!

They are just gorgeous! I love their cheeky antics   We had a pair of littermate who'd always work together when it came to kitchen raids - one would get onto the counter/into the cupboard and toss food onto the floor for the other one to eat   Very crafty cats...but that's what made them so much fun. I bet yours are just the same 

jolie0216 said:

 
So, my cat family started with a neighborhood stray who zoomed through my front door on New Year's Day last year when I opened it for a pizza delivery 

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Well............your opening line there just made my day........I've never before heard of a home invasion like that  

Aww thank you guys for the compliments - I think they are all gorgeous feline specimens, but I am totally biased 

I hope they are happy - nah, I know they are happy!  They get an abundance of attention, esp since hubby works from home most of the time.  They each have such big and distinct personalities!  Which came as a surprise to me, being a cat newbie til last year.   They have brought so much joy to the house - I feel so lucky that Lily (mama cat) chose our house to safely deliver her kittens, and they are lucky too.  It's still cold here in March, so they may not have survived outside....it makes me sad that someone abandoned her, since she was so friendly she had to have been someone's pet at one time (although obviously not spayed or really cared for).    I can't imagine just letting these cats roam outside (that's a big problem in our neighborhood, so many outdoor cats - not sure if strays, pets, or ferals), we just love them so much!   There's a couple kitties outside that I feed everyday - they usually get 9Lives since I can get a LOT of it cheap, but they also get the real good premium foods that our guys reject lol

So I found a couple things that worked for me and wanted to share in case it would help anyone else -

For more hydration:   I got a couple tins of tuna and threw into a big container, put in a few extra cups of water (either 2 or 3) and let it all steep for a couple hours.   They won't eat the actual tuna, but they seem to love this tuna water!    I have those covered ice trays, so I made a couple trays worth of tuna water ice cubes and they have fun licking those and drinking them as they melt.  I think I got the idea from somewhere else - and it works!!

Also, when I was at PetCo I saw something called "CatSip".    I'd never heard of it before, but I saw it yesterday in the cat treat aisle.  It's milk for cats without the lactose and other stuff that they don't digest well.  And they loved it too!

So with the tuna ice cubes and the CatSip and the Drinkwell fountain - between those three things I feel more confident that they are getting the hydration they need (or hopefully close enough to it) that I don't feel bad about them eating the kibble-topped wet food.   And I also picked up some Purina Pro Plan cans at PetCo (they are different than the Purina cans from the supermarket, different labels) and they seemed to like those.   So between those Purina cans and the Fancy Feast Marinated Morsels, they are eating enough of the wet food to satisfy my worries.   I guess it's just gonna be a constant game of finding new stuff when they get tired of the current rotation!   And they will eat all the wet food as long as they get their kibble pressed onto the top of it - doing that actually works better than the toppers do since they just lick em off.   So I feel I have reached a compromise with the cats - they still eat the wet food as long as they get their dry food on top      Thank you all for the advice - and I hope this helps anyone else who comes across it!

Maybe the cause is because you intoduced kibble?

Brand suggestions on wet i dont know if some of these come in wet and i dont know if you tried them or not
Kroger ,pet pride kroger ,speciel kitty ,evolve ,pride by natures variety ,solid gold ,whole earth ,caster n pollux ,ultramix ,9lives ,meow mix ,4 health ,diamond ,taste of the wild .ever pet ,for ever pals ,nulo ,

Also try to cut out dry for like 2-3 days to see if they start eating the wet

Mewlittle said:

Maybe the cause is because you intoduced kibble?

Brand suggestions on wet i dont know if some of these come in wet and i dont know if you tried them or not
Kroger ,pet pride kroger ,speciel kitty ,evolve ,pride by natures variety ,solid gold ,whole earth ,caster n pollux ,ultramix ,9lives ,meow mix ,4 health ,diamond ,taste of the wild .ever pet ,for ever pals ,nulo ,

Also try to cut out dry for like 2-3 days to see if they start eating the wet

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Yeah, I think that I should have never left kibble out overnight in the first place - they didn't eat that much of it at first, but slowly starting switching themselves over to nearly all kibble!  Isn't that funny - I used to leave it out overnight for their comfort, but I now know how bad of an idea that was.  I read something along the lines of you want  your cat to get hungry - not just so that they are more amenable to the food you want to feed them, but also the hunger "chemicals" in their bodies help to acidify their urine (which prevents the struvite crystals).   So if they are never experiencing hunger, then they are always in an alkaline state.    

I've tried most of those brands - they don't like the solid gold as they aren't fans of fish, Castor & Pollux was a no-go....they do like the Pride Rockstar Rabbit flavor (but no others flavors)

I did get the Nutro flavors someone mentioned above but haven't had a chance to try em out yet.   If the only way they eat wet is with some kibble pressed into it - then I'm OK with that for now.....I'll work on steadily decreasing the amount of kibble I put on top of the wet - real slow & gradual-like so hopefully they won't notice lol

jolie0216 said:

So, my cat family started with a neighborhood stray who zoomed through my front door on New Year's Day last year when I opened it for a pizza delivery :lol3:
I had encountered her outside previously when taking out the trash and she was friendly.   She came inside that day and didn't want to leave, so we just let her stay.    Turns out she was pregnant, and she had two kittens in March of last year.   I had done a lot of reading about cat food, since I had never lived w/a cat before, and saw that they did best on 100% wet food.
I had been feeding the mom cat Friskie's pate and KMR whenever she wanted it.   I started buying better food - Nature's Variety, Wellness, Merrick - and she seemed to like them all.   I started the kittens on the Wellness kitten pate.   I did leave out Wellness Core kibble overnight for everyone, but they honestly didn't seem to eat that much of it - at that time, they definitely enjoyed their wet food more.
So that system went on for some time - I had a rotation of Wellness, Nature's Variety, Merrick (they seemed to stop liking the Merrick after the label change several months ago), the green and orange Soulistic cans - I even got them to eat some of the frozen Nature's Variety raw from time to time.   However over time, it seems they stopped liking each of these wet foods.  First, they stopped eating the Merrick, but like I said I think that when their cans changed labels several months back, maybe their formula changed also.    They used to love the Grammys Pot Pie and Thanksgiving Dinner, but they started refusing it.  They also used to love the Wellness canned food, then they started refusing it.   They refused the Soulistic, the Natures Variety, the Natural Balance flavors they used to eat.....So I started getting Fancy Feast to get them enthused about wet food again.  I only got the Classic Pates.   They ate a large variety of those flavors for a long time, but eventually started refusing those also.   I also threw in other "better" supermarket cat foods - Newmans Own, I and Love and You - and they ate those for a time, but eventually stopped.   I'm getting really frustrated because I only ever wanted them to eat good quality pates, and that's what I started them all on from kittenhood (the mom cat is still a little more flexible in what she will eat - i guess thanks to her street cat history haha)

So in order to keep them still eating some kind of wet food - since they are now refusing any pates (high quality ones, low quality ones like Friskies, I've tried Sheba and Lovesome pates too) I tried giving them the cuts/shreds type wet food and they will kind of eat that - they lick up all the liquid but leave most of the meat cuts - they may or may not eventually eat the meat cuts if I leave it out for several hours.   They will definitely eat most of the meat cuts if I press kibble into them.   I really don't want to feed this kind of food because I know wheat gluten is not good for cats.   So, I feel like I'm kind of starting from scratch here as they are eating pretty much all kibble (at least I got them on a really good kibble - Orijen cat & kitten kibble).   I don't know how I can get them back eating a good quality wet food if I don't even have a single type of wet food (even a bad one) that they really really enjoy eating!!   I have water bowls and  a Drinkwell Platinum pet fountain, so hopefully they are getting enough water.  I worry about the 2 kitten boys mostly (well they are like 16 months old now) because I know males should not be eating exclusively dry, even a good one like Orijen.   I've tried parm cheese, FortiFlora, Bonito Flakes, Wysong, PureBites, freeze-dried treats as toppers and they either straight up reject it (parmesan) or just lick all the other toppers up and leave the wet food untouched!!     
I can get one of the boys to eat some Primal Raw freeze-dried, but the other two won't touch it.    They also won't touch the frozen raw at all now.
The only thing I can get them to eat consistently is Orijen kibble, and the gravy liquid from Fancy Feast (they won't even eat the Fancy Feast classics now - even the Chicken Classic that every cat is supposed to love!!)    Using these two food items - kibble and gravy liquid lol - and knowing that they will just lick off a topper without eating what's underneath - what do you think my next step should be?

I've exhausted all the canned food varieties from PetCo - I stopped in a PetPeople and got some Tiki Cat, Wild Calling rabbit, Weruva Nine Liver and Paw Lickin Chicken, Earthborn holistic - all were rejected, but I could get them to eat a little of the Earthborn if I loaded it with kibble on top.   The only cans they are interested in are the crappy ones from the supermarket (Fancy Feast, Purina, etc - they don't even really like the Sheba Cuts) and then all they do is just lap up the gravy.   I don't understand it since I started them off from their infancy eating high quality good - and they used to like all of it!

At least they like good treats - they won't touch stuff like Temptations or Pounce - they like the Natures Variety freeze dried chicken or duck treats, the Wysong cat treats, PureBites freeze-dried chicken - and since all of them really like those freeze-dried treats I thought they'd dig the Primal Raw - but only one of them likes it.    They don't like fish, so they won't eat sardines or tuna, but they will drink the tuna water sometimes.   I tried giving them straight up chicken broth (unseasoned) but nobody really liked that either.   What to do???

edit:  I no longer leave ANY kibble out overnight.   They are on a timed feeding schedule - and I thought I could use hunger as my ally - but even if they're really hungry, if it's a pate of any sort, they won't touch it - they'll only eat whatever I smash on top of it.......

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like kids they would rather have chips than eat their dinner. I would go with timed feeding and reduce or eliminate kibble