Tried to Add Wet Food to Older Cat's Diet - No luck, need suggestions!

Hello All,

My beautiful 14 year old Tonkinese, Wednesday Blue, has a chronic problem with constipation. The vet has her on Royal Canin Fiber Response (dry food) which she has been eating for a few years now. She never was fed wet food. It was recently suggested that I introduce wet food and a water fountain to get more hydration into her. Of course, by doing that, I took away the always available dry food and put her on 2 feedings per day mixing the wet with the dry. It's been a week now and not only does she eat very little, but she only pooped once in that whole time (very small amount, after 6 days). Can anybody suggest anything that might help my sweet kitty with this problem?

Thank you.

Billy & Wednesday

I just switched my ~15 year old cat to canned only since she couldn't digest the dry anymore.  I went to Petsmart and brought home about 10 different brands/flavors.  She deigned to eat one and only one (Nutro senior soft chicken) so it may be worth buying an assortment and testing each to see if she will eat any of them.  Once I found a wet she liked, she wouldn't got near her dry food again--even between feedings.  After about a week on wet, she now has diarrhea so we're not a complete success story, yet.  Good luck!

Try some canned pumpkin to help with the digestion issues. 

How much is she eating? Is she urinating regularly? I would give a call to your vet with these concerns to rule out health problems. 

Did you transition her from free feeding to scheduled feeding times slowly? You generally want to do this slowly. Some people leave out less free fed food/kibble and then introduce the wet food as scheduled meals. Then slowly they'll decrease the amount of kibble available. I did some version of this where I only left out kibble at night, but it helped that my cat liked the wet food more than the kibble. Eventually, he just stopped eating the kibble at night.

This is a good article:

http://www.thecatsite.com/a/transit...-to-a-new-type-of-food-canned-raw-or-homemade

You could try offering the wet and the dry in separate bowls. A lot of cats aren't keen on the two being mixed together. The article mingking linked too has some really great tips for transitioning from kibble to wet food. In terms of brands, I know a lot of people here think of Fancy Feast as 'kitty crack' because most cats find it so irresistible. In terms of prescription wet, my guys both went CRAZY for Royal Canin Gastrointestinal wet food (the one in the pouches). I was shocked by how much they loved it. I only fed it short term to help with a temporary issue, but it can be fed long term too. One advantage is its very calorie dense, so could work well for a small appetite.

If the switch to wet really does prove impossible, you could always take extra steps to increase fluid intake in other ways. A sure fire hit in this house is chicken water (liquid chicken has been poached in). Tuna water has a very high success rate too. This article has more ideas
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I switched over my 13 year old cat from all kibble to mostly raw several months ago. Toppers are your friend. Find a treat your cat loves and use that on top of the wet food. I've had a lot of success with the halo treats and bonito flakes. Some cats are picky, so you're going to need to invest some money in buying different varieties/flavors to find the one your cat will eat. I'm a big fan of weruva because they make good quality foods and they have a ton of different flavors that are enticing. My older cat never took to any wet foods except for Titki cat salmon and chicken, but he automatically liked raw so that's what i went with. Also from experience if you give them too much kibble they won't touch their other food. So you need to slowly cut back on the kibble and offer more wet food. It's very important that your cat eats so if she is protesting too long go ahead and offer the kibble, don't let them starve. Considering the lack of bowel movements it doesn't sound like she's eating enough.