Call me Crazy...

...but I just ordered a bunch of cans from onlynaturalpet.com to see what my kittens will eat.

This is supposed to be part of the plan to get a rotation of raw, canned and a tiny bit of kibble but I think it's turning out to be more than it's worth LOL.... the order total is about $85!!  Anyone else do this before ordering cases in order to figure out their cat's favs?  I'm only asking because I have 5 cats total, three 9 month old kittens and two old cats, 16 and 13 years old.

Yes, that sounds very familiar :lol3: I'm lucky that one of my cats isn't too fussy (meaning not too much waste), but I've done whole orders of random cans (and 6 packs when singles aren't available) for my two...and the same for my dogs

If I get any major fails, I donate any remaining cans to shelter food banks (a few local stores have donation bins). Ok, it costs a bit, but at least I know that some animals will benefit from my mistakes

It's also worth contacting the food companies and asking for samples. They don't always have them, but it never hurts to ask

I've had great success with ordering full cases of food that my cats have never eaten. I live in a rural area, so it's not always realistic for me to try everything before buying.

Between my old cat that will eat just about anything, my young cat that will eat most things, and my foster cats (the kittens that I've had will try to eat just about anything that you don't put away, including human food), somebody ends up eating whatever I order. LOL!

Yes I also have pecking order. What the queen fussy does not eat, the monster boy will eat, and what he is not crazy about my appreciative little feral girl outside eats. I buy random cans or asked for samples to try first. I found many companies that did not sell in any stores in my area were very willing to send me sample cans. I explained on their website I would like to try before buying in bulk online and that I would post my positive results on TCS. I received samples from Daves, Against the grain, Fussie Cat, Lotus, Wild Calling, Natures Logic, Red Barn and several others. I am glad I did this because a lot of the higher priced stuff they snubbed. I even requested certain flavors, and most sent what I asked for and more even! In the end they picked Merrick pates as their favorite, Pride Rabbit, Earthborne Chicken Jumble, Red Barn Tricky Chicky, & Nutro Natural Choice Chunky Chicken. I can buy all but Red Barn locally, but I buy in bulk from Chewy.com, it's easier and cheaper. Free shipping at $50, I buy Weruva dog food from them also.

I do this all the time. If I see a food that they have never tried I generally buy 3 of the 3 oz cans so they get one each or 1 5.5 ounce can so they can split it. I have a Petco, Petsmart and a Pet Supermarket all within a 1 mile stretch of road. If it goes well, I'll add it to the rotation but gradually because I know that if I buy a full case, they will change their minds and hate it as soon as it arrives. When this happen, I have plan A- shelve it for a while then re-introduce it and if that doesn't work, we go to plan B- I take it to the shelter that I got Henry from. They feed donated food almost exclusively. 

I did buy a case of Red Barn Tricky Chicky and a case of Dave's turkey & giblets without having them try it yet because they don't sell either one locally. They liked the Tricky Chicky but they Dave's wasn't a hit. Henry probably would have eaten it but he wasn't with us at the time. I had to re-introduce it to the diva sisters several times before it was finished. 

I prefer using Amazon's subscribe and save over Chewy. I get a % off and free shipping without a minimum and they have been watching each other's pricing because I've noticed a lot of prices are identical lately. I get the big (dog size) bags of Pure Bites this way and even with price fluctuation, the most I have ever paid for a bag is $21.00. Last month they were $16.06 with my 15% savings. I get free 2 day shipping as a Prime member. 

LOL at least I'm not the only one who does this!  My hubby thinks I'm nuts but we treat our horses the same way and buy them only the best.  At least they're not picky!  My three kittens all have differing personalities when it comes to eating.  The biggest female, Giz will eat pretty much anything I put in front of her, her brother Tigz is pretty much the same way except he doesn't like turkey, and then there's Annie, I'm always worried about Miss Annie because she's so much smaller than the other two and doesn't eat very much if at all... the two old cats will also eat anything I put in front of them since they still look at can food as a treat.  That comes from the fact that for their entire lives they have eaten nothing but dry with a bit of canned every now and then... it's just recently that I've been thinking about their nutrition and then I come here and realize that it's rather overwhelming!  The choices are so numerous as far as more healthy canned food... right now they're all on fancy feast and I go through 7 or 8 cans per day for all of them so that adds up pretty quickly.

I ordered one can of each of a variety of brands/flavors that people here have been talking about so we shall see what they prefer and what ends up in their rotation.  Once I get a little more comfortable I'm thinking of going completely raw but I'm not there yet and neither are the cats.

I think maybe instead of starting off with such a wide range of foods I might just try a few at a time... don't know what the best way to do it is.

I do know that I'll be sticking with the Wellness Complete Health Senior dry food since it seems to be the only one that offers all the probiotics and MSM, Glucosamine and HA for the old ones.... not sure what I'll buy for the kittens since I just bought a big bag of crappy walmart food for everyone!

I know the preference for most is to completely eliminate kibble but my monsters have to have it overnight otherwise I won't get any sleep... they tend to vomit if they go too long without food and the sound wakes me up immediately!!  

Anyways, thanks to everyone for the replies and advice!  Y'all have no idea how much it helps this crazy woman out LOL.

Yes! Oh my gosh it is so expensive figuring out what my cat like and he will STILL sometimes reject food that he previously liked!!! 

So far as long as I put Sheba on it he will eat almost anything. Sheba is my savior lol. 

GhibliTheCat said:

 
Yes! Oh my gosh it is so expensive figuring out what my cat like and he will STILL sometimes reject food that he previously liked!!! 

So far as long as I put Sheba on it he will eat almost anything. Sheba is my savior lol. 

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Oh YES!  That's where I'm at right now and why I'm reluctant to buy from a place like Chewy.com.   I bought a few cases of food that they all liked and wouldn't you know it but they all refused to eat very many cans!  They ate a few but I still have half a case of two varieties LOL.  I'm gonna keep them to add back or just feed them to my old garbage disposals.... they'll eat whatever I give them.

Now I just gotta come up with a meal plan for everyone.... so not only do I have waaaaayyyy too man choices with the variety/brands but I also gotta figure out when to give it to them.  

The three young ones eat a total of 6 cans per day split between them and at 4 meals... breakfast is one 3 oz can split three ways, lunch is two 3 oz cans, dinner is one 3 oz can and bed time is two 3 oz cans.  All fancy feast right now so I have to introduce others still.

The old cats get a 1/4 cup each of dry at lunch as well as splitting a 3 oz can between the two and then at bedtime they get another 1/4 cup of dry each and another 3 oz can of food split between the two.

I swear I'm spending much more time on the cats' feeding than I ever did on mine LMAO

mysticdragon72 said:

 
Oh YES!  That's where I'm at right now and why I'm reluctant to buy from a place like Chewy.com.   I bought a few cases of food that they all liked and wouldn't you know it but they all refused to eat very many cans!  They ate a few but I still have half a case of two varieties LOL.  I'm gonna keep them to add back or just feed them to my old garbage disposals.... they'll eat whatever I give them.

Now I just gotta come up with a meal plan for everyone.... so not only do I have waaaaayyyy too man choices with the variety/brands but I also gotta figure out when to give it to them.  

The three young ones eat a total of 6 cans per day split between them and at 4 meals... breakfast is one 3 oz can split three ways, lunch is two 3 oz cans, dinner is one 3 oz can and bed time is two 3 oz cans.  All fancy feast right now so I have to introduce others still.

The old cats get a 1/4 cup each of dry at lunch as well as splitting a 3 oz can between the two and then at bedtime they get another 1/4 cup of dry each and another 3 oz can of food split between the two.

I swear I'm spending much more time on the cats' feeding than I ever did on mine LMAO

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Slightly off-topic, just wanted to share a positive experience with chewy.com

I've only ordered three times with them (so not a long customer history). In the third order our kittens had a bad reaction to two of the foods we tried.

Jumped on live chat (huge plus) with chewy earlier today and they issued a refund for both items (no questions asked, huge plus). Told me to not send them back but to donate to an animal shelter (another huge plus).

Would highly recommend!

Yup, they did that for me before as well.  I had ordered some Merrick puppy food from them and there was some sort of bug in one of the  cans so they refunded the cost plus shipping!  They're a great company as far as that goes but my last order seemed to be filled with all old cans... at least I think that was the issue.  My cats were turning their noses up at varieties that they usually eat with gusto.  Then again, it could have just been them but I bought single cans of the same varieties from the store and they ate them again.... who knows.

I'll still order from them again though.

On topic again though is that I tried a can of the Nature's Variety Instinct Duck and they didn't relish it... the picky one took a few bites and walked away the other two ate it but didn't finish it.  So I gave it to my old garbage disposal cats and they ate it fine.  I've figured out that the kittens don't like any pate type food so now I gotta figure out which of the foods I ordered are pate and take them off the order next time.  Are all the NVI canned foods pate form?

Yes, the instinct pride line is the chunks, that's what my cats like. If you put toppers on food, they should eat it!

bonepicker said:

Yes, the instinct pride line is the chunks, that's what my cats like. If you put toppers on food, they should eat it!

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My cat loves the instinct pride! It has a better price too. He loves the chicken and I must admit that the little minced slices look quite good!

Mine like rabbit and duck

mysticdragon72 said:

On topic again though is that I tried a can of the Nature's Variety Instinct Duck and they didn't relish it... the picky one took a few bites and walked away the other two ate it but didn't finish it.  So I gave it to my old garbage disposal cats and they ate it fine.  I've figured out that the kittens don't like any pate type food so now I gotta figure out which of the foods I ordered are pate and take them off the order next time.  Are all the NVI canned foods pate form?

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As bonepicker and GhibliTheCat already mentioned, NVI is all pate but Pride is chunks and slices. I tried feeding our cats NVI back when we first adopted them (before I banned peas from their diet, though they're very easy to pick out of NVI) but they didn't like it very much: cats seem to either love it or hate it! Ours would eat one small serving each from a small can but that was about it. It was definitely not worth the money!

LisaHE said:

As bonepicker and GhibliTheCat already mentioned, NVI is all pate but Pride is chunks and slices. I tried feeding our cats NVI back when we first adopted them (before I banned peas from their diet, though they're very easy to pick out of NVI) but they didn't like it very much: cats seem to either love it or hate it! Ours would eat one small serving each from a small can but that was about it. It was definitely not worth the money!

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Mix it with a canned food they like to get rid of it.

The pates mine like are Merrick because it is light and airy not dense. They also enjoy nutro natural choice, which is light also. Otherwise, they prefer chunks and shreds. Maybe you could add water and put in magic bullet to liquify it. I find a lot of the top quality foods are snubbed by my cats, I feed the best that They enjoy. Much to my surprise they like Iams purrfect delicasies turkey @ liver. I bought it on close out at big lots, they love it nice chunks in gravy, it is now in rotation

bonepicker said:

The pates mine like are Merrick because it is light and airy not dense. They also enjoy nutro natural choice, which is light also. Otherwise, they prefer chunks and shreds. Maybe you could add water and put in magic bullet to liquify it. I find a lot of the top quality foods are snubbed by my cats, I feed the best that They enjoy. Much to my surprise they like Iams purrfect delicasies turkey @ liver. I bought it on close out at big lots, they love it nice chunks in gravy, it is now in rotation

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Ours have similar preferences: they love the Merrick and Nutro pates (or chunky pates) but don't really like the NVI. They like plenty of foods, so it's not worth the time or money to buy the NVI and gussy it up: cat catering does enough to keep these cats happy!

I don't know anything about that...

(said as I stare at various cases of food I ordered last week and hoping for the best)

I'm just thankful most of my brood is not fussy. Penelopy can be sometimes, but she ends up eating whatever is there eventually. I have the dry as a last resort, but so far have had good luck with everything. I think today we'll be trying the Felidae Chicken and Rice Formula. It comes in a big can, which is kinda exciting!

I knew I wasn't the only one that had cats that didn't like pate style foods.. as was mentioned by someone else there's so many choices out there that it won't be an issue finding at least a dozen or so that they all like!

I don't feel like buying special foods for each cat but if it gets them all to eat at least something then I'm ok with it!  I don't want anyone to go without food ALL day... one meal a day is acceptable but that's why I feed four... tried reducing them to three meals a day but they wouldn't eat two ounces at breakfast so there was a bit of waste.  Went back to splitting a 3 oz can between the three in the morning and they finish it.  I do give them dry at night but I'm now looking at replacing their garbage grocery store brand with something much better.  Since they don't eat much dry it shouldn't be too expensive.  I also want to try to introduce a little raw... either frozen or freeze dried.  

How good is the NVI raw boost dry food?  I've looked at the ingredients but I'm not any good figuring out what's ok and what's not LOL  I'd like to keep the fiber as low as possible and from what I remember the Wellness kitten food has only 3% fiber which I think is good??  Can someone give advice on dry as well? 

As far as wet/canned/pouches go I am pretty sure I selected a variety of foods that aren't pate.... I have to wait until we get paid before actually placing the order so the price has in fact changed because I changed the variety of cans.  I did notice they don't have a few varieties/brands I wanted to try, ie: Canidae/Felidae, Daves, Red Barn are a few that I know simplynaturalpet doesn't sell.  Anyone know if those three are all pate or do they have some other types too?  I'm going to check out their websites to check after I post this so I might end up answering my own question LOL

I really want to say thanks for all the advice that everyone has offered here... it helps a lot!

ttfn

MD

I am currently working on transitioning my cats to at least partially wet cat food. I have bought all of this so far:


I have tried a ton of different flavors and textured. My younger cat, Angua, eats all of it and loves everything. Carrot will eat exactly two bites of anything and nothing more.