not eating enough canned food

So I've been trying to transition my 12 year old cat to a wet diet of some sort  over the last number of months after some askew levels at one of his regular checkups (see here: http://www.thecatsite.com/t/318839/possible-kidney-issues).

Some canned food he just won't touch, but takes to ziwipeak/werevua.  It's been quite difficult though as, even with about 4/5 cans per days (he's 7.2kg), which is about the maximum he will eat, he doesn't maintain his weight.  Not massive drops, 100g or what have you, but it drops unless I add dry as one of his meals.  We've had several thorough checkups recently and other factors have been ruled out that might cause weight loss.  He has also had some loose stools from canned food.

The vet feels that he fills up on the cat food without getting the calories (I'm not sure if calories is the right word) he needs.   I have some supplement ordered that should arrive soon that I'll be adding to cooked meats that normally will happily eat, so hopefully because it'll be a balanced diet he can eat more of that and it will be more substantial.  I also am pretty setup to try raw soon, so perhaps that will also help.

At any rate, if anyone has any thoughts or experience on this I'd be interested to hear it.   It's frustrating as I each day I really don't know what I'm doing!  I can try to add in canned food with carrageenan or raw with garlic, but then people warn against them, but maybe it would be better than the dry he eats at the moment.  Seems like rocks and hard places everywhere.

thanks  

Weruva tends to be low-calorie so I might look to replace some of those foods with higher-calorie options. Has you cat tried Tiki Cat? Their meat-based foods are fairly high-calorie, though I'm not sure how their phosphorus levels are. (Here's Tiki's nutrition chart) Our cats particularly love their Gourmet Carnivore foods with liver. They're all carrageenan-free.

Since you mentioned weights using the metric system, I suspect you don't live in the US so wonder about food availability!

Weruva is relatively low-calorie, so you have to feed a lot more of it than you do for other wet foods.

Also, how many meals do you feed each day?  If your kitty can't eat enough at each meal, perhaps you can add an additional meal or two.

This TCS articles might also be helpful:

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

http://www.thecatsite.com/a/transitioning-free-fed-kibble-kitties-to-timed-meals

We feed Weruva, but only two types that have higher calories (around 150 per can). I would suggest changing him over to some of the higher calorie ones or adding something with denser calories instead of the Weruva. 

Thanks for the replies.  We don't have tiki cat here (Australia) that I can find evidence of.  I will look into the different calories of the weruva foods.

As far as finding other canned foods, the quality drops of pretty quickly or they have carrageneen (wellness and canidae).  I don't think there's any

left I haven't tried.

I've been feeding four meals a day.  Anything more than that and he won't eat much of it.   I've tried various combos of time/amounts of food, and

I think he's eating about as much as he'll eat of it right now.

Nature's Variety Instinct is also relatively high in calories, if you can find it where you are.

There's a thread about food choices in Australia: http://www.thecatsite.com/t/229827/help-with-australian-cat-food-choices There may be a suitable canned food listed there you can try.