Dealing with FIC - Food options

Hi all, 

Pretty much 1 year ago on the dot, I posted a thread here asking for advice on my cat Tank who developed FIC and was hospitalised for 4 days. He recovered well from that after a few complications (he had a bad reaction to the pain relief he was on). 

Now almost exactly a year later he's come down with this again, of course on a Saturday night... I rushed him to my vet on Sunday morning, he's had fluids injected under the skin, valium and pain relief he seems to be doing okay at the moment, so fingers crossed he'll have an easier recovery this time.

Last time he had this, I had all these grand plans to change his diet to a BARF diet.... That completely failed, no matter what I did, he would not take to it at all. So I just kind of gave up and gave him the food he wanted - dry food :/

Now this issue has come up again I really want to succeed in getting him to eat more moist foods. So if anyone has any tips to encourage a fussy cat to switch from dry to tinned or raw food that would be much appreciated!

I give my ferrets a freeze dried raw food called 'Feline Natural'. It's mixed with water, it's been a huge hit with my ferrets so I thought i might start by trying Tank on this. If he likes it I may be able to use it to introduce him to other foods too by mixing them in. Any extra tips would be much appreciated though!

For some reason my cat likes her dry food in water, she tips the dry food into the water and eats it when it expands, I guess you could try that. Have you tried cooked meats, such as chicken?

Try freeze dried raw cat food. It's al ot healthier than dry food and you can rehdyrate it. Many packages of freeze dried raw even state to rehdyrate the food before serving. They can be fed dry, of course. Dry foods are not meant to be sokaed in water. Have you ever seen package directions that say "Feed the amount of food recommended in the chart below. Prior to feeding, soak the food in water"? Most likley not

Freeze dried foods are kind of crunchy when dry so try feeding it dry for awhile before slowly adding water to it. Or offer the freeze dried raw as treats and see if your cat accepts the food or not. Sometimes you have to be sneaky and crush up freeze dried raw and sprinkle it onto canned food.

I'm not familiar with what brands of freeze dried raw foods are available in Australia. You should be able to find ZiwiPeak which is actually air dried raw food, not freeze dried. The texture is a bit more crunchier and similar to dry food.

LTS3 said:

 
Try freeze dried raw cat food. It's al ot healthier than dry food and you can rehdyrate it. Many packages of freeze dried raw even state to rehdyrate the food before serving. They can be fed dry, of course. Dry foods are not meant to be sokaed in water. Have you ever seen package directions that say "Feed the amount of food recommended in the chart below. Prior to feeding, soak the food in water"? Most likley not

Freeze dried foods are kind of crunchy when dry so try feeding it dry for awhile before slowly adding water to it. Or offer the freeze dried raw as treats and see if your cat accepts the food or not. Sometimes you have to be sneaky and crush up freeze dried raw and sprinkle it onto canned food.

I'm not familiar with what brands of freeze dried raw foods are available in Australia. You should be able to find ZiwiPeak which is actually air dried raw food, not freeze dried. The texture is a bit more crunchier and similar to dry food.

Click to expand...

I actually have a small bag of Ziwipeak that I use as treats for Tank, it's just like dry food though and i don't think it says to rehydrate it.
 

I use a different brand of freeze dried raw for my ferrets called 'Feline Natural' (the company is K9 natural). It's one that gets rehydrated and it's awesome, going to offer some of that to Tank tonight to see if he likes it Only downside with it is that it's super expensive!