Suggestions for dry food for 70 mo. kitten

wbandel

TCS Member
Thread starter
Kitten
Joined
Dec 5, 2016
Messages
1
Purraise
1
I adopted a kitten a couple of months ago, and after having him for about a month he started exhibiting symptoms of the Calicivirus. Took him to the vet where he went on antibotics for a bacteria infection he also got as a secondary part of his viral infection. The antibotics then gave him diarrhea. During this time he was still eating his regular food without any issues, though he was eating more and more often (drinking lots of water) because it was going through him faster. After he went off those antibotics he had to go on another batch of a different type after the diarrhea from the first batch wouldn't go away. Finished the second batch and after it ended his stool has now returned to a normal consistency. However, he now seems to be eating too fast and too much. After every dry food meal he ends up regurgitating his food.

Prior to him being sick (and while he was on antibiotics) he was eating about 50/50 dry/wet food and could regulate himself fine. I've tried limiting the quantities of dry food at a time, but he can hardly eat more than 1 tablespoon of dry food without regurgitating it. For now I've switched him to just wet food, and I don't have a problem with leaving him predominantly on wet food long term.

However, I would like to have an alternative dry food that he can eat in case for some reason I and/or my husband have to travel for work and he needs to be left alone for a longer duration of time. We also have another cat (roommate's cat), who refuses to eat wet food. In the past they shared dry food and we gave our cat wet food on his own. Right now they're being fed separate, but my cat will still sneak and try to eat the other cat's food and still regurgitate it.

As a bit of history:

Rommate's cat started on some variety of Meow Mix dry food

Our cat came from shelter with Kirkland Signatures maintenance cat food (chicken and rice, non-grain) dry food and Friskie's pate wet food

We then bought Goodlife chicken non-grain dry food to replace what the shelter gave us; kept buying Friskie's pate wet food

Prior to the kitten being sick, we worked on getting the roommate's cat off of the Meow Mix and both cats onto the grain free food. For a while there the roommate's cat was eating our food, and my kitten kept sneaking and eating the Meow Mix (which is why we decided both had to switch to the same food). They had finally both switched over and were fine when my kitten started getting sick with the virus. Like I said before, he was still eating fine while on the antibotics. Now he can't keep down the Goodlife dry food. For the last week or so all he's been eating is the Friskie's pates.

In summary:

I'd like recommendations for a dry cat food that would work well with a kitten who is having issues with eating too fast/too much and can't keep food down. I'm thinking preferably something that won't expand much when eaten. I'd also prefer it to be healthy and probably healthier than what he has already been eating. The cherry on top would be if the food was not the most expensive as he will probably share it with my roommate's cat, who as you can tell with the Meow Mix, my roommate is a bit of a cheapskate.

I'm open to other recommendations as well, but for now I'm thinking of shorter term solutions.
 

missmimz

TCS Member
Top Cat
Joined
Jan 11, 2015
Messages
2,301
Purraise
365
His symptoms are clearly telling you he doesn't tolerate dry food, so the answer shouldn't be to try and force him to eat something his body doesn't tolerate. Plenty of people feed wet food exclusively and still travel or work 10 hour days. You can leave wet food out for long periods of time without issue and you can get auto feeders for wet food for a fairly low price. Goodlife isn't very good kibble and Meow Mix is basically the lowest quality kibble out there. I wouldn't feed that garbage to my feral cats. There are plenty of decent low cost wet foods, including fancy feast classic and sheba pate. 
 

pusheen

TCS Member
Adult Cat
Joined
Apr 20, 2014
Messages
112
Purraise
28
Most dry food is garbage, and all dry food is bad when compared to even the worst quality wet food. Switch your kitty to wet food if he'll have it--he'll be much happier.
 
Top