something in canned food??

Hi. I've got a sweet tortoiseshell/white girlie, 8 years old now. She's always been a really good cat, except for at mealtimes - I know cats pester for their food, but what she was doing was ridiculous: yowling for it - following me round & round as I worked, yowling hysterically in the most appalling loud flat voice, really demanding her food. Then often she'd bolt it down so fast that she sicked it all back up again within maybe a minute. The yowling was impossible to describe adequately - I've never heard anything remotely like it.

For other reasons I recently changed her from her forever diet of tinned Felix to various good-quality dry food (Iams, Hills, etc). A miracle! At mealtimes it's almost creepy to look round & find her sitting in the middle of the floor with her tail curled neatly round her feet, blinking adoringly up at me, silent. She occasionally makes a little polite "mew" sound when she sees me looking, but that's all. No desperation, no hyteria. She enjoys the dry food with normal relish; she no longer eats with frantic urgency. She actually uses her jaws & teeth now!

Is there something in tinned cat food - or specifically Felix - which could cause this behaviour? It was like she was addicted, or had ADHD - could an additive be making her act like that? I'd be really interested to know, although I can honestly say there's nothing on Earth would make me EVER give her a bowl of Felix again! She was mental. She's a totally different cat now. She eats only as much of the dry food as she wants - she used to eat as much Felix as you put out, no matter how exaggeratedly you piled it into her bowl. Also she never ever used to drink water when she was on Felix, although she was forever weeing & had just taken to weeing on the carpet. On the dry food she drinks LOADS of water & only wees a bit, & always in the litter tray.

I'm sure my sweet kitty-cat has been suffering from some sort of feline ADHD, brought on by the tinned Felix. I would be SO interested to hear what other people think of this.


In any case -

- I've got my little Springycat back.

Wow, whatever it is i'd like to know too! thankfully we've never given our kitty that brand. I would not put it past some of these companies to put something in it to make it addictive though. Have you ever read the ingredients? I read all the ingredients of anything I am thinking about buying for our kitty, even the treats, some foods and treats have alot of "garbage" in them. I think sometimes kitties are like kids, they want what's worst for them the most, like kids want alot of stuff with sugar in it all the time, you know?
How long had you been giving her Felix?

This may belong in the IMO, but I don't feed my cats food with remnant in it. I've heard horror stories of what goes into canned food, and have refused to buy some of the most popular brands in the US. My cats eat Pet Guard for wet and Pet Promise for dry. We have very little litter box odor, and they seem to love it.

Years ago I read the lower quality foods will add stuff to addicate them to THAT brand. I've also read they put a lot of pressure on the kitten food sales due to ppl will stick with taht brand for life of animal if they start when they first get the cat(trusting the image and the animals preference to xyz brand) My cats were horribly addicts of friskies ocean fish(back when friskies was not part of purina...late 90's) took awhile to get them all to science diet..RJ