At my wits end with my little food terrorists

[Meowmee]

Except now you have one who will only eat dry food so the canned won't work anymore either. If it is a food sensitivity you have little option, you have to figure out what they are able to eat and that's ultimately only possible by limiting what they have access to or the cats will continue to have poo issues.

Zone feeding meals is a possibility. The only one food doesn't have to be the same one food for every cat as long as the food sensitive cats only have access to their one food. Our multiple cats with different dietary needs are fed their 3 meals a day separately, behind closed doors so nobody has access to food they can't have. It's inconvenient but necessary.

If you can get the one to go back to eating wet food great, but even then keep in mind sensitivities can develop over time and even what worked before may not work now or may work for one cat but not another.

Thank you for your input but this is simply not a viable option for me, separating the food, The cats etc. and it doesn’t work because I have tried in the past. glad it worked for you though, take care

 

[Meowmee]

Meowmee even if this is confusing and frustrating, never lose track of the fact that you're a good cat mom. With time everything will come back under control. For now stick with the Esley's, which is pretty high up on the list, for the dry. I really don't think there's much better if your cats are okay with chicken. We use Esley's for treats to help SG become accustomed to chicken. We only got so far with that and no further, but they are her treats. The feeding of cats is very difficult.

Thanks They have been on Elsys for several months now so I think it’s really time give up on it, and it costs a fortune anyway. The reason I tried it was I asked on a food forum post if someone knew of a grain free dry food that didn’t have peas, and, lentils etc. in it and someone here said her cats had been on Dr Elsy, however they got terrible diarrhea from it so maybe there’s some thing else in there that gives cats diarrhea. I think she had switched back to something else but I forgot what it was now.

I bought a bag of Kirkland today and I’m going to start introducing that in with the meow mix and see how it goes.

If I ever get back to any physical state where I can go back to doing the home cooked and it’s not significantly more expensive than what I’m doing now I will probably do that eventually- the problem is there are times when I can’t make it and then I have to have some other food on hand, and fussy cat was always the one that was on hand then, unfortunately the price went up by like $20 for that and I cannot afford to buy that anymore. Really pisses me off the way all these companies are price gouging everybody for everything now.

I love my kitties very very much however I wish I had cats like before that do not have all of these issues…it’s just more than I can handle right now.

 

[Kflowers]

It is very hard and you just have to hang in. Sweet Gum threw up every meal when I was giving her wet food. We thought it was chicken. Slowly, I realized that the brand or the cat food didn't matter as much as who manufactured it. By changing brands I was just changing labels not actual cat food, as it were. There seemed to be basic things across the brands of the same manufacturer.

We know that companies must clean all equipment when offering food without an ingredient that is some of their other products. I'm not sure this rule holds for pet food manufacturer, particularly since several manufacturers can use the same plant to turn out different brands, much less different flavors.

In our case, it turned out there was something in all the wet produced by the two o the large manufacturers that just didn't agree with Sweet Gum. Once I quit feeding her those wet foods she stopped throwing up. Of course by then she had decided wet food was bad. And she does seem to have a sensitivity to chicken though not chicken meal or chicken fat, which just shows how hard it is.

Anyway, what it comes down to is it's a long journey. You do your best and just hold on until you are physically better.