Cat Won't Switch from Meow Mix to a Better Brand

[codecat]

I used to feed my cat meow mix and he loved it, ate every bit every time I set down the bowl. But I've recently read about how terrible Meow Mix is and made the switch to Nutro, which is the best I can afford on my rather tight budget.

The problem is that he is refusing to eat the new food! I've tried to mix some Meow Mix into his new food but he just picks out the Meow Mix and leaves the Nutro. Should I play "cold turkey" with him and only give him Nutro until he is hungry enough to eat it or is there a better way to handle this??

thanks for your help!

 

[cranberry]

I just switched my cat to a new food and tried doing it gradually by mixing the two, as I've always read that's the better way to do it. But it turned out that she didn't like the food mixed and was fine when I gave her the new food on its own. But I did this very slowly to see how she'd react.

Good luck!

 

[stephenq]

HI!

Meow Mix is crack so convincing him to give it up can be a challenge!  There are other quality foods out there in the same price range as Nutro so you might try those.

But more importantly than a quality dry food in the opinion of many people here is the feeding of a wet food.  I would even recommend a lower quality wet over a higher quality dry if forced to choose because of the higher protein levels, lower carb levels and high water content which is good for kidneys, and kidney failure in cats is very common later in life.  So I would consider slowly introducing a wet food in a separate bowl, and see how that goes.  You may have to try different brands and flavors, and I would start with a higher quality and only work your way to lower quality if you had too.

There are a lot of "Sticky" threads pinned to the top of nutrition forum pl us many threads on transitioning foods, etc at http://www.thecatsite.com/f/64/cat-nutrition