Your Personal Experiences Transitioning Kibble Addicts To Wet Food?

I'm going on two weeks of trying to get Smo to eat wet food and have had zero success. I've tried timing meals to stimulate hunger, using wet treats as toppers, mixing in dry food and treats, but she is just not having any of it. I've even tried just serving her the broth portion of wet food supplements but she won't taste that either. I'm not sure what happened because she used to eat wet food (mousse) regularly, but it's like a switch flipped - she used to at least try any wet food I put in front of her if it was blended smooth, but for the past few months she's been determined to avoid it. I don't need to switch her over to wet fully, just make her eat a couple ounces a day, but the only "wet food" she likes are fish puree treats.

I've been linked to some great resources on these forums, but was curious about people's personal experiences with transitioning stubborn, kibble-loving cats to wet food. Apart from timing the meals, what was your process like? How much wet food did you use, what kind did you serve, and what did you do with all the leftover food? How long did it take before you got them to start eating wet regularly?

Oh, I feel you. We have Gohan, a die-hard grazer. Bonus because he’s easily distracted by anything and will be put off eating.

Getting a timed meal was key. He needed to be hungry.

At first we started with what types of food he liked. He seemed to prefer pate (he literally gags at gravies or chunks). He would sometimes eat some (we would put it down at mealtime and if he rejected it we would put the kibble down). Initially his favorites were Life’s Abundance and Lotus Chicken Pate. Over time he rejected both.

Also, we had to stay in the room and be quiet. No doing dishes, no leaving and if someone walked by the window talking it was all over.

Over time we realized he liked pate, as smooth a texture as possible. Now all he eats is Caru brand stews. It’s like ground meat soup . We still have to stay in the room and watch. But he’s been off kibble for a few weeks and over time he’s eating better and better. It can happen but it’s painful.

One of mine would only eat dry for quite a while. I bought all sorts of wet to tempt him, mousse, in gravy, in jelly, grain free, you name I bought it. Nope, only dry. Eventually I tried Sheba in gravy and at least he licked the gravy. I tried bowl of wet next to a bowl of dry and he started dipping into one then the other. I tried bonito flakes on the wet and he cleverly picked the flakes out. Running out of ideas, money and patience I mashed the wet and mixed in a small amount of dry only giving him a small amount at a time and yay...it worked. He does try to pick out the dry but will then eat the wet. If he starts to walk away from it I sit beside the bowl and tap it then he comes back. I stay there talking to him until its finished. On the odd occasion he leaves most of it, I pick it up, cover it and offer it to him later. I still get some waste but nothing like I used to. It took me about 6 months to get to where I am now. Some of them are stubborn little tykes. I know you have tried lots of ways already but dont give up. Good luck.

KarenKat Ugh, I feel you on conditions having to be exactly right. Smo needs to be just the right amount of hungry, and absolutely no one is allowed to move when she's eating - my boyfriend and I both freeze in place like statues once her plate is put down. How long did it take overall to get Gohan off kibble? Those ground meat stews sound just like the kind of thing Smo would like, so I'll have to test them out on her.

V verna davies Lol, the only time I've gotten her to even go near wet food in the last week was when I smothered it in her wet treat - it was a mountain of Inaba Churu over a half teaspoon of Wellness wet food. Smo ended up neatly licking off all the Inaba and leaving all the wet food I'm going to try your method and trying coating some dry food in a tiny bit of wet food, and see if she'll eat it that way. When you were trying the kibble/wet food mix, did you switch out the wet food you were testing each time? I have trouble knowing to do with all the leftovers - I feel bad giving it to the neighborhood strays because I can't feed them consistently, but I don't know if it's good to keep pushing flavors on Smo that she's already rejected.

I bought individual sackets, trays until I found one he liked. The only food he will eat is Sheba but not the chicken. If you find one he will eat, stick to it until she wont eat it anymore. I have 2 other cats but they wouldnt dream of eating leftovers so I had some waste but as I only now feed a tablespoon at a time (and often) it is minimal. Many members use beef broth. I wonder if Smo would like that mixed into his pate type food? Try anything and everything, I'm sure you are already. When I started this food marathon with Buzz he was eating 90% dry, now it is 40%. Not perfect but I'll take it.

V verna davies 40% is amazing - I'd even be happy with 10% with Smo. I've never tried Sheba on her but I do know they make those little trays, so I'll pick some up next time I head to Petco. I'll see if she'll eat broth and baby food also, because why not.

Also, I'm wondering - can the type of dry food they eat affect what wet food they'll eat (or not eat)? I've been thinking about when Smo's issues started, and it all seems to coincide with when I started feeding her Tiki Cat's Born Carnivore, which is very high protein (44%) and heavily fish-based, with no poultry. After a couple weeks on this she suddenly decided she didn't want any wet food at all. I just switched her to Dr Elsey's chicken Cleanprotein, so maybe that will help? Who knows...

Hmm ... well we started the beginning of 2018 during our difficult cat integrations. He took immediately to Applaws Chicken and Asparagus pouches ( an incomplete treat). We worked in about 1/4 of a 3 oz can of pate at some point. Then he stopped so we gave up for a bit.

Probably the beginning of this year we added in the Caru. In March we moved and stayed in pet hotels for 15 days. He was on kibble and one Caru meal. Probably a month ago we tried kibble free (Olive was vomiting in the mix) and it took him a little while to figure it out (first am feeding was ignored often) but he picked it up.

Also we were feeding Dr Elsey’s as well!

I use James Welbeloved dry food in turkey. Its all about experimenting and of course that all important diary. Keep updating us, we are with you on this journey.

KarenKat I guess I was expecting too much too soon! It sounds like so many people are having to keep at it for at least up to a year. I'm hopeful Smo will eventually start accepting wet food because she used to eat it - I do think the Tiki Cat kibble had something to do with all this weird behavior cropping up. She's only been eating the chicken Cleanprotein for a day, and I'm already noticing bigger pee clumps and smaller poops, which makes me feel like I don't have to rush things so intensely.

V verna davies Thanks Verna for the encouragement! Right now I plan on switching Smo over to chicken kibble exclusively and cutting way down on tuna wet treats - hopefully she'll take more interest in her fishy wet food when she sees it as a treat.

I basically did a cold turkey transition of my 12 year old cat, Gizmo, who had eaten nothing but dry kibble for all of his 12 years. He has IBD and was in to the vet for vomiting. They put him on the canned Purina veterinary diet made for stomach problems and wanted me to feed him that for 3 days. The issue is that I'd tried to transition him in the past but had enough trouble that I gave up, on more than one occasion over the years. This time I was determined because he was having too many episodes of vomiting over the previous few months, he had lost some weight and the vet had urged a switch to canned food more than once in the past.

This time, I believe that it all came down to luck. Finding a canned food that he would at least eat enough of that I could get at least a solid start with the transition. I already knew, from past experiences, that shreds and chunks were out of the question. So I started with different pates and targeted brands I hadn't tried in the past. I tried quite a few foods but eventually he took to the Stella and Chewys pates and later on, the Rawz Turkey pate. But I also quickly found out that he would throw up the following morning when he ate the chicken varieties. But didn't throw up the Turkey. So I had that issue to work out as well. But the real key to this was trying the Stella and Chewy's freeze dried raw Turkey nuggets with one or two crumbled and mixed in with his canned food. That's really what got him to eating enough of the canned to be getting his needed calories so he could gain some weight back. Now he's also eating a little of the S&C Selects frozen raw and I'm making some homemade Turkey with Alnutrin. They have to be mixed in with his canned food, but he's eating them real well.

It's only been 2 months since I transitioned him, again, cold turkey. No dry kibble at all. And I fully expected him to have runny stools from the immediate change, especially because of his IBD. But he never did. He's thrown up one hairball in the last 5 weeks. Amazing for him. He's gained almost 1.5 lbs and I'm probably going to have to cut his calories back a little bit I think.

Now, with that said. I thought my cat would be impossible to transition but he always did accept a little bit of canned when I tried in the past. He would almost always walk away after a few bites and he would never come close to cleaning his plate. So, worried about him losing weight, I always gave up. But after reading some of the posts here about transitioning, I'm realizing that my cat was easy-peazy compared to a lot of cats. All you can do is to keep trying.

Try some freeze dried raw as a topper or mix-in if you haven't. It's expensive but if it helps you get him started eating canned, it's worth it. And as a topper or mix in, it really isn't too bad, price wise. I'm about done with a medium sized bag of the S&C freeze dried and it's lasted close to 3 weeks. They are under 20 dollars for the 8 oz bag. It may be worth a shot.

Best of luck with the food change.

We eventually transitioned Oscar over to a mostly wet food diet, but it took several attempts over several months before he finally got the hang of it.

We tried many of the excellent suggestions recommended on this site, catinfo.org, and other sources, without much luck. No matter which brands, toppers, mixers, etc., we tried, Oscar just didn't seem to recognize wet food as food. We got some FortiFlora from the vet's office, and that didn't help either.

Our big break finally happened entirely by accident. Per our vet's recommendation, we had recently started our FIV+ kitty on a probiotic (Proviable-DC) to try to help improve his overall health. So we thought we'd give it a try for Oscar as well, because we wanted him to be healthy, too.

So I emptied the contents of a Proviable capsule into a tiny dab of Fancy Feast, and offered it to Oscar as a treat. Much to my surprise, he immediately wolfed it down and begged for more. Unfortunately, that first time, he wouldn't eat any more Fancy Feast since it didn't have the same taste as that little dab with the Proviable mixed in. But it was a start, and over time, I gradually increased the amount of wet food I mixed with the Proviable. Then he finally got to a point where he would eat the Fancy Feast whether or not it had the probiotic in it.

Our only problem was that Oscar would get hungry at night, even if we fed him again just before bedtime. So now he gets a tablespoon or so of Dr. Elsey's or Young Again dry food in his bowl at night to help tide him over until morning. He's happy that he has a full tummy, and we're happy that we can get a full night's sleep.

Best of luck, and hope you stumble across something soon that works for your kitty!

Have you tried feeding wet food in a different location? I had one that thought dry food was the only food allowed in the kitchen but if I put wet up on the cat tree I was successful. I was never able to transition completely to wet but could get one meal a day on the tree.

Since cats are aware of what we are feeling, it just occurred to me they are aware of what we think when we open the cat and look at the cat food. What if you think it's repulsively stinky, which most cats like, but they pick up on you find the food repulsive?

I wonder if our cat picked up on my insecurity with the food. After my last cat died and Sis moved in with hers, he ate dry food. So it was years since I'd seen cat food, actually meat at all. So when I look at the food I wonder is it all right? Is it spoiled? About to be part of a recall?

If our cat is picking up on that, no wonder she wouldn't eat the stuff.

darg Thanks for sharing! I do plan on buying Smo some freeze-dried fish to use as a topper (I've tried giving her freeze-dried chicken before and it seemed to offend her), along with some bonito flakes. I've been trying to entice her to eat small bits of wet food by smothering her favorite wet treat on top, but I tried that this afternoon and she walked away after looking at me balefully. All I can do is keep trying - I'm withholding any treats from her for the moment and planning to use them only as wet food toppers, which I hope entices her to eat eventually. What's frustrating is that Smo used to be a lot like your Gizmo, where she did taste most wet food I served her as long as it was the right texture (soupy/mousse-y) - she did this up until April of this year then completely stopped. Now all she does is sniff it once, walk away, and leave her plate untouched until the food start drying out.

cheeser Thanks so much for the kind words! I've actually considered using something like a probiotic to get her to eat - I wonder if the one you used was irresistibly tasty? What's interesting is that the lady who rang me up at Petco (when I was buying a billion cans of wet food) recommended I try an additive to help with digestion - she said it always worked on her four picky cats. I found the Proviable on Chewy and the reviews are really excellent, so I'm going to try that too and report back - I appreciate the recommendation!

Pjg8r I have tried all the locations, lol. You're lucky to have a cat that cares what's allowed or not - mine doesn't give a single crap, she'll do what she wants, whenever she wants. When she actually eats something it's usually the second I put it down, so what I do is find where she is (whether it's on the couch, my bed, the floor, a shelf) and plop the food down in front of her. I've tried using a designated spot as well but she acts like, "why aren't you bringing me my meal, slave?" So that's been a no-go.

K Kflowers I think you're onto something - I've been very anxious when serving her food over the past two weeks, feeling like if she doesn't eat wet food she'll get sick. I've also been following her around with the bowl if she rejects the food, like "PLEASE!" She probably picks up on my desperation. I'm feeling more zen about everything at the moment because she seems to be doing well on her current kibble (Cleanprotein chicken) - I don't like that she's eating only dry food but eliminating fish seems to be having a positive effect. I've decided we'll take it at her pace - I'll plop the food down, walk away, and let her decide what she's going to do with it. I've eliminated all fish from her diet so maybe she'll want to sample fishy wet food more when it's a treat, not something she gets to eat constantly.

I've found Zen works best with cats. anything else is emptying the ocean with a sieve. I suspect cats are Zen and when you manage it you are in harmony.