Too Much Fish?

teejay89

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Hello there! Over the past month or so I've been trying to find a good quality wet food that my kitty will actually eat (always the problem right :lol:) so I've been sort of on a man hunt for different brands and types of recipes. I completely stopped giving her dry food because it got to the point where almost every day for over a week she would barf at some point throughout the day while eating dry, and it solved the problem by 90%. She will still barf after wet food only if she eats too much too fast but I'm off topic..

Anywho, it seems like she really LOVES Tiki Cat tuna with pumpkin. It has great ingredients, no gums whatsoever and no carrageenan. She doesn't really touch their chicken recipes because it's shredded chicken, but she would eat other brands chicken pates but of course they had carrageenan in them. If I give her just the fishy flavors from Tiki Cat would that hurt her in the long run? I didn't see any other topic on it unless I just missed it, but I didn't know if a cat eating solely fish is bad for them in some way. Thanks for any help!

 

KarenKat

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Maybe someone can come by with more information, but the issue with fish is that many of the sources have heavy contaminates/metals in them. Also there is a link between hyperthyroidism and feeding fish foods to cats. So if your kitty (who is simply stunning by the way) will eat non-fish flavors then it is better to do more of those than fish if you can.

I feed Olive Life’s Abundance (there’s a chicken flavor and a new pork/duck flavor), Rawz Rabbit Pate and I’m experimenting with Fromm pate (although it’s super full of gums), Rawz Duck Pate, and some others. I’d like to feed her Kasiks (aka First Mate) but she hates it. I also throw in a Primal dehydrated raw nugget. I’m sure there are many other gum free foods to try as well.
 
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teejay89

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Maybe someone can come by with more information, but the issue with fish is that many of the sources have heavy contaminates/metals in them. Also there is a link between hyperthyroidism and feeding fish foods to cats. So if your kitty (who is simply stunning by the way) will eat non-fish flavors then it is better to do more of those than fish if you can.

I feed Olive Life’s Abundance (there’s a chicken flavor and a new pork/duck flavor), Rawz Rabbit Pate and I’m experimenting with Fromm pate (although it’s super full of gums), Rawz Duck Pate, and some others. I’d like to feed her Kasiks (aka First Mate) but she hates it. I also throw in a Primal dehydrated raw nugget. I’m sure there are many other fun free foods to try as well.
Thank you! Yes the thing that worried me was the metals/mercury that could be in the foods. It's just so darn hard though having a super picky eater, and once you find a good brand and they refuse to eat it it's back to square one. I will look up the brands you mentioned! I would just hate buying a whole case of something and her not eat any of it..
 

KarenKat

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Olive is not super picky - she hates turkey and seems like she’s not a fan of shreds or chunks but she will eat them (mostly). Our other cat Gohan is super picky. We just got him on wet food and so far he loves a brand called Caru - it’s a gruel-textured food but it has no gums, the ingredients are human-grade and I contacted them and they sent me one of each flavor for free to try out.


Life’s Abundance can only be purchased on lifesabundance.com but they sell individual cans so you can try it. It’s one of Olive’s favorites.

Onlynaturalpet.com, petstuff.com and incredpets.com will sell individual cans for some foods. Also contact companies and ask for samples, some will send them.

I also try and look up any independent pet store near me and see what they have available so I can get individual cans to try out.


Also some members put together a pretty comprehensive list of wet food ingredients, so you can sort for ones without gums: Check This Out.... Chart For Cat Food Ingredients
 

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I’m sure my boy would like those flavors too—he loves the Tiki Cat After Dark—but I also worry about the fish. I’m feeding a lot of Weruva now, and I stick to the beef/poultry/other land animal flavors in the canned variety but many of the pouch varieties—both the meat in broth/gravy kind and the pates—are sourced from two proteins, and one of them is usually fish.

Tiki Cat is a higher quality brand, so honestly I would worry less than if you were feeding a cheaper one that gets their fish from god knows where. You could also try balancing it out by feeding two protein sourced food, so that kitty gets her fish but also gets something that’s not fish in the same meal.

If that’s what your cat will eat, it’s good food and I wouldn’t torture yourself over it!
 
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teejay89

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Olive is not super picky - she hates turkey and seems like she’s not a fan of shreds or chunks but she will eat them (mostly). Our other cat Gohan is super picky. We just got him on wet food and so far he loves a brand called Caru - it’s a gruel-textured food but it has no gums, the ingredients are human-grade and I contacted them and they sent me one of each flavor for free to try out.


Life’s Abundance can only be purchased on lifesabundance.com but they sell individual cans so you can try it. It’s one of Olive’s favorites.

Onlynaturalpet.com, petstuff.com and incredpets.com will sell individual cans for some foods. Also contact companies and ask for samples, some will send them.

I also try and look up any independent pet store near me and see what they have available so I can get individual cans to try out.


Also some members put together a pretty comprehensive list of wet food ingredients, so you can sort for ones without gums: Check This Out.... Chart For Cat Food Ingredients
Awesome thank you! Usually Iris will eat only pate, she shocked me the other day when she ate a chunky fish food by Earthborn but of course when I tried to give her the other half later in the day, she turned her nose up to it :gaah:

I looked up Fromme because I remembered getting a dry food sample from a local small store in my town and I think they carry the wet food so I might just try that later this week. I'll try to get some of the cans of the lifes abundance too :)
 
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teejay89

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I’m sure my boy would like those flavors too—he loves the Tiki Cat After Dark—but I also worry about the fish. I’m feeding a lot of Weruva now, and I stick to the beef/poultry flavors in the canned variety but many of the pouch varies are sourced from two proteins, and one of them is usually fish.

Tiki Cat is a higher quality brand, so honestly I would worry less than if you were feeding a cheaper one that gets their fish from god knows where. You could also try balancing it out by feeding two protein sourced food, so that kitty gets her fish but also gets something that’s not fish in the same meal.

If that’s what your cat will eat, it’s good food and I wouldn’t torture yourself over it!
I actually tried to get some of the Weruva, I've been looking everywhere for the slide n serve but can't seem to find it! I swear she is just stressing me out trying to find the perfect food that doesn't seem to exist :lol: I havent tried the tiki after dark ones yet with her, I'll be going to a few different stores later this week so I'll try a few of those as well!
 

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I actually tried to get some of the Weruva, I've been looking everywhere for the slide n serve but can't seem to find it! I swear she is just stressing me out trying to find the perfect food that doesn't seem to exist :lol: I havent tried the tiki after dark ones yet with her, I'll be going to a few different stores later this week so I'll try a few of those as well!
Do you live in the US? You can get most kinds of Weruva on Chewy, including the Slide N’ Serve. You can also get it on Amazon.

I feed the CITK pates, not the original pates (because they have solely fish based flavors which I try to avoid). I get these from Petco.com.
 

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Tiki Cat fish flavors especially the tuna with pumpkin saved my Krista’s life! It got her eating and kept her eating enough when she didn’t really feel much like eating (pancreatitis) and was having trouble keeping other foods down (IBD.). I keep some on hand just in case she stops eating again.

In her case though, once I tried Rawz turkey with her, that’s when she really found a food she loved and began not just surviving but thriving. We were able to get her intake and calories up high enough to get her nutrients enough to heal and put weight back on. Tiki Cat is high quality but low calories. I’d have to feed 2-3 times as much food to get the same calories as she eats from Rawz. And she can really put away the Rawz these day.

...

For now, keep feeding what she’ll eat. But you can also add one more meal to her schedule and use that meal to try new foods with her. Start slow. Like 1 tbsp of new food the first day until you’ve seen what it does to her poops. Each day you can decide based on her poops (assuming she’s not barfing it up either), to proceed (good poops), hold (soft but still mostly formed), or abort (liquid poops rarely firm up with repeated feedings in my experience.). If proceeding, you can add another tablespoon of the new food. If holding, you keep the portion the same. If aborting, hopefully not much harm done. I like to do this kind of guest star naked transition (not mixing with old food), because I don’t want to put Krista off food she likes by mixing in stuff she doesn’t or doesn’t treat her right. She still gets her regular meals with her regular food. If we abort the new food, she’s not left without a food to eat. When you find winners, you can transition regular meals too.

I would try hard to move her away from fish. Not because I believe there is anything wrong with fish. Except that it’s kind of the nuclear option for taste. If she stops eating fish, what could you possibly offer that’s even more appealing? For that reason, once you can get her off the fish, I would save it for emergencies when she won’t eat anything else or the very occasional treat. Don’t give it so often that she expects it or she may hold out for it.
 
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teejay89

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Tiki Cat fish flavors especially the tuna with pumpkin saved my Krista’s life! It got her eating and kept her eating enough when she didn’t really feel much like eating (pancreatitis) and was having trouble keeping other foods down (IBD.). I keep some on hand just in case she stops eating again.

In her case though, once I tried Rawz turkey with her, that’s when she really found a food she loved and began not just surviving but thriving. We were able to get her intake and calories up high enough to get her nutrients enough to heal and put weight back on. Tiki Cat is high quality but low calories. I’d have to feed 2-3 times as much food to get the same calories as she eats from Rawz. And she can really put away the Rawz these day.

...

For now, keep feeding what she’ll eat. But you can also add one more meal to her schedule and use that meal to try new foods with her. Start slow. Like 1 tbsp of new food the first day until you’ve seen what it does to her poops. Each day you can decide based on her poops (assuming she’s not barfing it up either), to proceed (good poops), hold (soft but still mostly formed), or abort (liquid poops rarely firm up with repeated feedings in my experience.). If proceeding, you can add another tablespoon of the new food. If holding, you keep the portion the same. If aborting, hopefully not much harm done. I like to do this kind of guest star naked transition (not mixing with old food), because I don’t want to put Krista off food she likes by mixing in stuff she doesn’t or doesn’t treat her right. She still gets her regular meals with her regular food. If we abort the new food, she’s not left without a food to eat. When you find winners, you can transition regular meals too.

I would try hard to move her away from fish. Not because I believe there is anything wrong with fish. Except that it’s kind of the nuclear option for taste. If she stops eating fish, what could you possibly offer that’s even more appealing? For that reason, once you can get her off the fish, I would save it for emergencies when she won’t eat anything else or the very occasional treat. Don’t give it so often that she expects it or she may hold out for it.
Thank you!! I will try to start it slower, usually I will give her half a small can of new food (if she even eats it at all) but I will try to give her less. I am definitely trying to find her a good food thats not fish, but she is so picky because some brands she'll eat chicken, some she won't. She wont touch turkey, but seems to like duck. Normally her poops are pretty regular despite what she eats, the only thing that seems to change is how far down the house the smell can go :lol: I would like to try Rawz because it seems highly recommenced here but I just didn't want to spend $50+ on a case she won't eat, but I just dug and found one site that sells them individually so I may give that a go too!
 

CatLover49

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Hello there! Over the past month or so I've been trying to find a good quality wet food that my kitty will actually eat (always the problem right :lol:) so I've been sort of on a man hunt for different brands and types of recipes. I completely stopped giving her dry food because it got to the point where almost every day for over a week she would barf at some point throughout the day while eating dry, and it solved the problem by 90%. She will still barf after wet food only if she eats too much too fast but I'm off topic..

Anywho, it seems like she really LOVES Tiki Cat tuna with pumpkin. It has great ingredients, no gums whatsoever and no carrageenan. She doesn't really touch their chicken recipes because it's shredded chicken, but she would eat other brands chicken pates but of course they had carrageenan in them. If I give her just the fishy flavors from Tiki Cat would that hurt her in the long run? I didn't see any other topic on it unless I just missed it, but I didn't know if a cat eating solely fish is bad for them in some way. Thanks for any help!

Pretty kitty
 

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I would try hard to move her away from fish. Not because I believe there is anything wrong with fish. Except that it’s kind of the nuclear option for taste. If she stops eating fish, what could you possibly offer that’s even more appealing? For that reason, once you can get her off the fish, I would save it for emergencies when she won’t eat anything else or the very occasional treat. Don’t give it so often that she expects it or she may hold out for it.
I so agree with this! Our previous cat was a fish addict and she did develop mild thyroid disease; when I monitored her food in her last months, it also seemed that fish had been one of her food allergies/sensitivities.

We only feed an occasional can of food with fish as a primary ingredient: it's almost always a can of some sort of Cats in the Kitchen food from Weruva. They make a few where chicken is the first protein ingredient and fish is the second. Our cats really love those and they make for a good treat. I think some of the new BFF foods from Weruva have "surf and turf" (or "land and sea") options. In any case, I mention this because some of Weruva's foods that are part chicken and part fish might help you move the cat off fish. Weruva does have gums so if you can't feed gums or are set against feeding gums, those foods are not a good choice!

Personally, I'd rather feed gums than a lot of fish but we only feed one canned meal a day and not all those cans have gums anyway. Our cats have strong preferences for raw and homecooked foods.

Also, since Rawz came up, lots of members have mentioned that Rawz is very generous about sending out samples. Our cats are always changing their mind about Rawz but it's very good food, so I keep trying!

Good luck!
 
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teejay89

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I so agree with this! Our previous cat was a fish addict and she did develop mild thyroid disease; when I monitored her food in her last months, it also seemed that fish had been one of her food allergies/sensitivities.

We only feed an occasional can of food with fish as a primary ingredient: it's almost always a can of some sort of Cats in the Kitchen food from Weruva. They make a few where chicken is the first protein ingredient and fish is the second. Our cats really love those and they make for a good treat. I think some of the new BFF foods from Weruva have "surf and turf" (or "land and sea") options. In any case, I mention this because some of Weruva's foods that are part chicken and part fish might help you move the cat off fish. Weruva does have gums so if you can't feed gums or are set against feeding gums, those foods are not a good choice!

Personally, I'd rather feed gums than a lot of fish but we only feed one canned meal a day and not all those cans have gums anyway. Our cats have strong preferences for raw and homecooked foods.

Also, since Rawz came up, lots of members have mentioned that Rawz is very generous about sending out samples. Our cats are always changing their mind about Rawz but it's very good food, so I keep trying!

Good luck!
Thank you!! This week I will check out Petco to see what types of Weruva they have, I think I've seen some of their food online doesn't have gums but its slim. I always knew that carrageenan wasn't good but just recently learned about gums, and its hard to find foods without them! I will try to see about Rawz, luckily I found one site where I can just order individual cans so I might try a few of those, I looked and the closest store that sells them to me is over an hour away :headshake:
 

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teejay89
As LisaHE mentioned, Rawz will send samples for free, I recently requested just one sample of their duck pate in the new 3 oz cans and they sent me 4 cans, very nice (they sent me 2 duck and 2 turkey pate samples). Good luck. :)
 
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teejay89

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As LisaHE mentioned, Rawz will send samples for free, I recently requested just one sample of their duck pate in the new 3 oz cans and they sent me 4 cans, very nice (they sent me 2 duck and 2 turkey pate samples). Good luck. :)
Thanks! Did you request it through their website? If so that is what I'll do now :yess:
 
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