Cat Won't Eat Without Sardines

[pisces7386]

We have been feeding our 3 cats homemade raw (the same recipe) for three years now. They get two meals a day. One of our three cats, Penny, has always been a little more reserved when it comes to food. She has gone through phases where she has needed to be convinced to eat (we would hold a little piece to her face so she could sniff and then sit with her until she finished eating). For a few weeks now she refuses to eat unless we put sardines in her food and a tiny piece on the edge of her dish... canned sardines in water with no salt added from the grocery store.
It too much! We have been buying the little cans from the grocery store and breaking it into little pieces, freezing it, and thawing little chunks at each meal. We are at our wits end. We tried some bulk sardines from Hare Today and she refused to eat the meal that had them. We tried cooked Hare Today sardines, again no good.
We are talking about getting appetite stimulants... but that seems way way more extreme than what we are already doing.
Any thoughts or suggestions?

 

[orange&white]

I buy tinned sardines, salmon and mackerel to supplement the cats' raw diet. Sometimes I mix the fish into the batch for the week and sometimes they just get a "fish dinner" and the batch doesn't have any fish. Maybe rotating "with fish" and "without fish" keeps the cats from being as picky. My 8 month old definitely prefers the "with fish" mixes and sometimes doesn't like to eat the first of a new batch "without fish". I make tiny bits of unseasoned cracklins to sprinkle on her food (which makes me just as much of a doting mother as you are. ). She loves her cracklins.

It's also possible that Penny just prefers to eat at different times than you are serving food? My Farrell often won't eat one bite of breakfast, but the next meal isn't until I'm off work. By then she's really hungry and will eat plenty of calories between her dinner and before bed meals. I've started to not worry if she skips a meal, as long as she gets hungry enough to eat the right amount of food some time during a 24 hour period.

 

[Ardina]

We can talk about training cats, but they often train us! When I was transitioning my cat to new food, she would refuse to eat and I'd put tons of treats on, run after her with the plate, sit with her and encourage her, and generally beg her to eat. All my efforts just made her pickier. What eventually worked was tough love - she gets the plate of new food (maybe with some treats because I still wanted her to at least try the food). If she turned up her nose, after 20 minutes the plate would go back in the fridge and wouldn't come out until the next mealtime no matter how much she begged. By then, she was hungrier and much more willing to try it.

Of course, make sure your cat doesn't go without food for more than 24 hours. But a little hunger makes them a lot more willing to eat food that they wouldn't otherwise!

 

[silverpersian]

Adding a rescue cat cured our picky resident. He knows that she is more than happy to vacuum up his food if he doesn't eat it. We feed them separately, but he's seen how food-crazy she is, and eats his food as soon as we set it down.

If sardines are a hassle, you may want to try a light sprinkle of bonito flakes. They impart the fishy smell, but it takes just a few flakes.

 

[pisces7386]

I know she has got us trained! We've tried letting her get hungry ... and she seems perfectly content to go on a hunger strike. We will let her go 2 meals (24 hours) without eating, but then we make sure she eats. Our other two are more than willing to eat hers... but we are trying to get the one to slim down and the other will puke if she eats that much, so we do not allow them to eat her food.
We've tried the bonito flakes, no go for Penny. We have tried a bunch of various fishy options and it seems that she has set her heart/mind on the canned sardines.
We are in the midst of a hunger strike right now, we just got The Hare Today sardines and I am going to do my best to get her to like them.

 

[orange&white]

It does sound like she is just being picky, but I would ask the vet for a CBC panel at her next schedule wellness exam. How old is she?

 

[maggiedemi]

I wonder why she doesn't like the Hare today sardines, what is different about them? Does she like the juice from the sardines in the can?

 

[orange&white]

I wonder why she doesn't like the Hare today sardines, what is different about them? Does she like the juice from the sardines in the can?

Raw versus cooked?

 

[valentine319]

I would love to say I've been successful at training my cat but I'm not. We tend to adapt around them. Maybe lightly cook one of the hare today sardines to see if that's what she's wanting. You could try cooking it a little less over a few weeks if that's what she's looking for.

 

[pisces7386]

Mild Success! Hunger has won... a little.
She refused breakfast with the Hare today and Canned sardines. We waited 2 hours and offered again.... drum roll please- SHE ATE HALF! Tonight- the same thing! As I type she is eating dinner, 1.5 hours late with my husband standing guard, but she is eating!

We had considered a few weeks ago that she has that weird whisker thing... where the whiskers get overstimulated. this evening we dumped her food from her dish onto a small plate, and we saw an immediate difference. We may need to revisit the whisker issue too

 

[valentine319]

My cat eats less from bowls. I found clearance plates for her. But mine will eat better from a plate than from anything she has to stick her whiskers in. Don't forget the really cheap solution if you don't have any plates is paper plates.

 

[orange&white]

Nice to hear she ate! My cats eat off flat saucers from Dollar Tree.

 

[maggiedemi]

Yeah, once my cats started eating off saucers and plates, they won't eat out of bowls anymore.

 

[mschauer]

We had considered a few weeks ago that she has that weird whisker thing... where the whiskers get overstimulated. this evening we dumped her food from her dish onto a small plate, and we saw an immediate difference. We may need to revisit the whisker issue too

I'm not sure I know what you mean whiskers getting overstimulated. Like others I have switched to feeding on plates. I started doing it because I noticed one of my cats would paw at his face after having stuck his head in a bowl. It looked to me like it bothered him to have his whiskers touch the sides of the bowl.

The sad face in your post makes me think you think "the whisker issue" is some kind of serious problem. Or maybe I'm reading too much into too little. It just stuck me as odd since I don't really see it as a problem. It's just a consequence of cats having whiskers.

 

[pisces7386]

I'm not really upset about the whisker thing; I know its not something to be too concerned about. Its just that it is one more thing to deal with at meal times.
She barely ate any of her food last night (while I posted about our success)- She ate about a quarter of her meal once we put it on a plate. She also refused breakfast. We broke down and gave her the standard canned sardines with dinner tonight. She wouldn't eat from the bowl so we dumped it on a plate and she ate it all.
So I guess we will have to stick with the canned sardines and look into getting some small plates for her. sigh.

 

[PushPurrCatPaws]

Ah. I remember a whisker thread a while back that caught my attention here:
Whisker stress and feeding / water bowls

Is there a way you can "puree" the sardines, and freeze small pureed portions that you can warm up and put in her food? This might allow the sardine batch to last longer, and cut down on costs. And you can control the amount of sardines she ingests. Little pureed bits of sardines spread through her meal might give her nose the impression that she is getting more sardines than she thinks.