Confounded by our two cats eating behaviour...

[tpapictures]

This is nutrition based, but it's also partly behaviour. I guess the reason for posting this here is because the opinion of nutrition people is probably more useful in this case.
Firstly, everything posted here from the Good Tips to Get Your Cats To Eat sticky thread to the other info posted here to help others has all been really interesting. My wife and I have read through all of that. But it hasn't really provided us with any kind of path going forward. I will try to keep this straightforward as I can as I think both our brains are so jumbled with this and other issues that it runs the risk of coming out all garbled and confusing if I'm not more cautious about sticking to the point here... I'll forego their names to keep it simple, it'll just increase the potential for confusion.

Cat A:
11 years old. No health issues. Very behaviourally particular. Has not been the same diet-wise since the death of our last cat in April and even before that a year prior when that cat got sick and had to take medication every day. That whole situation flipped a switch in him that he hasn't fully recovered from.
- Eats wet food pretty exclusively. We need to get him eating 280 calories per day to be at a good weight for him of 13.5-14 lbs. But he has very little interest in the majority of foods. Even ones he likes only entice him for a few days.
- He likes only abour 3-4 different wet foods and for only about 3 days and then will no longer like it and we need to move forward in the rotation. We have tried over 20 brands of wet cat food.
- When we try wet foods we have to be careful because one try too many and he gets an upset stomach, and then won't eat the same food he was liking at all for about a day or so which massively affects his weight. Why do we try more than one? Because the longer it takes to find out what he'll eat the longer it takes to get him to eat properly and to get him back towards a weight that's more healthy.
- We are limited to about 10% roughly of what is in the market because he can not eat anything with gums, pulses of any kind, any kind of fish or tapioca starch without provoking diarrhea and even, though very rarely, bloody stool from irritation. He does not have IBD, it's just how sensitive he can be. And removing all those things removes about 90% of the wet foods in the market.
- The other problem this provokes is that chicken, turkey, even beef which is pretty much all we're left with for feeding him are all foods that are extremely low in calories per kg. So, since he won't eat a lot in grams, he hardly ever gets enough calories to make it to 280 per day and that makes him lose weight which we are constantly battling.
- He'll eat dry only as a novelty. Which is to say that if you serve him a dry and he happens to eat it, he will refuse to look at it in a few feedings and dry food only comes in massive bags that we will never get through so while we don't let money stop us from getting the best food possible, it becomes a financial burden to just waste money on a whole massive bag of dry cat food that ends up being useless. Why all dry foods don't offer sample packs or just 50g bags, I'll never understand. Aside from all that, we don't like dry food anyway as it is completely species inappropriate for cats. We were just trying it because it massively boosts his calorie intake.
Cat B:
Recently adopted, also 11. Granted he's got way more reason to be wonky right now with his diet as he only arrived here a little under a month ago. But the shelter was never able to get him to eat what he was apparently eating. They tried giving him something else that wasn't working. A dry food by Hill's. We won't feed our cats Hill's but we did to get him used to being in his new home. But he wouldn't take it anyway so we showed him a dry food we had by N&D and he ate. Fine. He wasn't getting any wet, but our vet recommended Purina Essential Care because "all cats eat it". Well, he does, but doesn't love it. He does need to lose weight, but isn't eating enough of the dry or wet and has absolutely refused about 10 different wet foods and any other dry. No interest. Not even nausea. Just, nope, not eating. He eventually gets 200 calories or so in him daily, but reluctantly and he should really be getting closer to 280 as well as our other cat despite needing to lose weight. Their introduction and living together has gone great, so that's not affecting either of them. No incidents at all. And they are free to roam all day and night.

Cat 1 needs to eat more. We don't know what to do.
Cat 2 needs to like different foods. We don't want him to be on this Purina forever, we'd prefer him on something better. And he doesn't love it anyway so we'd love to see him eating happily. And ideally off the dry altogether.
Treats and toppers work for neither of them. This isn't health related. This isn't a problem with their cohabitation. This is pickyness and two cats who seem to simply not care for food.

If you can think of ANYthing, we're all ears. I'll tell you if it's something we've already tried. But it probably will be.

 

[mysterylover]

Wow! I feel your pain. I have 3 cats who are siblings. One tends to be constipated, and I am always looking for food that will help him but NOT cause diarrhea. Foods with oils like sunflower seed oil. My cats also have issues with gums, BUT I recently found that they do not get diarrhea if the food has a certain mixture of gums but no sunflower oil or fish oil. The BFF Play pate line is one they are able to handle and actually get constipated on unless I add food like Applaws with pumpkin to it. Oh, and also, both of the male cats have to have food that is chunky or has some shred in it, or they literally eat so fast that they wheeze from nearly aspirating - because they basically try to breathe while they are eating rather than take a break. Oh, and I also have them eating off plates, elevated, and I feed them 1/3 spoonful at a time, and they still wheeze if there is not something to chew in the food. The third cat, their sister, had dental issues about a year ago and suddenly refused to eat anything but soft pate that had strong smell (like new zealand mussels, a little fish, or liver). She had surgery and had teeth extracted for resportion disease, and she still wants her food smooth - and also, she has had constipation with some of the foods that were smooth and she loved. I so feel your frustration. She has gotten so upset with me for offering food she did not want that she went into the next room and hid under the furniture because she was so hungry but disappointed that it was not the right smell, texture, etc. She is now eating BFF OMG, but only some flavors in the Land & Sea. All have tuna in the mix but at least with Chicken listed first, but yes, I feel the calorie issue as well. She needs to weigh about 10 pounds, and the BFF OMG pouches only have about 54 calories a pouch, and by the time I add water to make it smooth enough, her stomach cannot hold a full pouch, so I need to feed her four times a day, at least, but it's hard to fit it in with work, even with me working from home. I fall asleep before that last feeding a lot and then feel guilty.

Anyway, I don't really have any suggestions. The small cans of Applaws chicken and rice have come in handy. I do use them as a topper, but I actually stir two teaspoons of shreds into pate for the boys to avoid the aspirating issue. However, the girl went nuts over that stuff, and I found she would eat some of the BFF Play pate if I put a bit of that in there cut up tiny, though she gets tired of the texture before eating enough.

One of my cats seems to only be able to handle agar agar (or more recently, the mixture of three gums with no oils in B.F.F. Play (Take a Chance, Best Buds, Checkmate) in terms of not getting diarrhea. He also is likely to throw up first bites of a meal if the carb count is too high, but even foods with agar might cause mushy, smelly poo if they add a lot of salmon oil or have sunflower oil. Believe it or not, the Rawz Chicken and Liver Pate actually causes him constipation. The Rabbit Pate has more fiber, so it does not cause this - but of course, it is very expensive and I have to order online, which sometimes takes 6 days to arrive. He can tolerate Lotus Turkey pate in small amounts, but it is high in carbs.

For Cat A, if you can find three or four foods/flavors that he does well on and can rotate, that would seem like the best strategy. You could try maybe Applaws chicken (just for supplemental feeding) or some baby food chicken (I use Beechnut) or just boiled chicken to add some calories as treats.

For Cat B, it sounds like you are trying all sorts of things. With my female who would not eat and feeding was such a battle and hard on her and me emotionally, I finally gave in and let her have food with SOME fish and even SOME tuna in it. She is dependably eating for the first time in a year. I don't love her having that much fish, but I also want her to eat and enjoy mealtime with her brothers. I tell myself that at least fish is not the first ingredient in what she is currently eating, and she seems to have no discomfort with the texture (after I smash and smash and add water and chop up any big bits -- hand blender might do better but it is loud if I am feeding with others in the house are asleep). If you don't have a food log, I would definitely see if you can keep one and see if you can see a pattern or anything in terms of flavors/textures.

Also, I know that companies changing formulas due to sourcing can cause digestive issues and cause cats to not like a food they once loved. You obviously love them both. I have heard people here say they had cats who were just not food motivated. Mine are really too food motivated. We have to put them up when cooking sometimes because they cannot stay out of trouble. LOL!

Hopefully others will have more suggestions. I just wanted to give you some support in your efforts!

 

[FeebysOwner]

Hi. I honestly don't know if I have any 'real' answers for you. But it is curious to me that Cat A shows up with no health issues. Although, I do know some cats just keep getting pickier and picker about their food with age.

First, I would make a list of the foods he can eat, and likes to eat, and see how many meals/days that would equate to if you never fed the same one before you went through the entire rotation. I have a cat with less restrictions about what she can eat than yours, although she pretty much restricts herself to chicken and/or beef. I have found I need to go about 10 days without repeating any one food. If I don't repeat the food in about that timeline, she seems to be fine with eating them. I have an occasional glitch, but this seems to work the best for her.

Secondly, because I only use 3oz cans to avoid repeating food too often, I give her baby food meat (Gerber Stage 2 or Beechnut) as an added meal so that she gets enough calories. Both are just meat with nothing added, other than Gerber does have corn starch in it. Depending on which flavor of the 2.5 oz jars you get you can add anywhere between 50 and 80 calories a day. However, I do add EZ Complete to them so that they are nutritionally complete for a cat - so, you would have to check that there is nothing in that supplement that would be a problem. And EZ Complete will not work for the chicken version due to a calcium conflict. EZComplete Premix Information (foodfurlife.com). Feeby will eat the beef and turkey versions, and Gerber has one that is ham that she also has eaten. After talking with the folks at EZ Complete, the amount to add to a 2.5 oz jar is 1/2 tsp.

I presume this is all possibly 'ditto' for Cat B, as applicable. Maybe with Cat B you could 'test the waters', by adding some water to a small portion of his dry food to see if that might encourage him to eat more 'wet'. Maybe that would help expand his interest in other foods over time. It might be that the baby food meat might expand his interest in wet food too?

 

[tpapictures]

Thank you both for your replies. Any feedback we get at all makes my wife and I feel a lot better about what we're doing, attempting, struggling with, and even if it's things we already tried, considered, thought about it still helps us feel not so lost. We have had days where it has really beat us up where we feel like our cats' appetite is slipping through our hands. We feel like we're willing to be flexible on whatever they need to be happy and balanced but we won't just let them eat any low quality food full of non-species appropriate ingredients just so they can eat happy but get tons of complications from eating all sorts of non-natural ingredients.

Just wanted to say that before answering. So, thank you.

One tends to be constipated, and I am always looking for food that will help him but NOT cause diarrhea.

Getting S. Boulardii, available in any vitamin shop or online has been an absolute lifesaver for us when trying foods has led to diarrhoea. We use this one and it literally stops diarrhoea in a matter of hours. Let me know if you want help with how much to give.

I recently found that they do not get diarrhea if the food has a certain mixture of gums but no sunflower oil or fish oil.

Ok, that's a degree of comparison we haven't done. We've noticed gums and ALSO peas, pulses or pea/chickpea flour cause our cat issues. Any combination of ANYthing with Tapioca Starch is guaranteed to mess up our cat's stomach and to make him not be as hungry for about a day, triggering again a potential hit to the weight gain.

Oh, and also, both of the male cats have to have food that is chunky or has some shred in it...I so feel your frustration.

If ours don't get a paté -- and it has to be a specific non-pasty texture that we have to get just right with water -- they will lick a few times and just walk away. If they sense chunks or shreds, they turn around and walk away in two or three licks. For your aspiration problem, I think you might have cats that are good candidates for those silicone licky pads. You basically spread the food out over little silicone bumps and tracks and it forces them to slow down and think more about how to pick up the food.

She is now eating BFF OMG, but only some flavors in the Land & Sea. All have tuna in the mix but at least with Chicken listed first, but yes, I feel the calorie issue as well.

Yeah, if we go anywhere near a food that has any kind of fish in the first three ingredients we know we're getting soft stool and a reduced appetite in the next 18-24 hours.

She needs to weigh about 10 pounds, and the BFF OMG pouches only have about 54 calories a pouch, and by the time I add water to make it smooth enough, her stomach cannot hold a full pouch, so I need to feed her four times a day, at least, but it's hard to fit it in with work, even with me working from home. I fall asleep before that last feeding a lot and then feel guilty.

We have a new rule that if food isn't at LEAST 1.0 kcal/kg we don't bother. We know neither our first or the new one will want to eat all day every 2 hours so we have to get the foods that get as many calories in as possible. Especially since neither likes treats or toppers. But please try not be so hard on yourself. Sometimes, you just need to stop, take a breath, remember they aren't doing this on purpose, regroup, and start from scratch... what do I KNOW they like, what have I NOT tried yet, what are some of the ones I've sworn off of and do any of them have something I can work with? But don't feel so bad if you can't get them to a specific amount every day. I know, I know, I'm saying the same thing. But starting the whole problem solving from scratch is sometimes crucial.

Anyway, I don't really have any suggestions.

As I said, just your thoughts and feedback are helpful to read.Any little thing could trigger an idea.

I found she would eat some of the BFF Play pate if I put a bit of that in there cut up tiny, though she gets tired of the texture before eating enough.

If we put ANYthing next to the food they're expecting to eat, they won't eat it and it risks making them walk away altogether.

He also is likely to throw up first bites of a meal if the carb count is too high, but even foods with agar might cause mushy, smelly poo if they add a lot of salmon oil or have sunflower oil.

You need to try the Probiotics from Fera Pet. It has completely chilled out and helped slow the roller coaster of our cat's poo issues. Better than the Purina stuff and the highest range of bacterium in any probiotic.

For Cat A, if you can find three or four foods/flavors that he does well on and can rotate, that would seem like the best strategy. You could try maybe Applaws chicken (just for supplemental feeding) or some baby food chicken (I use Beechnut) or just boiled chicken to add some calories as treats.

We do have 4, they work fine, but they simply are not enough calories to make him maintain the 13.5lbs we want him to be at. We sit at about 12.8lbs and struggle to get higher. Applaws would never work due to the shredded meat.

If you don't have a food log, I would definitely see if you can keep one and see if you can see a pattern or anything in terms of flavors/textures.

We do. In fact, they're so useful we've even thought about turning them into downloadable excel sheets and docs for others to use. One tracks the entire month and what he eats in order daily from what part of the day to what part. No notes unless they hate it, it's just meant as a list of where we've been this month with foods. The other section marks the end of day calories for each day of each calendar month. And the last section is where we mark down how much we give of what they're eating throughout the day so we can get a visual at any moment of what they're eating.
A whole other document is a calorie tracker. One sheet has every single food they've tried in a copy-pastable chart with calories and tied to a formula that calculates calories basedon the grams they eat. This combination of things keeps us on top of things and it's how we know what order to go in and at a glance how they've liked or not a certain food when in a store.

I just wanted to give you some support in your efforts!

Thank you so so so so so so so much.

Hi. I honestly don't know if I have any 'real' answers for you. But it is curious to me that Cat A shows up with no health issues. Although, I do know some cats just keep getting pickier and picker about their food with age.

We were too, which is why we went to see him and have him looked at. No problems at all. Our vet doesn't think he's in any kind of bad shape, but said, "sure get him to gain a little weight, I like seniors to be a little heavier than not so that if and when there are issues, they have some weight as a buffer if they decide not to eat for a while."

First, I would make a list of the foods he can eat, and likes to eat, and see how many meals/days that would equate to if you never fed the same one before you went through the entire rotation.

For us that would be about 3-4 days. Right now when he's into one, we get about 4-5 days of it before we start to see a drop in interest. Unfortunately we feel that if he only had one per day we'd be constantly battling soft stool and diarrhoea. I talked about the charts we keep higher up in my response to M mysterylover . I just counted, we've tried 66 different flavours of 24 different brands. 4 work well enough to buy them and use them in rotations. None give us quite the number of calories we need. Dry food is really on and off. When he likes it he can eat it for about a few weeks but then you can't serve him any for months once he goes off it. Every now and then he has a scarf and barf morning and that alone can put him off dry for a long time.

Secondly, because I only use 3oz cans to avoid repeating food too often, I give her baby food meat (Gerber Stage 2 or Beechnut) as an added meal so that she gets enough calories.

I asked about this in another thread. We can't get meat baby food here in Canada at all. It just doesn't exist but for in very randomly obscure areas. So that's not possible. And even if it were, we've shown him raw chicken breast, veal liver, and pork and there is basically no interest. Boiled, I have only tried chicken breast, not with enormous success. So cooking and blitzing up meat ourselves in a processor would likely not render much interest, but I suppose we can try if I can get a method for doing it.

Maybe with Cat B you could 'test the waters', by adding some water to a small portion of his dry food to see if that might encourage him to eat more 'wet'. Maybe that would help expand his interest in other foods over time. It might be that the baby food meat might expand his interest in wet food too?

So he has naturally on his own gone off the dry. Not entirely, but when we bring him both several times a day, he goes to the wet first and might finish the dry later. But we can not seem to get him interested in any other wet but the one he's eating. It's a really crap Purina product they gave us at the vet when he wouldn't eat after being adopted due to stress induced nausea. But we are planning on picking a food we like and starting really really small, like the head of a pin. We tried starting with the regular 25%-75% transition method once a couple of weeks ago and he stopped eating for a day.

Thank you both so much!!

 

[tpapictures]

Just wanted to update quickly here...

A cycled routine of 5 foods has calmed Cat A's disinterest in food. Also, we had a random idea of just placing dry food next to him which started something we couldn't have predicted which is that he goes back and forth from wet to dry the entire time he eats. Works fine, but now the dry bores him too after a while so we are starting to cycle dry food as well. But that combined feeding seems to interest him. Storage, vacuum sealing, keeping logs of all this is tiring but helps us stay organised. Life isn't exactly a bundle of fun at the moment for various reasons but we're trying my wife and I to stay positive for the cats' sake. At least we have each other to work on this with. Alone it would be a real struggle.
Cat B is resistant to all attempts to upgrade his crappy Purina Senior Care food the vet gave us. He just seems to never have known what wet food was so it's a miracle he eats this at all. But our attempts to transition him to better quality isn't successful. We have no info about what he ate for 11 years so we have no starting point to transition him with. But he likes this Purina stuff so we try to go from there but I have never seen a cat so tremendously resistant to all proteins, brands, and textures. We need to keep trying different ones bit by bit but it gets pricey to buy food that may end up being thrown out. Toppers, treats, sauces, broths, not a single one of them elicit even the faintest response from him. His brain only knows whatever he was fed for 11 years and the shelter made no effort to find out what that was.

So, there we are. Thank you all for your suggestions.