Fearful Eater

[violetxx]

I just brought two new kitties home from the SPCA who are 1-2yrs old and are presumed to be sisters. They are both very small and skinny, and we are trying to put weight on one girl in order to get her spayed, she's only about 2.2kg. Initially when we brought her home she wouldn't eat very much. We assumed it was due to the stress of the change. When we did get her to eat she licked her food extremely fast and kept sitting up every 30 secs to look around as if she was terrified to eat. Currently we are feeding her with her sister since she will eat more if the other cat is around, however the other cat will constantly try and steal her food. Its sort of as if there is a "pecking order" between them. The other cat is putting on weight much faster since she is practically eating enough for 1.5 cats.

We've also tried a bunch of different flavours, however she still doesn't seem very interested in them. We've tried wet:

• chicken,
• chicken and quail
• salmon, and
• venison

All she does is take a few licks and then walks away.

And she seems to prefer dry food if anything (but she is still not eating enough), however the food they're on now gives them extremely stinky and soft stools so I would like to switch them to either a wet food or have them consume a wet and dry food.

We brought them to the vet immediately before bringing them home and they both have a clean bill of health except that they had URI's when at the SPCA.

Any suggestions would be much appreciated?  

 

[hobo08]

Does she have her own quite room that you can keep her in? even away from her sis, so that cat isn't eating all the food.

 

[violetxx]

She does, but she still won't eat very much and tends to eat more around her sister.

 

[sevenwonders]

Sounds like it might be time for appetizers! I'd try a few small bits of anything you can think of that might stimulate her appetite.

Chicken, salmon, sardines, tuna, or even (junk food) Cat Treats. I'd try one or two and then let her see you place the third and fourth pieces into her food bowl, beside or on top of the food you want her to eat.

You might also try to add a small amount of warm water to her food - I've had cats who loved their food on the warm side.

Good luck, and let us know how it goes!

 

[violetxx]

Those are some good ideas SevenWonders.

We have added the warm water to her wet food before but when it comes to wet food she just isn't a big eater it seems. We picked up a bag of kitten dry food (with more calories) and we're feeding her those along with her current dry food brand. She is starting to eat a little more slowly. One thing I notice a little odd is that she'll eat maybe 5-6 crunchies and then drink water for literally 5 mins straight and then eat maybe 3 or 4 more. We're feeding her now at least 4 or 5x a day to try and get her used to eating more. We also bought some tuna that we are going to use as a back up if we need to. Thanks for your suggestions!

 

[sevenwonders]

I am very happy if I was able to help 

The Kitten food was a great idea!

If she likes hard food, opinions will vary, but I like Innova "Cat & Kitten" and Blue Buffalo. For "grain free" I prefer Buffalo Wilderness.

Although it is not the "best" food out there, cats seem to love the canned Friskies Pate varieties. I sometimes buy the Classic Seafood Entree and Poultry Platter for my Ferals when money is tight.

Those 2 varieties have meat as the first ingredient, and the first 4 or 5 ingredients are some form of meat, and they do NOT have corn, which is unusual at that price.

Oh, you may already know, but for readers who might not...

although it is fine to use a little tuna as an appetizer, and the kitties will LOVE it, canned tuna is not sufficient for their regular diet. It lacks the vitamins that they need (especially Taurine) and the amount of Mercury in tuna could be harmful to their little bodies. Oh, I'd stick with tuna in water - we accidentally bought the one in oil once - even the Ferals turned their noses up at it... even after rinsing in cold fresh water and draining. I left it out for the possum or raccoon... whoever got there first  ;-)

I seriously doubt that you will have to resort to this extreme with your Little One, but in urgent situations where a kitty just won't eat anything designed for cats, the only choice may be to feed them a turkey or chicken diet on a long term basis. In that case, a supplement that I have used and had good luck with is Dr. Goodpet's Maximum Protection Formula. I also add some Taurine powder (that I make from tablets I buy at GNC and powder them in a small food processor.) In an effort to make the food as nutritionally complete as I knew how, I also added Liver, Bone Meal and Salmon Oil. Actually, we completely turned around the life of one of our kitties who was diagnosed with CRF when he was about 15 - the vets told us he wouldn't live long. After he showed no signs of improvement on the Rx foods they recommended, I started cooking for him. Long story short, he ended up improving dramatically and lived happily to over the age of 20 on homemade food! In his case, I had to reduce the proportion of protein, so I added carrots, broccoli, pumpkin and a little bit of oatmeal. We had similar success by removing the grains from this recipe for another kitty who had IBD.

Sorry, I got on a rolllll there...

 

[catwoman707]

I would say she eats more when around her sister is because her sister is more food aggressive than she is, and likely has been stealing her food for a while!

Kitten dry is great, you want to use a higher quality kitten such as Babycat by Royal Canin, or Natural Balance Kitten formula. The first is more pricey than the 2nd.

Kitten food is higher calorie and nutrition, this will aid in her weight gain. This also tastes better from the higher fat content.

If it's possible, I would recommend a supplement of KMR (kitten milk replacement) She will love it and you will then know she is getting all that she needs. It's like a treat for cats and kids of all ages.

 

[violetxx]

@SevenWonders: Surprisingly she won't even touch friskies pate, I tried it immediately after she stopped eating. They tend to feed it to the SPCA cats often and I figured she might be familiar with it, but unfortunately she just snubbed her nose.

I have also heard about the Tuna, we bought a Blue Spa select Tuna I believe, and I would never give it to her often. We once fed one of my cats the Blue Wilderness Salmon for a few consecutive weeks and he started losing function in his back legs and I read that its a sign of too much mercury in the diet, so we stopped feeding it and he was back to normal.

I hope we won't have to cook from scratch to get her to eat, but we'll do what we have to at this point. What is the"Dr. Goodpet's Maximum Protection Formula" all about? I've always wanted to supplement my cats with a good Omega vitamin, because often they don't get enough Omega 3's in their diet, but I'm not familiar with that supplement.

The cat in the photo was actually a CRF cat who passed away in September 2011. Don't even get me started on the Rx foods, they did not help at all. Wish we would have thought of making home-made food for him. He lived to 17 but was diagnosed a year ago.

@catwoman707: We purchased Royal Canin Babycat at the moment because we are so desperate. I will look into Natural Balance as well. I was actually thinking about a KMR because she sometimes tries to suckle her sisters arm which I find really weird. Unfortunately I don't know much history about these two kitties because they were just dropped off at the SPCA, but I will definitely post some pics of them, its too funny to see them in action!

 

[sevenwonders]

Wow, so there ARE kitties out there who don't like Friskies? 

My kitties like the Blue Spa Select cans, but not every day, and sadly, my 2 picky boys don't like the Seafood Stew,

which is the one I thought they would be most likely to enjoy. They will usually eat Innova Cat & Kitten cans.

They love Friskies though, so when they refuse to eat the good stuff, I'll add about a teaspoon of the Friskies

to their food and mix it in just a little - that will usually get them to eat.

I'm concerned to hear about the experience you had with Wilderness Salmon. That is one of my "staples."

But, I only give them about 1/6th of a cup of Salmon per kitty, about once every two days. I might have to cut back to twice per week.

Oh, Dr Goodpet's Maximum Protection Formula is a good human-grade supplement that I learned about while researching

cat nutrition when I decided to cook for my kitties. I always add it to their homemade food. I will occasionally add a teaspoon of it

to the indoor kitties' canned food, and I add it at least once per week to the Ferals' canned food, especially during the winter.

Dr Goodpet (goodpet.com) is a site with several pet supplements and health care products - I've been happy with them.

Please let us know how the girls are doing! 

 

[violetxx]

Hi SevenWonders,

I'll elaborate more on the Blue Wilderness issue we had with my cat. At the time we were feeding him two flavours, I think it was the chicken recipe and the salmon recipe. During one week I think he got fed it practically everyday b/c we weren't paying attention to the flavours and ran out of chicken. During that week we started noticing that every time he jumped off something as he landed his back legs would collapse slightly and it got worse as days went on. I did some investigative work and found out it was all the mercury. I would just say keep an eye out for those symptoms. I mean generally there's nothing wrong with eating fish, but the same goes for humans - you wouldn't eat it every day due all the heavy metals found in them and the blue wilderness formula is practically pure salmon without all those grains and veggies there to dilute it so its much heavier.

Update on my Ms Finicky eater. She is eating quite a bit more now. We've gotten her on a routine and anytime she looks away while shes eating we touch her bowl and she starts eating again so its only a matter of time before she's fine on her own. We're feeding her Royal Canin Kitten 36 and some Venison sensitive stomach that we had leftover from my other cat. It seems she loves dark meats so she may eat a beef friskies, but I definitely don't want her to get hooked on that unless I have to. Once we get her spayed we'll slowly ween her off those grain foods and either put her on Before Grain wet food if she'll eat it and I'm looking for a good dry food. My other one is on Now but I'm not satisfied with it (very smelly stool) and I want a food with fewer fruits and veggies. One thing I've noticed reading these blogs is that many people rotate foods. Why is that?

Here's a pic of 2/3 of my angels, correction *devils

The picky eater is on the left.