Finding a Dry Food for Picky Cat

[steph86]

Hi, all. I'm in need of some help with a stubborn cat and finding a dry food he'll eat. Van Gogh was eating a prescription food, Royal Canin Calm, due to the stress of getting used to being an indoor- only kitty (he's a former semi-feral stray) and being bullied by one of my other cats when no human was around.
Sam, the "bully" cat, passed away last year, and now Van Gogh no longer needs the prescription. (The price of the food has also skyrocketed to $79 a bag!) However, finding a less costly food hasn't been easy.
I've tried both Solid Gold's lentils, apples, and salmon flavor and Tiki Cat's trout and menhaden flavor, but neither were to his liking.
Ideally, I want to feed him a natural food with few processed ingredients, but am also tired of buying bags of food he only picks at.
Any suggestions would be very welcome. He loves fish-based wet food, and usually won't eat poultry flavored food.
Thank you so much!

 

[Bellspurr]

All my cats love mother and kitten from royal canin

 

[Babypaws]

Hi, all. I'm in need of some help with a stubborn cat and finding a dry food he'll eat. Van Gogh was eating a prescription food, Royal Canin Calm, due to the stress of getting used to being an indoor- only kitty (he's a former semi-feral stray) and being bullied by one of my other cats when no human was around.
Sam, the "bully" cat, passed away last year, and now Van Gogh no longer needs the prescription. (The price of the food has also skyrocketed to $79 a bag!) However, finding a less costly food hasn't been easy.
I've tried both Solid Gold's lentils, apples, and salmon flavor and Tiki Cat's trout and menhaden flavor, but neither were to his liking.
Ideally, I want to feed him a natural food with few processed ingredients, but am also tired of buying bags of food he only picks at.
Any suggestions would be very welcome. He loves fish-based wet food, and usually won't eat poultry flavored food.
Thank you so much!

I have a feral cat I brought inside about 3 years ago and thank goodness she has blended in great with all my other cats…I mix dry in with wet food, unfortunately I can’t get them to eat a decent wet food, i dont know if he’s your only cat but in my opinion you’re better off giving very little dry, I don’t think there’s any decent dry food around, some might be low in carbs but high in something else etc etc.
My picky cats were only eating dry Friskies (along with wet food mixed in) but what I did was I wrote to a few companies and told them I have a lot of rescue cats and want to change them to a different brand of food and asked if they have any samples or coupons. I got samples from Dr Elsey and coupons from another company. I was able to get them to eat Dr Elsey, and Orijen, along with the Friskies dry. I figured they at least getting something a little bit different than just Friskies..

 

[syzygycat]

It's far from a quality food, but Crave is was the easiest dry food to get new cats to eat. It's a little under $3/lb. once they're eating "something". It's easy to slowly add a incrising ratios of decent quality food over the course of a a couple of months.

Our go-to dry food is Dr Elsy's CleanProtein which is one of if not the best dry food. Took 2weeks to go from 100% Crave to 50/50 Crave/Elsy's. A lot slower to get them to eat just Dr Elsy's with no Crave mixed in.

My cats are a lot fussier about changing dry foods than wet foods. Will never eat a new brand unless it's very gradually introduced.

 

[Alldara]

The ones you have tried sound like they are all along the "grain free" trend.
I'd suggest trying a regular food with either rice or oats as the fibre, rather than peas or legumes.

Any dry food is highly processed, regardless of whether it is grain free, grain, low or high cost.

You could try some freeze dried food like Stella and Chewys.

I'd also recommend, especially for an aging male cat, if you can afford to feed him one can of wet food with extra water added daily, this would be excellent for his health. Any kind will do for the health benefits, so whatever he will eat.

 

[syzygycat]

...You could try some freeze dried food like Stella and Chewys...

Stella & Chewy has a lot of flavors, they're pretty hot or miss with my cats. BUT if OP wants to try freeze dried and doesn't like poultry.

Instinct's freeze dried 'Raw Meals' Pollock might be a good choice.

I haven't tried the Pollock personally Instinct's freeze dried Raw Meals and raw Mixers Chicken is like cat crack all my cats love it as much as any treat. 2 of my cats hate poultry but still love this stuff. The small bag is inexpensive, worth trying both flavors.


The Rawbooster Mixers is treat, I use it as a topper to get cats to eat foods they otherwise wouldn't

Raw Meals look identical but are complete meal replacements not treats.
Both are kibble shaped. Both can be eaten dry (or with water). Both crumble easily and used as a topper

Instinct puts Raw and Rawboost in a few product names... freeze dried is 'Rawboost Mixers' and 'Raw Meals'