Infuriating Picky Kitten

[IndyJones]

So my Indy has gotten stupidly picky about her food. I feed her both canned and dry but she seems to not want to finish her canned. She is in perfect health other than her weepy eye which she always has had since before I got her and has a super soft and sleek coat.

When I got her she would lick her bowl clean but now she only eats a bit of food and then does her digging thing and walks away. When I give her her food she meows and meows like shes starving but she doesn't finish it.

Now, if I give her a fish flavour she polishes it off. But I don't think it's good for her to have it all the time. She also likes any food that is a stew type with chunks in sauce.

I'm sick of throwing away the expensive food. Any idea why a healthy kitten is so damn picky?

I'm beginning to think I should just put her back on the junk food she had when I got her if this keeps up.

 

[talkingpeanut]

How old is she?

 

[StefanZ]

Junk food as you mention, has probably more of "digestives"? sprayed on it. Its a sort of slurry making the food more tasty. Typically used on cheaper cat foods. So the slogan "Whiskas, if the cat may choose itself" isnt totally false. The problem is, the cats isnt choosing the very best and most healthy, but is choosing what tastes best.

A ketchup lower will take anything which is drowned with ketchup, and leave be the cuisine made by the best cook with experience of being chief in the White House...

 

[IndyJones]

She was on fancy feast gravy lovers when I got her. I switched her to wellness because it doesn't have colors or other stuff in it. I don't mind giving her wellness but I'm not going to keep throwing it away. It's too expensive to keep throwing it away.

She is 11 months old.

 

[Sarthur2]

I have given up on this same issue and I feed my cats whatever flavors of Fancy Feast they like best. All my cats have lived to old ages.

 

[IndyJones]

That's what I'm beginning to think. $2 A can is far too much to be throwing away. Fancy feast is about $0.69 here so would feel a bit better about it. I still wish Indy wouldn't waste food at all though.

 

[MoochNNoodles]

I hear ya on wasting food. But after going through a health scare with each of my girls; back to back, they get what they will eat. And that's gotten us 2 years farther. I had a chat with my vet (You know you talk to your vet too much when she answers the phone and hollers "WE HAVE POOPAGE!!!" instead of saying "Hello." ) and decided that quantity was more important than the quality at that stage. So for us it's meant a mix of Fancy Feast and Purina dry. And now Friskies Canned and Purina dry. I've had to experiment. We do the best we can; but the cats have their opinions too. (They are a little better quality dry before their health issues started. ) Noodles is still too thin; so I'm just happy to see her tuck into her food at any point.

 

[ileen]

I use Fancy Feast gravy lover's flavors because Luciano likes them best. Ordering through amazon or chewy in bulk they're just over 50 cents/can (3 oz can). He used to finish whatever I gave him, but now he seems to shy away from the pate texture and prefers the chunky/flake textures. That surprised me because what he was only eating some of were the fish flavors - tuna, whitefish, cod, shrimp etc. I supplement with dry but the only time he eats more than 70% of that is when I'm gone way past the next feeding time.

 

[Ardina]

Oh how I understand your struggles! My cat (as a kitten) was also super picky and took ages to transition from a dry-food addict to licking the gravy off very particular types of Fancy Feast, to finally eating Fancy Feast and Friskies pate. In the end, I never managed to get her to eat anything healthier until last month when I discovered that she loves raw food. Go figure - it's either carb-heavy, digest-coated food or raw. So she's eating homemade raw now, and both she and I are happy. So give raw a try maybe?

The strategy that worked for transitioning her so far was to feed three meals and replace the middle meal with the new food. Eventually she got hungry enough to eat at least some of the new food. Though you're still going to waste a lot of food with this method, unfortunately. Once she was completing the middle meal of new food consistently, I replaced the third meal and eventually the first meal as well. This works up to a certain step - I got stuck at the FF and Friskies pates and couldn't get her to switch to Wellness from there. If I hadn't discovered Saipha's love for raw, I was probably going to give up and feed her what she wanted. Eh cats

 

[maggiedemi]

My cats love the Fancy Feast Gravy Lovers best too. Also the Grilled and Sliced. Have you tried Sheba Cuts? I think those are a little higher quality. They have Chicken and Turkey flavors without fish, they just have fish oil in them.

 

[IndyJones]

I live in Canada so we don't have chewy here unfortunately would be great if we could get it here since I don't have a license or car. Raw is too expensive. We used to have Sheba here but I haven't seen it in at least 10 years. I thought they went under until I came here.

 

[Ardina]

I live in Canada so we don't have chewy here unfortunately would be great if we could get it here since I don't have a license or car. Raw is too expensive. We used to have Sheba here but I haven't seen it in at least 10 years. I thought they went under until I came here.

It's actually cheaper for me to feed raw than Fancy Feast, which I was pretty surprised to discover. I'd always assumed it would be really expensive too.

 

[orange&white]

My kitten, who doesn't always want to eat when I feed her, gets 3 meals a day. If she hasn't touched her meal in 15 minutes, I ask her if she's sure she doesn't want to eat and give her another 15 minutes. If she hasn't touched her food after 30 minutes, I scrape all but a few bites off her plate. Then she usually looks like, "Hey! Where'd my food go???", and eats the little bit I left her. She usually eats the next two meals I offer her pretty quickly.

You might try changing the portion sizes, or put uneaten food back in a Tupperware tub in the fridge until the next meal.

As long as my cat eats the right number of calories by the end of the day, her food goes away after a short "meal time", and she can try again later.