Bored with food

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Kerflumper

Member Since 2012
My cat gets bored with food after about 4 weeks. She just stops eating it. This is odd to me since she ate the same dry food for ten years. The vet put her on Purina DM recently because she says it is the best wet food for diabetic cats even though it has more carbs than Special Kitty, 9-lives, etc. The vet wants me to keep her on the DM and when I suggest that she's bored with it, she says to leave it out and don't change it - she'll eventually eat it and she'll learn that she doesn't make the food decisions.

Finding a food that's low in carb is tough enough, but switching gets to be a challenge every month.

Thoughts?
 
Purina DM is mostly liver. Cats tend to get bored of liver pretty fast. Your vet's reasoning is awful and she should be giving you a full refund for the food. If your cat doesn't eat she can get sick - both DKA and hepatic lipidosis can be brought on by not eating enough and both can kill very fast.

What foods have you tried so far?
 
We started in April with Hills W/D dry and wet. Switched to 9-Lives wet in June. Switched to Special Kitty in July. Tried Grreat Choice for about a week. Went to DM in September.
 
Hmm, those are mostly cheaper/lower quality foods with byproducts as the main protein source. Maybe she's got expensive taste. :lol: You could try a higher quality food with more muscle meat or something with unique flavors like duck, rabbit, etc... maybe a few different flavors of Fancy Feast classics/Special Kitty select.
 
Some cats need variety. My Gabby would not eat the same food for more than a few weeks, or she'd get sick of it and refuse. I avoided this by rotating different flavors of different foods. Some she liked more than others--Merricks, Petguard, and Wellness ended up being the winners that were rotated frequently. She would not eat foods with liver for more than a week at a time.

I would get several different types of low carb canned foods, rotate, and find a few different foods that she likes. Then rotate those flavors around every few days. Even premium foods are going to be cheaper than what you're paying for the DM, so you have a lot of options.

If you're considering a food that isn't on any of the food charts, check the ingredients. Anything that is just meat--no corn, wheat, soy, rice, or other starches added to the mix, is going to be low carb. Most cat foods with gravy are going to be too high in carbs (contain starches and wheat gluten), and most pates are going to be low carb (all meat, no grains). If you want to try the special kitty pates, I believe all or most of those are low carb. Just check the ingredients on the label. If I remember correctly, the special kitty selects are the pouches with gravies, which would make them too high in carbs.

Edit: I just did a search and I see that they also call their Fancy Feast type pates in the small cans "select"--those would be fine to feed. If you have a cat that doesn't like liver, though, you might be better off with a premium food that doesn't have much liver, like Merricks, EVO, or Wellness. If you enter your zip code in the store finders on their web sites, you can usually find them at local pet supply or feed stores for very reasonable prices--it costs me less to feed Bandit Merricks than Fancy Feast after getting a case discount at the local feed store. Wellness is even cheaper if you get it in the large, 12 oz cans, but I would get some small cans and make sure it's liked before buying in bulk like that.
 
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