Seriously challenged to change diet

[worldtraveller]

Hi friends!
I am becoming increasingly frustrated when trying to convert my diabetic Kitty to wet food, and would love to hear your tips, support, prayers, directions, demands, orders, wishes how to do this conversion.

So here's the whole story, in short:
Kitty, orange tabby, was born in Dallas TX in May 2000 and Joey, grey tabby, was born in February 2004, also in Dallas. Since then we've lived in Atlanta (GA), Helsinki (Finland) and now in Moscow (Russia) for my work. Kitty is the most friendly, easy going kitty in this world. Everyone's friend. Joye is sensitive and loveable, but does not like loud noices and fast movements (i.e. kids). They both have been on dry food all their lives, and I had it easy. Well, not any more. Kitty was diagnosed with diabetes last December after the normal diabetic symptons.

Due to Kitty's personality, he truly is the best diabetic kitty in the world also. I can test his BG effortlessly any time and he's easy about the shots also. He allows my kitty sitter also to give the shots easily. Such a good and adaptable guy. BUT - he is seriously stubborn about not eating wet food (well, he loves tuna but that's not helping for the long run). Joey, on the other hand, started to eat wet food from day one and I think he does not really care if he never gets any dry food. I would have thought that Joey was more difficult to convert, but who knew?? :roll:

I must admit that I have not yet done all the tricks that are suggested in the links in FD pages, and I promise to do better job and continue to have my patience. So before we get there, I really would love to hear good wet food convertion tips from you out there.

Also, is anyone familar with kitty food brandname Vom Feinsten? In my closest pet food store they sell it and Joey seems to particularly like it ( we have Classic and Wellness kind). I have not figured out if these are low carb enough, but I think they may be.

Thanks in advance for all your good tips. I continue to be so impressed with all helpful people in this forum! :smile:

 

[SonnyB]

I totally understand the challenge of finding a diet that is acceptable to all family members, feline and otherwise. I can't tell you the countless times I have relented and made my 5 year old (human) chicken nuggets because he wouldn't eat what mom and dad were...

Since your boys like tuna, I would suggest starting with the tuna-blend cat foods, and maybe put a little people tuna in with it to start. Not great in the long-run but shouldn't cause any major issues unless anyone is prone to bladder or thyroid issues. I would then start looking to the other flavors, but maybe drop a little tuna on top. Maybe if you start with a tuna blend, like tuna and chicken, etc. they might eventually like the chicken, etc. on it's own.

Our guys aren't horribly picky, not crazy about beef and turkey, pretty okay with other ones. But, I'm convinced they would eat laundry detergent if I poured a little canned tuna juice over it!

Good luck!

 

[Lori&Scout]

I hear ya... it's been a tough conversion in my household as well but after 2 weeks of no dry food, both cats have finally adjusted.

Scout is not a terribly picky eater but she does love her crunchies. My civvie Nipper, on the other hand, turns her nose up to almost all wet food even though I always offer her a token amount when Scout gets her dinner. She will eat tuna water and a little canned tuna and sometimes the Whiskas fish flavors that are lumps of food in gravy. Mainly she is interested in the gravy. So that's where we started two weeks ago. For several days Nipper barely ate, meowed at me constantly, acted pathetic, and every other trick in the kitty book to get me to put the dry food back down, but Scout was doing so well without it that I held firm. Now I know cats on insulin need to eat, so it's not as simple as waiting until the cat is hungry... so here are some things that worked to get Nipper to eat during this phase.

1) Bonita tuna flakes sprinkled on top of food and given as treats. These are low carb. I would hand feed her a few flakes and then move my hand over the wet food bowl and hand feed a few more, then when she went to eat them I'd drop them into the bowl. If she didn't eat them in the bowl, I'd pick them back up and hand feed with the wet food smell on them. Repeat until she would eat out of the bowl. Most of the time once she had that first bite, she would eat some of it.

2) Fishy flavors. Both of mine LOVE the Blue Buffalo brand's Salmon flavor. I don't feed it all the time but it did help Nipper see that not all wet food was bad.

3) Mix with hot water to make a soupy mess. I think it smells stronger and fools Nipper into thinking she's eating gravy. After a few hours of the food being out, make it more appetizing by remixing with more hot water.

Hope this helps! It took about 12 days before Nipper would consistently eat wet food without encouragement. She has lost 0.2 lbs in the two weeks since I took the dry food away, so she clearly isn't starving.

Lori

 

[MelanieAndRacci]

I've been going thru the same thing with Racci. So far after I don't know how much money wasted, I've found 3 types she will eat. Both are expensive and have low carbs but both one has a lot of phosphorous and salt. I haven't checked thee other yet but at least they're wet! Before this she looked like she would vomit if I gave her wet and just walked away. She would rather starve.

The ones she likes are Wellness Turkey puree, chipped turkey in gravy and salmon with trout. What I do to make her eat them is use tuna water instead of regular water to mix them and warm them in the microwave. I also mix them with chicken broth and cut up chicken very fine to get chicken in her. So far it's working for the past week or so but she decides she doesn't like things as soon as she turns around. ohmygod_smile and now all of a sudden she decided she doesn't want flakes, she wants puree when before she wouldn't eat anything but flakes! So go figure! Of course she loves tuna and sometimes likes chicken sometimes doesn't.

Melanie & Racci