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I'm going to go against the grain here and say that:
1. Some cats are perfectly capable of going on a hunger strike indefinitely
2. This is really bad because those hunger strikes can lead to potentially fatal liver issues. I've had a couple online friends lose much loved cats because of hunger strikes that made their livers shut down.
So don't just think that, yeah, they'll eventually just give in and start eating the wet and all will be well.
Have you tried meat baby food yet to see if the kitten will eat that? It could be a way of phasing in the wet that's acceptable to the cat.
Just think, if you had a doggy to follow your eldest cat around, you wouldn't be wasting all that money. Puked up cat food is dog heaven! lol Vroom vroom. Recyclin' the food!
That made my morning
That's what our dog does. But since I scaled back the amount I feed our cat, it's not much of an issue.
I never would have guessed that some cats don't like wet food! Both cats we've had would scream for it. I give our cat Sophie a spoonful in the morning and one at night. Then she has dry food available all the time. She is the most accurate clock in the house. On the dot - 6am and 5pm she'll start yelling for dinner.
She is picky on the brand and flavor. Mostly from a throwing up perspective.....
Heh, mine does that now, wonders where her wet food is twice a day, but it took a while to get to that point. There are any number of other wet foods that she really doesn't much care to eat, or didn't, at least, back when some were tried, including stuff like Fancy Feast, etc. Of course, some of the times I tried to feed her that I was mashing up a pill in it, so perhaps she was able to smell/taste it in there over and above the really stinky food.
I'm not sure yet if I can get her to eat a different wet food now that she's used to a specific one. I may try a new one soon.
My 1 yr old cat has gotten very picky about the wet food over the last 3 months. I give her Evo 95% Chicken/Turkey. She turns her nose up at it now and instead prefers the dry kibble (I use Taste of the Wild and Nature's Variety Instinct...both grain free).
I need her to eat more wet food so that means I will be cutting back on the kibble (and mixing a little kibble in the wet food to entice her).
I have not yet tried meat baby food... I didn't even think that would be appetizing to cats! I feel at this point like I have tried everything, including the fancy feast "appetizers" that are just literally chicken in "gravy"
I am going to try again mixing the dry food in with the wet food. If that doesn't work I may try moistening the dry food, and if that works then mixing in the canned food.
Silly kitten. Takes nibbles of my ARM but won't nibble on some canned cat food!
You may have to do some syringe feeding if your kitten continues to refuse food. Wet/mixed with warm water -- a thin consistency so you can get it through a syringe, and slowly inject it into her mouth a little at a time.
You need to stimulate her appetite and getting food into her mouth (even if you have to gently force it) can help accomplish that. I did that for my kitten when she was feeling sick a few days after a spay surgery. I fed her about every 2 hrs because she was refusing to eat on her own.
Ended up at the vet anyway, but at least she wasn't in liver failure and she perked up quickly after some subQ fluids.
If the alternative to feeding kibble is to force feed the wet, I would seriously give the kitten the kibble instead of trying to make them do something they clearly aren't willing to do.
It's actually not hard to figure. Given the choice, who wouldn't rather have potato chips than liver? I'd go for the bad-for-me snack food in a heartbeat, and that's basically what the cheaper foods like Fancy Feast are.
I am so perplexed. I can't get Jack to eat any human food. I've tried salmon poached in chicken stock, beef raw and cooked, ham, turkey real and sliced, chicken scraps, bacon. Nada!
If the alternative to feeding kibble is to force feed the wet, I would seriously give the kitten the kibble instead of trying to make them do something they clearly aren't willing to do.
Agreed. Force feeding seems a little extreme, especially when the kitten enjoys the kibble.
Ours aren't crazy about wet food; we give it to them, but they rarely eat it. And we'll keep giving it to them (I'm stubborn that way), but we also give them a high-quality, grain-free dry food.
Oh I didn't realize the kitten was eating (kibble). My advice to force feed is only in the case that a kitten won't eat anything at all.
Well...your kitten doesn't like wet food. You can't force them to like what they don't like.
I've been hiding bits of kibble in my cat's wet food so she at least gets some of the wet food when she goes for the kibble nuggets. She's not underweight or anything and she does eat. I'd just like her to eat more of the wet food.
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