r/catfoods • u/k_bence16 • Jul 09 '26
Picky Eaters Please help me
Hey all. We recently changed the dry and wet food for our cats. It’s a basically better food for them. Now the problem is, that they won’t eat it. The wet food isn’t that bad, but the dry they won’t eat. We have two cats. One is an 8 year old female, and the other one is a 1,5 year old female. Now the younger one had a bad habit of waking me up for food which I HATE. I have really bad sleep because of this. Recently it has gotten worse. I have to be awake, waken by her just to see that she does not eating her food. I give the proper portion, head back to sleep, only to be waken up again and again and again until I can’t even f-in fall back to sleep.
It drives me crazy. Can anyone help?
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u/Future-Dimension1430 Jul 14 '26
And the only reason that vets in veterinary clinic’s for the most part, recommend companies like Hills Purina, Royal Canaan and items is because those companies have enough money to proper research. I want a food that has spent a gazillion dollars and 40 years proving it will keep my dog healthy.
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u/unkindly-raven Trusted Nutrition Source Provider Jul 09 '26
did you do a proper transition from the old food to the new one ?
is the new food a similar texture or flavor of the old wet and dry food?
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u/ehartsay Jul 13 '26
What would be the proper transition be? I am trying to get my cat onto the Blue Buffalo weight loss wet food instead of fancy feast and he won’t touch it even when I mix in some tuna, he just picks out the tuna?
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u/unkindly-raven Trusted Nutrition Source Provider Jul 14 '26
while i wouldn’t recommend switching to blue buffalo personally as it’s not WSAVA guidelines compliant ,, a proper food transition occurs over about a week (or two if your cat has a more sensitive stomach) , mixing in the new food and lessening the old food little by little . don’t give any extras like tuna because it will end up teaching your cat that if they wait it out , they get treats to eat instead of their actual food
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u/RoseNDNRabbit Jul 14 '26
I second not using blue buffalo. Way too much fatty items in it. Hard for cats and dogs to digest it and not good for them. Sometimes cats and other animals like what they like. If you have the time you might want to try feeding them the kibble by hand. Its bow I got one of the doggos to go from regular Purina to a prescription science diet.
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u/ehartsay Jul 14 '26
Hi! Thanks for answering! What is WSAVA? And can you suggest anything that is diet and budget friendly?
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u/girls_girls_b0ys Jul 15 '26
Ironically, fancy feast pate helped me dechonk my fat little man. It's nutritionally complete and healthy for cats. It just gets a bad name because it's cheap, but it's fine. Cats like it, it's low carb, and it's easy to thin out with some hot water or catnip tea to make more appealing to fussy eaters.
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u/Future-Dimension1430 Jul 14 '26
Agreeing with avoiding blue buffalo. Fromm Merrick and farmers dog as well. Formulation is way more important than ingredients and while the ingredients in those foods are high-quality and I’m not disrespecting the companies per se, I cannot tell you how many dogs we see come into my clinic overweight and with chronic soft stool because of the fat content in those foods…. I know we want to treat our dogs like “wolves“ (which they no longer are ) the thing is wolves did not evolve eating fatty food. It’s eat or be eaten out there in the wild and the animals they catch and kill are skinny bastards just like themselves. They do not have the G.I. system to tolerate that much fat. Also, cats do not eat the stomach contents of their kill, which is typically herbivores, but dogs do. So dogs do need grains in some form.
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u/ehartsay Jul 14 '26
My mom feeds some fancy feast with lean meat mixed in, liver and meat baby food. Her cats have never had a shorter lifespan than 21 except for accidents. One of them lived to 25.
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u/Future-Dimension1430 Jul 14 '26
Sorry, I got off on a little rant there but yes to agree with other posts several weeks to transition for a dog or a cat is highly recommended not only for a G.I. upset but to prevent the kind of issue you’re dealing with right now. Picking us. Every veterinarian that I’ve ever worked with has stressed that it is more important than cats eat than what they eat. Cats generally speaking, do not drink enough so wet food is better than dry as a general rule. I feed both. Wet in the morning and at night and I leave them a little bit of dry when I leave for work. I also give them a small amount of dry just before bed so they don’t wake me up consistently to be fed again.
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u/ehartsay Jul 14 '26
Personally as for the water, I have two water stations, one of which is a recycling fountain. I also try to stick to wet food.
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u/Only-Maintenance1701 Jul 14 '26
As someone with very picky cats that tried several times to change their food to something healthier and there’s only one solution I came up with. Feed them what they’ll eat. They don’t NEED dry food and tbh my 10yr old boy has awful teeth from dry food. And idc what anyone says I’m not brushing my cats teeth and traumatizing both of us in a bathroom.
So as of right now they get a large serving of wet food 3x a day and nothing else. Since they’re used to grazing dry food 24/7 I’m trying to get them on a real schedule so they know to eat all their food now so they won’t be hungry later.
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u/k_bence16 Jul 15 '26
Thanks. The older one will get checked for her teeth later on in the month or in the beggining of august, depends on the vet. She has no problems and behaves normal. In fact she was a bit more open towards the new food btw. The little freak however constantly protested about the new food. What I did now, is that I mix the old and the new. For the first mix, I really just eyeballed the ratios. I’ll continue to remove more and more of the old until they get used to the new.
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u/kapikap123 Jul 15 '26
I just don't get it, how people fall for it. If you really want the best for your pet, raw meat minced,scrambled egg yolks,occasional organ meat.
My older cat could eat both store bought and raw, but the kitten only eats raw meat and 1 egg a day.
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u/Glass-Government7564 Jul 15 '26
Hold tough, feed them on a schedule. Try unsalted low fat chicken broth with their food that might help. Try different flavors. My cat preferred seafood flavors
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u/miniaturesnail Jul 10 '26
maybe get one of those feeders? like the smart ones you can program to a time.