Spoop's World

The cats (except for Caesar) went a few days without eating much of anything.  I can tell that Leia has lost weight for sure.  I don’t put the dry food out at all, just the canned food.  The first breakthrough came when I crushed some Temptations treats and mixed them in with the food and sprinkled some on top.  To get them really interested, I dipped whole treats in the wet food and them one at a time.  Luke and Leia were quite interested in those treats, so they suffered through the wet food.  The idea is to get them used to the taste and texture of the wet food.

For the past couple of days, they have been eating much better.  I don’t have to do the dipped treats thing anymore.  Now they’ll eat the food when I set it down for them, as long as it’s mixed with either Temptations or FortiFlora.  They’re not quite ready to eat the canned food by itself.  They seem to prefer Fancy Feast over Wellness and that’s fine as long as I feed them the right flavors of Fancy Feast.  Caesar still gets fish if he wants it, but the others are mostly fed beef, chicken, and turkey.  The fish just doesn’t have the right amount of protein and carbohydrates.

Oh!  I almost forgot.  Another breakthrough came with the treats.  When I first fed them the healthy freeze-dried treats, they wouldn’t touch them.  Sniff and snub.  Hubby tried again a few days later and they went nuts!  I was so surprised.  They only like the turkey and chicken, though.  They didn’t care for the liver.

I’m very happy with how it’s going.  I was prepared for it to take a couple of months, but it looks like it will be much quicker than that.  Good kittehs!

For the first couple of days of the Big Cat Food Switch, I just picked up the dry food and put it back down a couple of times a day when I called the kitties to come eat.  I’d leave it down for a couple of hours and then pick it back up again.  They barely ate any of it and thus the adventure began.

I bought several cans of the best food I could find at Petsmart using the charts I’d found.  It’s mostly chicken, turkey, and beef.  I got some fish flavors, but those are primarily for Caesar.  I decided he’s just too old (19) to worry with switching his food.  If he wants to eat fish, then he can eat fish.

After seeing that they wouldn’t eat the dry food on a mealtime basis, I started them with the canned food when I called them.  I’ve been trying everything I can think of:  mixing it with FortiFlora, mixing it with dry food, mixing it with crushed treats, heating it up.  So far, it’s no good.  They walk up to the bowls that I’ve just spent a good amount of time preparing, give it a quick sniff, then snub it and walk away.  Sometimes one of them will eat a bit of it.  Not very much or very often, though.

Treats have been cut back to almost none.  Luke hates it because he’s a big treat eater.  They only get four or five treats a day once or twice a day.  It will be ok for them to have limited treats, but they’ve got to start eating the canned food and not trying to hold out for a pile of treats.  So, until they do start eating, I guess I’ll stop the treats altogether.  It makes me feel bad, though, because Luke is so pitiful!  Silly kitty.

The plan now is to just keep going and try different flavors and combinations, hoping they’ll start eat very soon.

I recently discovered that I’ve been doing a grave disservice to my cats by feeding them dry food.  I started reading information published by Lisa A. Pierson, DVM and learned that all dry food contains too much carbohydrates for cats, who are obligate carnivores.  That means they are meat eaters.  Period.  Canned food is the way to go, and feeding a diet of raw meat is ideal.  Although, I don’t really see me with a meat grinder and raw chicken, turkey, or rabbit making a concoction to put in the freezer for the cats.  I can do canned food, though.  The oldest, Caesar, is already on a canned food diet because he’s so old and I worry about him not being able to chew dry food.

I found a couple of charts that shows the percentage of protein, fat, and carbohydrate calories in many canned foods.  Here and here.  Cat food should contain less than 10% of calories from carbohydrates.   I was really surprised at how bad many of these cat foods are.  Grains are the worst culprit.  And think about it.  Would a cat ever eat rice in the wild?  No, she would not.  Their digestive systems aren’t made to handle it.

So, I’ve got a plan to switch my cats to a strictly canned food diet, choosing the best foods from both charts.  Phase 1 started yesterday and I no longer leave their dry food down for them to nibble 24 hours a day.  I call them to the kitchen twice a day and put the food down.  After a couple of hours, I pick it back up.  The idea is to get them used to meal times instead of continuous grazing.  They also no longer get huge piles of treats.  (I know, I know.)  They are getting just a few at a time twice a day, fed to them one at a time.  Luke especially was very bad about gorging on treats.  I figured they weren’t any worse than their food.  It turns out that I was right, but BOTH are bad for them!

I’ll try to post updates as we work our way through this major change in the kitties’ lives.  Thanks for reading!