Finicky Cat

Question
Our cat Meatball is a 1 year old Maine Coon. We took her in from friends when she was about 4 months old.  They were having a baby and because of pregnancy complications couldn't keep her.  We were happy to take her in and now she has become like our child.

Meatball was being fed only Meow Mix dry food by our friends.  We knew this was not the most nutritious so we started her on about 1/4 a can of wet food 2x per day and EVO dry food.  It took a few tries to find a wet food she would eat.  After several tries she was eating Merrick, but soon stopped eating that and settled on Newman's own.

Recently we had an interview to adopt another cat so Meatball could have a companion.  When we told them what we were feeding Meatball they where shocked that we were giving her so much more dry then wet.  They said we should try to wean her off the dry and instead she should be eating 2 cans of wet food per day for optimal health.

We of course want Meatball to be her healthiest and took their advice. Since trying to wean her off the dry, she has refused to eat hardly any wet food.  Usually she would finish 1/4 can no problem, but now we are lucky if she will eat a few bites.  We have tried a number of different kinds of wet, but we can't get her to really eat more than a few bites if any.

We have still cut down on the dry, but she is not really eating the wet so we are concerned that she is not getting enough food now. Any advice of how we can get her to healthily transition to a diet primarily of wet food?  

Thanks!

Answer
Hi Jessica,

I think you can talk to any vet, any nutritionist and any behaviorist in the world, and they will agree - no diet fits EVERY cat. I am a proponent of an all wet or mostly wet food diet myself, but I don't think anyone with a healthy mindset can argue that every cat must absolutely be on one. Meatball needs to eat, and I don't feel that WHAT she eats is as important as the fact that she remains eating. EVO is, in my personal opinion, the healthiest dry food out there, and if she ate solely that, I would be satisfied with that as her caretaker.

If you really want to try to get her onto a canned food, the best I can recommend is that you try doing it just a sliver at a time while taking just a shaving of her dry food away. Also, consider adding some chicken broth to the canned foods, but be sure it doesn't have any onion or garlic ingredients in it. Some of the premium foods are very dense, and I find my cats like them a little better with some moisture added.

I don't know which foods you've tried, but my cats actually dislike all of the premium canned foods I've tried except for Nutro Natural Choice products. They especially like the varieties in gravy. If you haven't tried these, you might want to give them a shot. Their ingredients are pretty impressive.

Best wishes!

Jessica