So, remember this post?
Well, my cat (who still resides with my parents, because she is too high strung to try and move with me) has a tendency to anorexia. My parents were keeping her weight on with kitten food for a while, but even that wasn’t enough, so they had to supplement with the only thing she would eat.
Whiskas.
Or Friskies.
One of those brands. You know the type.
To her credit, my mother tried. She tried every vet diet out there, including the Recovery stuff which is practically kitty crack.
But no.
My cat would only eat the cat version of McDonald’s.
… Can you guess who now has a urinary tract infection?
Hint: It’s not one of the pets who are on exclusively vet-brand food.
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That’s all my cat will eat too! Purina Cat Chow. Everything else he vomits up. He never vomits, or even really gets sick, unless he eats a different kind of food.
Purina’s not AS bad. They have diets that go increasingly high in quality, all the way to the vet level. The chow is the lowest of the low, but it falls more in the Iams range of “mediocrely crappy but not too dangerous”.
More like Wendy’s than McDonald’s :-p
Cats are like that. Persnickety. If it’s any consolation, Matthew’s parents’ cats lived to be 21 and 22 respectively and ate nothing but one of those super cheap foods…
I forget, but what’s your opinion on Science Diet as opposed to Prescription Diet? Our vet is 30 minutes away and has hours that make it difficult to pick up food, so we switched to the Science Diet we can get at PetsMart. (They’re the same price oddly.) We’re still sticking to the Oral Care that was suggested by the vet. Is that okay, or should we really try harder to make it to the vet’s?
Sure, and George Burns lived to be over 100 despite those big cigars, but that still doesn’t make smoking good for you :-p
Science Diet is fine. It’s middle of the road, like Iams and so on. It isn’t brilliant but it won’t give your boys bladder infections.
Oh, so it’s no better than Iams? Bummer. Can I buy the vet food from a DIFFERENT vet, one that’s closer? Or would they need to see the cats and “prescribe it”? (We chose the farther away vet for the military discount. I guess that wasn’t so smart after all!)
They tend to be lower calorie than Iams. That’s a plus.
You can buy vet food from any vet, but losing the discount would suck. If the Science Diet is convenient/affordable, don’t feel the need to switch. The important thing is not to block up your cat, and Science Diet won’t do that.
Awesome! Thank you. 🙂
my cats eat mostly what they find outside… we supplement with the cheapest food we can find… they seem to be doin alright, but really they’re outside cats so i don’t think they have the same requirements as indoor, more sedimentary cats.
Usually what happens with outdoor cats is their bladder blocks and they just… don’t come home one day. Or a coyote eats them.
PH’s parents have exclusively outdoor cats. Every now and then one disappears…
I know if you have to start something with, “please don’t be offended, but…” you probably shouldn’t share it- but I figured you might get a kick out of this.
http://www.punknews.org/article/44533
Boo, it says I can’t view it in Canada!
Boo, indeed! It’s a Weird Al parody of Green Day’s American Idiot called Canadian Idiot. Insert lyrics about poutine and politeness.
LOL — judging from the comments, I think my dog must have been a ‘persnickety’ cat in her past life. Getting her to eat anything has been a constant battle of wills since the day we brought her home. We once went on a vacation and had to leave her in a kennel for two weeks. She might have twice the whole time, and even then the veterinary staff had to actually hand feed her to get her to eat anything at all. I still haven’t stooped to feeding her doggy McDonalds though. She’s only three, so that will be the heavy artillary for when she has a midlife crisis and decides to go on a hunger strike indefinitely.
Home cooked meals would be a better option than the cheap dog food, which probably tastes like cardboard anyway, to the persnickety dog! Somehow, they try harder with cat food…
Daisy is very picky with her dry food as well. I found one which was all natural and everything and she wouldn’t eat it! As in, with wet food, she’ll lick it a bit but not necessarily eat it – all of a sudden, she started clearing her plate and not touch the dry food. “Huh” I said to that experiment and switched back to what she normally got, donating the rest of the bag to the local cat rescue. I normally feed her Hills Science Diet anti-hairball mature thingamajig.
Read somewhere about preservatives in cat food and how one of them was really bad, but Hill’s didn’t have it. Royal Canin (again, the antihairball formula – she tends to look rather, ehh, constipated if it’s not) weren’t too specific on their ingredients, so kinda go with Hill’s normally.
With wet food, which she gets a little of, it’s one that has at least 80% meat in or something like that (Nature’s Menu, also has less rubbish in). Try and feed her a different brand, even with more meat in, she turns her nose up at it. Some wet foods she’s tried before has made her throw up, so I know not to give her any of that.
All natural is no guatantee of being safe for a cat’s bladder. Some of the worst offenders are expensive pet-store diets that boast “all natural ingredients” but certainly make no promises about the pH of the food!
Royal Canin sells as Medi-Cal in Canada and it’s naturally preserved. That’s what my dog and cat here eat. Don’t know how it is preserved outside of Canada, though.
I think I got lucky on the cat feeding front. Our girl gets excited (excited!) when we give her “treats” of single kibbles of diet food, just in a high quality pet store brand that’s different from her usual. She’s never complained about her healthy kibble. Somehow she even managed to think that she was getting the better of us when she convinced us to switch to the dental stuff. 🙂
Of course, she also enthusiastically tries to get away with chewing on plastic wrap, packing tape, and door hinges. But not chicken. Perchance our kitty isn’t exactly a refined palate kind of cat.
My, my Inexplicably Loved Cat is like that!