Thanks for taking my call on CAT CHAT® and taking the time to help me and my cat, George.

I have tried all of your suggestions; a variety of flavors, including the really smelly fish, adding a sprinkle of the dry food on top, the lamb baby food on top, etc.  We have also tried getting him really relaxed and putting a bit on his nose, no luck.

Whenever he is presented with the wet food he runs the other way, literally.  He will go on a complete food strike.  His current food is Science Diet.

He is a rescued Russian Blue, nine to eleven years old.  We have had him for seven years.  I think he was quite bused/mistreated by the man from whom we rescued him because he had a terrible skin mite problem that caused him to pull out a lot of his hair.  As soon as we got him, we had to have him sulphur dipped about four times to clear up the mites.  Could this have done something to his olfactory system?  (The man from whom we rescued him told us that he pulled out his hair as a nervous tic. Not true.) 

I think that he would be so much happier on wet food. If there is anything else that you can suggest, please let me know.

Thank you in advance for your reply,
Laurinda

Dear Laurinda,

So glad you followed up with me after you called into CAT CHAT® to talk to me about how stubborn George is being about switching to wet food. My book THE CAT BIBLE has lots of information about ways to make the transition, but I turned to Lynette of Feline Outreach, who is really knowledgeable, to see if there were any suggestions I might not have included. This was her answer:

*  Try one of the flavors in gravy - I don't like them long-term, but you could start there and gradually try other foods.

*  Do NOT leave dry food out.  Meal feed the dry food.  Store the dry food in the refrigerator, freezer, or somewhere else the cat can't smell it.  Cats have strong senses of smell, they will smell it in a cabinet and hold out for it.

*  Start with meal-feeding the dry food, then meal-feed the dry food with just a little canned on the bottom.  Pick it up after 20 or 30 minutes, dry food can start growing mold & bacteria once it gets wet. Gradually decrease the dry, until the cat is eating some dry food that has wet food stuck to it, keep decreasing until it's eating some just wet... and keep going until the dry is gone.

*  Try different varieties and brands of canned food.  Some cats don't like certain brands.

It's frustrating, but keep at it.  I had one cat that took almost a year to get completely off dry food.  Now she loves canned.  Don't give up!

A little story - I'm fostering a sweet little princess kitty who had IBD (a gastro-intestinal disorder, resulting in chronic diarrhea).  She was on medications and prescription dry food.  I finally found ONE canned food she would eat - Fancy Feast grilled chicken in gravy.  (She wouldn't eat freeze-dried treats, etc.)  So, I started with the food in gravy, then tried mixing in a tiny bit of another canned... after lots of experimentation, I found she would eat a couple other chicken canned foods if I added water and made it real "soupy" so it looked like it had a sauce/gravy.  I'm now able to wean her off the drugs and
hopefully she's more adoptable.

I hope some of this helps you and George – please let me know your progress report.

Best,
Tracie