Quote:
Originally Posted by Kynthia
Hi,
I am trying to transition my cat to wet food and bought many cans of Homestyle Prairie recently. My cats seem to be very happy each time I open the can... One would just gobble her food down. However, my other cat, a Russian Blue seems to only be licking the broth enthusiastically and eating very few of the chunks if it sticks to her tongue. I think she likes the taste however does not know how to eat chunky meat. Because of this, the other cat would end up eating her food.
I would leave dry food for the cats to snack on during the day. The Russian Blue seems to be able to take in more of the dry food due to the familiarity compared to the wet although she seems more enthusiastic about the wet food.
I think she just doesn't know how to eat meat because I have tried feeding her with boiled chicken meat, and she only licked the chicken... Question is, how do I "teach" her how to eat meat?
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Hi Kynthia -- cats are obligate carnivores by nature, so I can't believe your grey cat "doesn't know how to eat meat". It's more likely that she is finicky about the flavours on offer. Neither of my cats will eat chicken, for example, and if I manage to trick them into it by mixing chicken with other foods, one of them invariably vomits later. Ok, now I know -- they don't do chicken, and they won't eat pork. Venison, eel, mutton, salmon, brushtail possum, beef, buffalo and turkey, however, all work fine for them.
I found that the first step to making the transition to a wet diet had to be an abrupt one:
stop feeding biscuit. As my vet said to me, what child is going to eat his fruits and vegetables if there are bowls of potato crisps sitting around the house 7x24? As long as a cat knows she can fill up on biscuit, she has no incentive to try new foods.
I did a lot of reading as I went through this transition, but the two most helpful sources that I found were Dr. Lisa Pierson, a veterinarian and feline nutritionist who posts a ton of very useful info at
www.catinfo.org. One of my other favourite resources is Anitra Frazier's book,
The Natural Cat. Happy reading!