Cat Chat Feline Forum

We've been feeding our bengal a raw diet. At first she absolutely loved it. Four weeks later we're coming home to untouched food in the bowl.

Took her to vets, nothing wrong with her. Vet reckons she's being fussy because she's not "hunting" for her food. But I can't exactly hide raw chicken wings and bits of liver around the house. She hates dry treats so that options out too. She is an indoor cat. We're working on harness training and building a run so she can safely go outside, and we will provide frozen chicks etc when that's ready, but we're talking months.

I was thinking of making some sort of fillable toy to put the chicken wing in and hide that for her to hunt, but my mum (who has the skills to make said toy) refuses on the basis that it wouldn't be hygienic for humans. I asked my tech savvy dad to help me make this machine I saw a guy made for his fussy cat, where you train the cat to put a ball in the machine, and the machine releases food. My dad refused and suggested I just don't feed the cat for a few days.
My family are not animal lovers, so don't understand why these options make me grit my teeth.

Does anyone have any other suggestions? She hasn't eaten for three days and I'm really worried.

Hi there.

If it was me I'd grill a chicken breast and chop it fine and offer warm-ish, open a tin of tuna, anything, fish fingers, fish anything, cooked, beef, even ham, ordinary cat food if you've got it at the back of the cupboard, offer her anything to tempt.

And if she doesn't eat, ring your vet for advice even if you don't take her in till tomorrow.

I'd forget the high-tech stuff for now; 3 days without eating is SERIOUS for a cat, and, no matter what you'd like her diet to be, I feel you may have to be guided by HER preferences.

When I bred Siamese I had a notice on the wall which said:-

If the kittens won't do
What you want them to do,
The thing to do
IS
What the kittens want to do!

I've found this, frivolous as it is, to be one of the soundest guides to cat keeping.

Good luck with her, and please let us know how you go on, fusses to her x

As laudable as your long term aims are the important thing for your cat is to get her eating by giving her whatever she will eat.

Recently we have had to change Bilbo's diet for health reasons and after an intiial reluctance he started eating it only to stop a few days later, at that point I decided that although it was important to him and me that he ate the new diet it was more important to him that he ate something and if that meant going back to his old diet and restarting introducing the new food from the beginning then that was what we had to do even though it is far from ideal.

I know the situations are different but the bottom line is cats need to eat and going for long periods of time not eating can result in serious health consequences and as harsh as it sounds there's is very little point in insisting on a certain diet if the cat is at best to ill or eat it

I'm not insisting on the diet, I just found it funny that for three weeks she's been scoffing the food like it's her fina, meal, and suddenly she's gone off it. I already have seen the vet today, vet says she's not sick she's just being fussy and it's because I'm not letting her "hunt" for her food.

She has this evening thankfully eaten liver, kidneys and some fish. I just wonder if maybe she was being fussy.

For the record we do keep tinned stuff in the house as a just in case. Once or twice I've forgotten to defrost the raw food so I gave her the tinned stuff and she turned her nose up.

I'm sorry if my choice of words offended youthat wasn't the intention.

Glad she has eaten