Cat will starve but will not eat cat food

[pr00thmatic]

well, she's not eating cat food... and I already tried every cat food here in Bolivia, wet and dry, she just doesn't want it, even when I mix it with chicken, she will even reject the chicken because it acquired that "taste". So if you really don't have access to a food that the cat will want to eat, I think this is a good solution.

Besides, she is healthy, and the vet didn't say it wasn't ok...

Do you know what kind of laboratories could I make to see if she's missing something?

[Kay]

Sorry but this is no closer to providing a balanced diet and should definitely NOT be touted as a solution to the problem of a cat refusing to eat a balanced diet. Your kitten might be eating and ok for a while but this is not a long term healthy diet.

I know this is the received wisdom, but I do have to wonder myself if it's really true - I fed a cat entirely on cooked meat for 16 years, chicken and rabbit mostly, from 1983 to 1998 - though I did include offal - sheep's kidneys, heart and liver, and tongues too if I could get them - offal was easier to get back then

she died suddenly at 14, cause unknown, but no apparent illnesses from a diet deficiency

with so much research funded by animal food manufacturers, and so many vets in their pockets, as it were, some independent research would be welcome

[fjm]

Does the whole chicken you buy include the giblets? If so I would add the heart, liver and gizzard to her food. If not, at least add some liver - around 5% by weight. Unless you are feeding raw bones (not just marrow) you really also need a source of calcium - finely ground eggshell in the proportion of one level teaspoonful to each kilo of meat will be about right. Ideally I would also try to get her to eat oily fish occasionally (tinned sardines, perhaps), and a few drops of vegetable oil for vitamin E. But adding the right amount of offal and calcium to her chicken will go a long way to balancing it, and varying her diet with other meat (rabbit, a little beef, perhaps guinea pig if you are in Bolivia) would be a good idea.

[Mollycat]

fjm you have done a great deal of research and include organ meat in your home cooking along with a measured proportion of bone or eggshell and you make sure the meats you use include enough taurine, you even adjust it to support issues like renal failure. I hear you that maybe early on you didn't have such in depth knowledge, and that your cat reached a good age in good health on it. I've no doubt cats are probably more flexible than the pet food industry would like us to believe and I'm equally sure industrial food is a long way from perfect nutrition anyway, and it's also true that few humans feed themselves or their kids a balanced diet.

I'm just not happy with the idea that people would read "chicken" and "chicken marrow" and imagine that's great or even really complete nutrition. No problem with people saying this is what I do and it has worked for my cat so far, it just seems a big leap from there to a panacea.


edit - sorry fjm I misread and misreplied, I meant Kay, apologies to you both!

[fjm]

Absolutely with you, Mollycat - just chicken meat, even with a little bone marrow, is not a balanced diet.

[Blondys13]

Hey I have the same problem...
I have a small 7 months baby girl..
We have a Cattery and she was one of our two first ones.
We had a boy and a girl. We kept the girl.
Both of them hated cat food.
The grew up with the mother's food and hated it from the start...
Exactly as you said everything she smells besides boiled chicken and milk... Is like poo...
Both my boyfriend and I are vets... And asked other colleagues... At first nobody believes... But we tried.... I don't even remember what... From wet food to dry.... Nothing that is made for her.
The mother eats almost anything... The baby hates everything.
I am from Romania and we do not have Encore...
I got so excited thinking I found something....
So it's not about how the first owner feed the cat...
It's has a personality... And... We have to deal with it.

We bought from zooplus(I saw you also have in UK) Milkies... It contains some fruits and vitamins... And she loves them...
And gimcat pudiing
These are the only thing I can buy from store... Noting else works yet... But I don't give up...
Please If you find something else... Something more comercial which I could also find in Romania to try.. Please let me know...


PS pls excuse the mistakes... I got excited to find that I an not the only one with the problem.... And maybe we will manage to rezolve it sooner together.

[fjm]

The basic principles of feeding non commercial diets are pretty straight forward:
Never feed cooked whole bones - ground bone simmered with the meat in water is usually OK
80% muscle meat, 10% offal (kidney, spleen, other organ meats; about half should be liver); 10% bone. Heart is a muscle, not an organ, and is an excellent source of taurine.
Feed a variety of meats and other protein sources - for cats ideally mostly chicken, rabbit and other similar animals.
If you are not feeding bone you need to add the equivalent amount of calcium - around 2000mg per kilo of meat. 1 teaspoonful of finely ground eggshell is an easy source.

eg:
Raw:
Half a raw chicken wing, 100g of chicken thigh meat with skin, 1 teaspoonful of liver
A couple of chicken hearts, 100g chicken thigh meat with skin, 1 teaspoonful liver, a good pinch of ground eggshell

Cooked:
800g chicken thigh meat and skin (no bones)
100g chicken hearts (optional - if not available 100g chicken meat)
50g liver
50g kidney
50-100g mixed green and orange vegetables, finely chopped (leave these out if the cat really objects to them!)

Simmer until cooked, chop, portion and sprinkle over 1 teaspoonful finely ground eggshell (the eggshell tends to sink to the bottom of the pan if you add it while cooking)

Sardines or mackerel canned in spring water; eggs; a little beef or lamb; any not too fatty unprocessed meat you are preparing for yourself are all good alternatives to add variety and cover all the nutritional bases. You may also want to consider a vitamin E supplement, either as a tablet treat (eg Vetzyme B+E) or by adding a very little vegetable oil to the diet.

These are just the basics - if you plan on home cooking long term it is really worth researching nutritional requirements and food values yourself, or getting recipe plans from a qualified veterinary nutritionist. Most books and web recipes are seriously unbalanced or rely on premixed supplements - it takes a quite bit of thought and effort to do it all yourself.

[Mollycat]

This should be pinned fjm a lot of people would benefit from the knowledge even if they don't plan on home cooking.

Just to add, you can feed exclusively muscle meat IF you add the right dosage of something like Felini which is designed for that purpose, supposedly with all the extra nutrients needed. It's expensive and comes in quite a large pot but the quantity used is tiny, it's a loose powder. I tried it briefly, it was another £££s to add to the huge list I might as well have thrown down the drain as my cat refused point blank to touch any food with the tiniest trace of the stuff on it. Ragdolls may be laid back, but easy they are definitely not.

[voliviavv24]

naybe you have a slow cooker?