I've i've finally had a success get Roxy to eat wet!!! she's been "starved" since this morning (she was offered wet this morning aswell but refused). I'm not sure exactly how much she's eat because as soon as i saw her actually eating it I left her too it and havent gone back yet as I dont want to put her off.

At the moment she's eating Gourmet with chicken (pouch), I know it's not the best but I got a big variety of different ones to try one at a time to see which she likes (they both have brilliant tums and I can swap foods no problem wiht no upset tummies), but now that shes actually eaten some I think she'll be okay to eat others (as long as I dont let her pig out on dry).

I've found though that zara will only eat shredded foods (except applaws, I think thats too dry for her thoas she likes the sauce/gravy on alot of the shredded foods. If it's mushy (like toplife) she wont eat it, and she will have a lick of pate types but not much else.

So I was wondering what shredded foods are there that arent all completely crap? I will still be feeding them dry as well (at the moment thats Acana) so it doesn't have to be a complete food. My aim is to get them eventually eating raw (like the dog) but previous attempts have not gone well so I'm focusing on them eating wet and then focusing on them swapping to a complete wet food (so trying to eventually getting them to eat a pate type one or something) then losing the dry, and eventually losing the wet and feeding raw, but I dont think Zara or Roxy will be happy with that lol

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Unfortunately there isn't hun. If you go on to zooplus, there are a couple of Cosma tins that are apparently complete as well as some SchesiR ones. Porta 21 used to be marketed as a complete food but they are now allegedly changing their declaration to a complementary one (just had a peek on zooplus.de and apart from their holisitc range they now no longer describe the rest of the wet Porta range as a complete food...). I believe Tesco do a shredded something as do Sainsbury (new range).

However, the big problem with this type of food is that it tends to be very low in fat but I guess you could supplement with some goosefat etc. They also tend to be low in taurine but I guess again you could supplement. Personally though I don't trust them to contain the nutrients your cats need.

I know you are feeding some dry food but again I don't think the industry PR stacks up - i.e. that you can feed complementary food daily as long as you also feed a dry food. I just don't see how this can be considering that dry food isn't brimming with excess nutrients and one needs to scale down the amount of dry one is feeding to take into account the complementary food (i.e. one doesn't feed a full daily portion of dry so that a cat gets all the nutrients and then the complementary food but typically needs to scale down the amount of dry food that is being fed, which means that the amount of nutrients also get reduced). I think you see where I am going.

When you tried them on raw food, have you ever tried cutting it into thin slivers of food (not cubes) and started off by searing them lightly?

Yep. I even tried cooking it completely and then less and less each time. But as soon as it had the slightest bit raw in it then Zara wouldn't touch it. And Roxy wont even touch meat when it's cooked let alone raw.

I think I might just try and get zara eating the pate stuff then, I have Natures Harvest for them to try. Zara always steals a few mouthfuls of the dogs food when he has NH/WW, but when I tried her on the cats NH she was having non of it last time, so perhaps this time I should put it in the dogs bowl for her so she thinks she's stealing it lol. Cause apparently someone elses food always tasted better

Do you think it would be better to continue feed not so good wet food (along with the dry) untill I get them eating better wet, or just stop the bad wet and go straight back to dry and trying to get them to eat good wet? (although I dont want Roxy to stop eating wet incase it takes me a year to get her going again lol)

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Pardon me, but what buggers

Personally, I would rather my cat ate wet food, even if it is crappy wet food (as long as it is complete) than just dry food.

And yes, I think cats suffer menu envy too. Somehow food always seems to be more appealing when it is in a bowl that isn't their's.


In terms of getting them to eat raw. There is Felini Complete, which can be added to cooked food, which might be worth a look. But not sure whether that is a viable long-term solution.

They are Buggers! Good job we love them Zara used to eat wet no problem untill Pushkin died and then she completely stopped (about a year and half ago now), Roxy (now about a year old) has never eat wet, she ate it from the age of 3 weeks to about 9 weeks when I started giving her dry and then she refused to eat it and just ate dry.

I'll have a look att he Felini Complete now

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Actually, some other people's very similar plight reminded me of a product called FortiFlora, which is a food supplement that entices cats to eat and helps with their stomach (probiotics). However, the reason why it is apparently loved by cats is because the main ingredient is animal digest, which is effectively the stuff that dry food gets coated in to make it more attractive. You can only buy it in big quantities I believe (online pet supplies) and it is a tad expensive but if there is a cat show near you soon it might be worthwhile popping along to see whether you can pick up some samples from there. Or email Purina and see whether they will send you some samples.

The guideline is 1 sachet per day but I think that is completely OTT if you are only using it as an appetiser.

I wonder if it's cheaper in america? off to google that

The Felini Complete has me confused. If feeding raw in the correct ratios etc then surely you would need it, so could that in theory making a diet of just chicken breast complete? (not that I would ever do that I'm just confused )

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Well, with the Felini Complete you aren't feeding any bones, so it includes calcium and phosphorus to take that into consideration. It also include some more taurine.

The one thing to keep in mind though is that the European (and definitely German) way to raw feeding, and Felini Complete is an example of a product to address this, doesn't believe that a cobbled together approach of supermarket/butcher meat gives your cat all that s/he needs in terms of raw feeding, which a whole prey would give but which is darn hard to recreate with just a few available ingredients. For example, supermarket meat or meat from a butchers is typically well-bled (therefore doesn't contain the salt and iron and other minerals that they would consume with the blood of their prey), the nutrients that are parts of the animal that you don't get very easily (e.g. lung, spleen, brain, eyes etc) as well as the fur/feathers (natural source of fibre).

So for example if you were to feed things like rats/gineapigs/mice/DOCs etc then you wouldnt need it? Although I feed mice and DOCs to the ferret, and rabbits to the dog, dont think mum would like me feeding small furry things to the cats lol so this is all theoretical.
I think when I do my next zooplus order I'll deffinately get some

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Technically yes, though a cat's diet by all accounts also contains the goodies that come from other critters (insects etc). Then there is the issue as to whether the whole prey that is farmed is as nutritious as wild prey etc. And then there is the added problem that very few nutritional analyses of whole prey have been conducted (well, let's face it, human's don't eat them, otherwise we would know a heck of a lot more).

So, to get round the big gaps in this knowledge, on the continent you can get raw feeding calculators that take the known nutrients in meat/offal etc and pitch those against the known daily nutrient requirements of cats (dogs are less problematic because they are metabolically different in important ways) and then you make up the difference in specific, targetted supplements, which our peers over the big pond just baulk at.