sigelphoenix

When Drannor first came home he didn't really eat. I set out wet food (Wellness Beef & Chicken), kibble (Wellness CORE), and various freeze-dried meat treats (chicken, salmon, and seafood medley), but he didn't go for any of them. I chalked it up to the transition, since Drannor seemed more interested in exploring his new digs than anything else. I tried switching it up, putting out a different flavor/brand of wet food when each can ran out (which is typical of the way I feed Kershach) and using old kibble samples from Mud Bay to try different kibble flavors each day (this was not typical).

At first, he showed slight interest in EVO kibble, but after a day or two he seemed to stop eating it (it's hard to say for certain, because Kershach nibbled on everything I dished up, whether it was "his" or not).

Worried about his lack of nutrients, I tried Greenies treats, which are supposed to be kitty crack. And they worked! Drannor took one sniff and inhaled them. (Hilariously, Kershach, a.k.a. Mr. "I refuse any treat that isn't pure, freeze-dried meat," sees no appeal in them and sniffed hopefully at the object Drannor was in raptures over ... then walked away in disgust.) But of course, treats alone are not enough to live on.

I went back to Mud Bay and was given various free canned and kibble samples to try (one of the reasons I continue to shop there instead of searching out other, less expensive sources). I hit the jackpot with two kibbles - Avoderm's Chicken & Herring Meal and Premium Edge's Finicky Adult Cat - which Drannor again sniffed-then-inhaled. This is in direct contrast to his reaction to all other types of food, which has been sniff-then-walk-away, or sniff-then-pretend-to-bury-it.

I tried to use these successes to find canned food for Drannor. I tried the canned version of Avoderm's kibble. (Premium Edge, sadly, does not make canned food.) I tried different brands, different protein sources (chicken, beef, turkey, duck, lamb, salmon, venison ...), different types (pate, shredded meat, bits-in-gravy). I even caved and tried the junky full-of-byproducts grocery store brands like Fancy Feast, since the junky flavor is purportedly appealing to a lot of cats. I also cracked a can of tuna and offered Drannor a spoonful (tuna isn't suitable for a regular diet, but if a cat likes it you can at least use it to bribe them to eat their real food). Each time he would sniff, then "bury" whatever I presented to him. I tried bringing him to the food area, I tried bringing the plate directly to him, I even tried putting some on my finger or a spoon and offering it to him. Nothing.

This entire time I figured that Drannor does like canned food, but he just wants to be fed a particular kind - because he's always been interested in the sound of a can opening, in a similar way he's interested when I open the door to the laundry room (a.k.a. Greenies Land). And it's still possible that's true. But since I've tried over 20 different canned foods, and he hasn't touched one of them, I don't think I can keep waiting and hoping I'll find the magic stuff. So I'm now trying some of the tips here about teaching a cat how to eat wet food.

I can't rely on hunger alone, because Drannor is stubborn. I do feed him a half-serving of kibble each morning (to match my routine with Kershach) because I want Drannor to be getting some calories. In the evenings, when it's gooshy food time and Kershach digs in, Drannor wanders over hopefully to the food area and sniffs, but always wanders away without eating. If he's feeling opinionated, he "buries" it before he leaves.

So I started on Saturday by scraping a bit of wet food onto the side of his kibble bowl, thinking he'd encounter it during his hoover-ing of kibble. However, the stubborn bastard left it untouched, so on Sunday (yesterday) I scraped a bit more directly on top of his kibble before I served it. This worked slightly better, as he was determined to eat every piece of kibble, and even ate the ones "tainted" with wet food, leaving only part of the wet food uneaten.

He actually left a couple of pieces of kibble, presumably ones that were disguised by too much wet food. So I tried offering them to him by hand. I'd done this before, but using Greenies, so this time with kibble the ratio of wet food to dry crunchy was much higher. But Drannor did eat the kibble. I offered the first one dry-side first, so he could smell it, and that worked. Then I tried wet-side first, and he actually licked the wet food off first, then ate the kibble.

That night at dinner time, he ignored the wet food as usual. I waited a couple of hours before I broke out the Greenies (I don't want him thinking of them as a dinner replacement), but when I did, I tried dipping them into wet food again. This time I didn't need to flip them - he sniffed, licked the wet food off, then got his Greenie reward. I kept offering them, scooping more and more wet food onto each Greenie. When I dropped the Greenie onto the plate of wet food, he bent down and sniffed it out. (Which impressed me because, from what I've read and learned from experience, if you drop a treat into a bowl of food, it might as well disappear from the cat's awareness, because the smell gets swallowed and they can't see well enough to find the treat by vision.)

Then, when I stopped doling out Greenies, he went back to the wet food plate and started licking it up. I don't know if there was residual Greenie smell or not, but he went at it for a good thirty seconds, and I went !!! at ratzeo in (silent) joy next to the food area.

This morning, I did the same trick of adding a pat of wet food on top of Drannor's kibble. It succeeded about as well as yesterday.

But then tonight, when I dished up the wet food (the same flavor as I've been using since Saturday), I got a minor miracle. Drannor sniffed and declined it, as per usual, but then I tried offering some to him by hand - the same size as a treat. And he went for it! No kibble, no Greenie - he just licked it up. He even licked (and nibbled) my fingers clean. I kept it up for as long as he would eat, and he ate a good half-dozen chunks of wet food - oh, say, an ounce's worth? A little less? I even tried a bit of the different canned food I had put out for Kershach, and he ate that as well, though with less enthusiasm.

It's a victory ... but I'm not sure what it means, honestly. Since then, he has done his usual "wander over, check the food area for something interesting [i.e. kibble], sniff the wet food, bury it, wander away." I offered him bits by hand again, and he did eat (though only a couple of morsels).

So ... I don't know. This isn't the first time I've offered this flavor of canned food. This isn't the first time I've tried feeding him by hand (though previously it was just something on the end of my finger, rather than held in the way I hold a treat). So does that mean he is one of those cats who's never learned to eat gooshy food? But then what about his interest in the sound of opening cans? Was he accustomed to being fed by hand, and refuses to eat from a plate?? (God, I hope not.)

Tune in next time for more neurotic cat-mom-ness ...

Edit: I decided to see what I could coax Drannor into using tonight's serving of Greenies ... I started by feeding them straight to his mouth, then placing them on the wet food plate, then placing them on top of the wet food, then pressing them into the wet food. He didn't hesitate to eat through some wet food to reach the Greenies. In fact, he ate pretty heartily, taking several bites before unearthing the treat. He even did this when I buried them deeply enough that he couldn't find the Greenie, and just ended up with several mouthfuls of gooshy food. All this, despite the fact that I was holding the Greenies bag while sitting next to him, and he could have given up and begged for more out of the bag. (This could be an effect of Drannor's good manners ... but honestly, they're not that good when it comes to Greenies.) He eventually got tired of the wet food, even when I presented it with a Greenie serving platter, but that was about a half ounce of gooshy food eaten (of the second-choice flavor, no less).