How to Get Your Cat Interested in New Cat Food

In order for your cat to accept and tolerate a new cat food, you should proceed slowly with the transition. It often takes some persistence to persuade picky individuals.

Do Not Change Cat Food Abruptly

Cats are highly specialized carnivores that have less variety on their menu in the wild than many cat owners think. There is often mouse, mouse, and more mouse. The digestive tract and especially the intestinal flora of the cat adapt to the food it is used to and may react with sudden changes with indigestion.

You should therefore allow about a week for a feed change, during which you gradually replace the old feed with the new. The following mixture has proven itself:

• Day 1 and 2: 3/4 old and 1/4 new food
• Day 3 and 4: half old, half new food
• Day 5 and 6: 1/4 old and 3/4 new food
• from the 7th day: only the new food

If your cat treats the new cat food with contempt and only sorts out its beloved food:

This trick will definitely help…

• Place a second bowl with the new food next to the bowl with the usual food.
• Your cat will probably only eat its usual food for the first few days. At the same time, she smells the aroma of the new cat food.
• In this way, the unfamiliar smell will slowly become a familiar one, and after a few days, your cat will try the new food.

Pay Attention to Your Cat’s Food Preferences

The fact that cats refuse new food often has nothing to do with taste, but simply with their food preferences. Kittens learn from their mother what is eatable and what is not. Anything that mom doesn’t present to them as food is simply not recognized as “food” later on.

So if your cat is used to dry food and you suddenly put wet food in the bowl, she may look at you blankly and not quite know what to do with it.

If possible, stick to the type of food that your cat knows. Otherwise, you have to be very patient to overcome the lining embossing, and sometimes it still doesn’t work.

Here are a few tricks that can help:

• Mix the new food in bits and pieces with the usual food and allow plenty of time until there is only the new food in the bowl.
• Moisten dry food if your cat is used to wet food.
• To begin with, use treats that your cat is particularly fond of as flavor enhancers. The more intense the treat tastes, the better. Liver sausage, meat broth, or fish paste, for example, are well suited
• If necessary, heat the cat food to body temperature so that the flavors can develop better.
• Playfully combine the new food with positive experiences, for example by letting it trickle out of a food ball.
• Make use of the food envy: If you have other animals that like the new food, feeding them together can also change the minds of food naysayers.
• Feed with love, preferably out of your hand. This often works wonders, especially with sick cats. However, you should only do this for a short time if possible, so that your cat does not get used to it too much.

Very important: stay calm. The more uptight you are, the worse your chances of success are.

Of course, it would be ideal to give kittens who are still with their mother as many different cat foods as possible. This allows them to get used to different flavors and textures of food, making it easier to change food later.

Beware of Learned Aversion

Have you ever had food poisoning or drunk one to the point of thirst? Then you probably associate the guilty food or luxury food with very unpleasant experiences and avoid it.

This is exactly what happens to cats with a learned food aversion. For example, if your cat has to be hospitalized at a veterinary clinic, she may associate the food she was given there with pain or discomfort. So it’s not a good idea to introduce a new food just when your cat is doing particularly badly. However, sometimes it is unavoidable for health reasons.

Ideally, you should feed your cat food that you don’t want to continue feeding while she’s feeling down. For example, you could offer your cat with kidney disease a kidney diet during a uraemic episode when she is plagued by nausea and switch to a different manufacturer’s kidney diet as soon as she is better. Since cats with kidney disease can suffer from nausea from time to time, it makes sense to have several kidney diets at home so that you can quickly give a substitute food in an emergency.