We rehomed a cat 3 weeks ago. He is six years old and was pre-loved rather than a stray. He was very friendly in the shelter - seemed to like strokes and rubbed up against out legs.
We brought him home and no major issues. Seemed to settle well and although he didn't like cuddles, he was happy to sit near us and would sometimes lean against our arms when we were sitting on the sofa.
But then it turned out he was a dry food addict. Our last cat recently died and we had a variety of food left over including dry food - James Wellbeloved or Lily's kitchen which are grain free ). Our old cat rarely ate dry food - I bought it for times when we needed to leave her overnight just as a back up. I mainly wanted to use it up so I gave him some.
Anyway, he then refused wet food and held out for dry so I decided to take action and gradually cut down the dry food but the only wet food he would touch was Whiskas. Everything I read said the most important thing was to get rid of the dry so because he was still settling in, I decided to go with that as his main food but gradully try to introduce better quality wet food.
But since he's been on only wet food, he's been miserable :-(. He is much less affectionate and hardly purrs (he wasn't much of a purrer anyway). It's really upsetting me and I don't know what to do.
We started letting him outside at the weekend and to train him to use the cat flap, we used some 100% meat treats from Natures Menu. That seems to have put us back to square one as he is currently refusing the Whiskas (mixed with a small amount of butcher's choice as he will reluctanly eat that if mixed in). He keeps hanging around the catflap looking longingly for treats 
. He was purring round me asking for more.
It would be so much easier to give him what he wants (i.e. the dry food) and it would make him happier.
What would you do? I really hate feeding him Whiskas and he doesn't particularly enjoy it. The dry food is at least better quality and grain free. My aim was to use Whiskas as a transition food and try to mix in better quality food but all my attempts so far have met with refusal to eat and a miserable cat. It's making me feel very stressed too. I know it's early days and maybe I'm expecting too much too soon. I don't want to go back to dry food if ultimately I'm going to switch him to better quality wet food. That would seem like a step back.
But I want him to be happy and to like living with us. At the moment I feel like he'd prefer to be back with his old owners who probably gave him 100% dry food.