New rescue cats only eat Royal Canin

[NewFelineMum]

We adopted 2 rescue cats (mum and kitten) 2 weeks ago and have continued them on the same food they were on at the fosterer’s house - royal Canin and whiskers/ Felixstowe pouches.

They absolutely love the RC but barely touch the wet food. They are both eating kitten food at the moment, as the mum was nursing until very recently, but I have started throwing a little bit of adult food into the mix for the mum.

I know RC is billed as a complete food so I’m wondering what to do about the wet food. I’ve tried different flavours and the tuna seems to be the preferred one but still very little is eaten. Should I try some different brands or is it ok just to feed your cats dry food? They will eat a piece of cooked chicken or tinned tuna so is it ok to stick to dry with meat/ fish treats?

The other issue is that the quantities advised for their size don’t seem to be enough for the mum cat and she is always asking for more but I don’t want her to end up overweight.

I’ve never had a cat before so any advice would be gratefully received!

I've adopted several cats.
They all came to me on that food.
I just swiftly changed them to whickers/felix/ store own brand.

I've been told they abaolutly need wet food.
So I'd stop dry and just leave wet out.
Do half puches as with the weather I find any left out food attracts flys.

They're animals, cats at that. So luxury is always their ideal. But they won't starve themselves.

If they’re happy on the Royal Canin then leave them be, it’s a complete food and won’t cause any issues. Personally I prefer to feed mine wet (they all hate dry!) but if that’s what they like and are accustomed to then there’s no reason to switch. They don’t ’need’ wet food. Like you said I’d simply give them some cooked chicken/fish for enrichment purposes and variety a few times a week. Stick to what you’re doing - they’re happy and healthy which is what matters.

My little cat is incredibly choosy. She has biscuits and a bit of wet food. The wet food’s a problem as she changes what she’ll eat. The biscuits are the staple and I think as long as yours are eating chicken (good for cats because of the taurine content) and tuna (they like it but I’d rinse it to get rid of the salt) they’ll be fine. Just make sure they’ve always got plenty of fresh water, which should be in a different place to the food. They sometimes don’t like them next to one another.

I’ve got two rescue cats and they’ve both been on the Royal Canin biscuits with water since I’ve had them (the oldest one I’ve had for 10 years now, although she went onto wet kidney food a couple of years ago because of her advanced age).

If your cats are happy on biscuits, I would keep it that way. It’s much better for their teeth and cheaper to feed. I buy the very big bags of fit cat for my youngest one and they last for months.

Just make sure they’ve got plenty of water.

I would get them onto part wet diet if you can. My cat lost a kidney and the referral vet put it down in part to her dry food diet. He recommended always feeding wet food for the moisture content, some dry for the benefit to their teeth, and using a water fountain rather than a bowl as it encourages them to drink more.
Try different brands of wet food. You can also warm it slightly as some cats prefer it at mouse temperature. It took me a while to get my cat to accept it but she loves it now.

As long as they drink well, then they don't NEED wet food as such. Make sure there's always plenty of fresh water down preferably in a couple of places about the house.

Ideally though a bit of wet can help keep their moisture intake up, and cats are notorious for changing what they like when it comes to food - sometimes one day they will only eat poultry wet foods of a certain brand, next day you are clearly trying to poison them & nothing will do except fish flavours from a different brand! But often they just go off a particular type & happily eat another for the next 5 years.

Try getting small packets of different brands, types, flavours and textures to see which they prefer; my DSis just went through this recently with her new-ish rescues and mine benefited from the remaining pouches and trays from the ones they didn't like 😁.

I feed a small amount of wet twice a day, and leave dry down 24/7. Tobias can be a bit of a porker, so I've recently changed to one formulated especially for piggy cats. He's lost some weight, whereas Girlcat hasn't really changed.

The mother may well also be trying to rebuild her resources after raising the kitten?

Try different brands and types of wet food. Mine have dry left down and wet food 2 or 3 times a day

Personally I wouldn't feed any of my animals RC unless they needed one of the specific health related diets for some reason.

There are so many cheaper, better quality brands of food out there.

My lot were all on RC Persian. Until Cheddar, who couldn't tolerate it they loved it. I swapped mine to Oaks then to Amazon lifelong.

My cats came to me raw fed. Then they decided they preferred meat in jelly (ex was lazy about meat, and gave them canned one day), then they zeroed in on particular types and refused to eat anything else. Now, they mainly eat 100% meat dry food, and lick the jelly off the pouches (they won't eat any tinned now) - I've just given up.

They seem healthy, they drink, they exercise, they have other foods offered to them from time to time (eg cat pate from various brands when I decide to try again, raw meat if I have it), and half a pouch each in the morning (which the meat is left from) and so I just leave them to it.

I’ve been wondering about this too. Our previous cat was a total gannet and would wolf food as soon as it was in her dish. We sadly had to say goodbye to her earlier this year, and adopted a little fella from Cats Protection. He licks the jelly or gravy from wet food, but leaves the majority of the meat. He just seems to prefer dry.

He drinks plenty and will happily eat a bit of tuna or ham or chicken if we are eating some (and today had his face in some Heinz beans I was about to microwave for lunch!) so there’s nothing coming over him, but I worry it’s not good for him just to have dry food.

I buy a small pack of a different food every time we do a grocery shop but it’s the same with all of them. He does favour poultry flavours and actively dislikes fishy ones (but really really loves human tuna from a tin!).