Older cat begging

[MinnieMountain]

My moggie is nearly 14. The last few months, she’s slightly gone off the dried food she’s enjoyed for years so we’ve supplemented it with wet food.

She’s now started a habit of begging despite not finishing her wet food. She’s also much more interested in our food.

Is this just an age thing? She had a teeth clean and treatment for gingivitis in the summer.

I would take her to the vets and have them check for hypothyroidism and kidney disease (and a general health check.)

Good call @Moreovers . I’ve looked up the symptoms and being increasingly vocal is one.

My cat did similar when we introduced wet food. And as time passed she would start refusing the previously devoured brand of wet food but keep asking for more. (She meows relentlessly and then when you get up she walks us to the cupboard where it is stored).

She became really fussy and we had to keep swapping from one brand to another. But it felt like her appetite was insatiable, having way more than the recommended amount and she started to gain too much weight.

We gradually reduced the wet food and eventually eliminated it, by topping up her dry food when she was pestering us.
Now her appetite seems to be regulated again and her weight has returned to be right for her frame.

She still asks for food, but if we just walk her to the bowl, she does a "oh look at that, some lovely food" dive to the bowl, as though she didn't know it was there (where it has been since we first brought her home 12 years ago).

My theory is that something must be added to the wet food to make it more addictive to support the manufacturers profits. A bit like salt and sugar, msg etc for humans.

I'm not saying don't get her checked out but if nothing is found it might be worth trying to eliminate it to see if it's the food itself that is the problem.

Just to add, like you we initially added wet food as she seemed to go off her dry food. A change to the pocket type biscuits at first then gradually mixing with the non pocket ones had got her back to standard supermarket shelf dry food.

She loved the wet food to start with @TwinkleDee . Just Asda pouches. Now she licks the jelly off and leaves 1/4 of the solids.

I can relate to the cupboard thing.

Yes when our cat got to the stage of just licking the jelly or gravy off, but kept meowing to tell us she was hungry, we'd swap to another brand. She'd be happy with the new brand (for varying lengths of time) and then start just licking it again. And so the cycle would continue....until we got to the really expensive but tiny portions of wet food. At that point, with the volume she was eating it would have cost me more to feed her than myself, so I refused to buy those.

It only ended when we stopped the wet food. And now she's content on bog standard dry food.