Meet the Other Phone. A phone that grows with your child.

Meet the Other Phone.
A phone that grows with your child.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

The litter tray

Join our community of cat lovers on the Mumsnet Cat forum for kitten advice and help with cat behaviour.

Switching to premium food, cat not keen

8 replies

uhohjojo · 05/09/2025 10:01

I have two cats. Chibi is a huge, greedy, beast of a cat, and always seems to do runny poos, not diarrhoea, but leading to a mess on the fur at his backend. So over the years I've realised that it's food related, it gets much worse with fish or certain brands of catfood. I've decided to trial a grain free diet for a few weeks to see if that's the culprit.

It's already working amazingly on the bottom front (!) it's been clean for days. He's usually a greedy thing but I've tried Untamed and Marro and he's clearly not enjoying it. He only eats if I starve him so he's forced to eat.

His brother isn't keen either and getting sneaky tins of Gourmet on the side.

I'm not fussed about the purity of the food, they can add all the flavourings as far as I'm concerned! So are there grain free brands that are tastier to cats? Do cats eventually start to love these super-expensive premium products? There are so many glowing customer reviews, but there would be, it's marketing! Do lots of cats hate this subscription box food?

He does have Nature's Variety biscuits as part of his diet, but he's always loved wet food, so it's a shame he's not enjoying the new grub.

OP posts:
DiscoBob · 05/09/2025 10:04

Have you tried the allergy and sensitivity control ones? Royal Canin do a couple in both wet and dry. I'm not sure if any of the dry are grain free though. My cats adore these.

But mine was more skin allergy than poo related.

stormsandsunshine · 05/09/2025 11:10

It's worth thinking about texture. My cats wouldn't eat higher end brands, and I finally worked out it's that a lot of them are pate-style and they don't like that. When I switched to one that was small chunks in sauce (Bozita), they were much happier and the bowl gets emptied now.

tumblingdowntherabbithole · 05/09/2025 16:21

Have you tried Butchers? It's surprisingly good quality for the price and is fully grain and gluten free.

pinneddownbytabbies · 05/09/2025 16:31

The more we pay for cat food, the less likely it is that they will want to eat it. And the premium stuff seems to disagree with one of them anyway.🤑

Judystilldreamsofhorses · 05/09/2025 19:41

No advice on the toilet front, but our boy rejected alllll the premium foods. Quite rude, as he was a stray until a kind lady took him in at about eight months old - before that he was living in her shed with his brother, presumably eating mice and spiders. (He also hates toileting outside and comes in to use the litter tray.)

I just handed over a huge bag for life full of mainly Untamed and Blink to Cats Protection (where he came from) a new weeks back. I had to give away the frozen/raw one - Katkin? - on our local community FB group as he wouldn’t even look at that!

uhohjojo · 05/09/2025 21:31

Thanks for all the helpful advice. Really good point on the texture, could be that. He eats anything usually, but seems to be really offended by expensive food! At least there's good deals on the trials of these brands, but if I add them all up I'm sure I've spent fortunes! I'll press on and try a couple of the brands mentioned. 🙂

OP posts:
Sunshineandrainbow · 07/09/2025 22:46

My cat loves purizon dry food. Because he eats this good quality dry food I don't stress too much about the quality of wet.

If cat has a runny bum royal canon hairball dry food will probably sort it out. Whole thread on here about it.

PinkSparklyPussyCat · 08/09/2025 10:45

I remember my vet telling me that the best cat food is the one the cat will eat! I also follow Cat the Vet on Facebook and she has made some interesting posts regarding cat food.

New posts on this thread. Refresh page
Swipe left for the next trending thread