Cat has gone off her prescription food, any tips?

[Kim5678]

Does anyone have any tips or tricks for getting a cat to eat their food, which doesn’t involve adding other food or treats?

My cat is on hypoallergenic food. I had a long and expensive time going through all of the foods on the consultant’s list before finding one she would eat. She loved it for six months! Thankfully she’ll still eat a bit of the meat, but the biscuits were the main part of her diet (her choice) and now she won’t touch them. So she’s playing up by waking me up at all hours, trying to eat plants, clawing the carpet and I feel bad she’s hungry. I have loads left and I can’t add anything to the food to make it more attractive as we don’t know exactly what she’s allergic to. I use metal bowls so will try ceramic today, but is there anything else I can do?

Get her allergy tested so that you can find out exactly what she can and can’t eat. It’ll broaden your options and you’re more likely to be able to find a few brands you can switch between.

Can you elaborate on this please? Our cat is allergic to something god knows what. Extensive bloods have come back as all negative - no allergy to anything. They tested initially for trees, grass, mould, dust, mites - and the plan was once something came back positive, they’d do more specific tests to narrow it down. But all negative. So now all we were told to do is put her on anallergenic food and treat this as a food allergy. We were not told about tests on what she can and can’t eat. Any info you have would be awesome, many thanks.

Allergy testing - they are only useful if you test for what your cat is allergic to. The food allergy testing is not reliable.
Which hydrolysed diet is your cat on? It sounds like z/d which I have found the least common palatable. Of the dry hydrolysed diets I have found Purina HA the most palatable and still 5 years later my atopic cat runs to the bowl twice a day.
You could work with your vet doing dietary challenges Farmina do a great range of novel protein and carbohydrate source foods that are very useful for this.