what would make my 7 cats choose to starve instead of eating fresh meat

reply to post by reticlevision


loved it - you write well

i just planted some catnip and have to keep it hidden from the cats till its big enough or else the cats will love the catnip to death lol

reply to post by Becker44


oooh put the claws away lol

Hi everyone, I will chime in on this topic since I have 13 cats...

5 of my kitties are kept indoors at all times, 5 love outdoors so they stay outside all year round (during winter they have nice cozy crates with the door removed, the crates are padded/insulated with old comforters and have heated blankets to lay on to stay warm) and 3 are out most of the time but sleep indoors at night.

I have fed my cats basically every dry food on the market, even the holistic ones that are sold at places like Hollywood Feed, testing out what makes them happy but also what keeps them healthy. They all love wet food but it just costs too much to feed them all wet, I usually give them wet as a birthday treat (I am a one parent household with teenagers that eat a ton of food and am in nursing school, so money is extremely tight right now). I have figured out that:

1. they all have different tastes
2. they all respond differently to different brands
3. food with coloring additives are forbidden, because I have had more trouble with this food than any of the rest (vomiting, itching and dermatitits). There is one on the market my cats just LOVE and it's the worst one as far as side effects
4. cats love variety!

I usually buy 2-4 different brands/types that they all seem to tolerate well so they get a variety and this is what is offered to them daily. I occasionally buy urinary tract and hairball formulas for maintenance for their urinary and digestive systems to keep things running smoothly.

The outdoor kitties hunt sometimes, but honestly they have pretty much wiped out the population of prey to hunt so that isn't much of an issue anymore. Plus, they are spoiled, lol.

I don't know whether cat food manufacturers put anything addictive in their foods, although I am pretty sure they try to make it as tasty as possible. I have had my kitties turn their noses up at a food they usually love, so I discontinue it for a time and then reintroduce it after a couple of months, with no problems. Seriously, they get tired of eating the same foods everyday, no matter how much they like it. So to the OP, I just think maybe your kitties just liked having a change of pace offered to them!

reply to post by justsaying


thanks for that helpful insight

I have zero problems when I feed my cats their regular food that I get from the pet meat abbatoir

and I have been feeding them this same food for longer than a decade

I've got a an old female cat who has been raised mainly on dry food with only wet food occasionally.
Over a year ago she refused to eat the 2 major brands that she'd been happy alternating between for a few years.
It was all very sudden and I knew something was wrong afterwards when the following happened.

I thought that maybe she had an upset stomach or something as she was sick, and that once she got hungry enough she'd eat the dry food when she was ready and feeling better.
However, after day 3, with a fresh bowl of dry food that I put out for her that morning, in the afternoon I found her rummaging and tearing open the garbage bag full of household waste that was in the laundry ready to be put out for garbage night.
My cat has NEVER been a garbage rummager in all the years I've had her.
She preferred to rummage in the stinky garbage for something to eat, than eat whatever was in those dry biscuits in her bowl.

So I threw out the dry food in her bowl, along with the boxes of both brands (I tried her with both , nada) and went and bought a new brand. She hoed in like the starving thing she was.

I thought that maybe I'd bought a bad batch of dry catfood and a few weeks later I bought one of the brands again and the same thing happened. She REFUSED to eat it. So I threw it out. Now I was convinced there was something wrong with it and it just wasn't a bad batch.

Now, the most interesting part of this, whether or it's just coincidence or not I don't know, but it was around the time of that big pet food scandal in America where pets were getting ill from petfood coming from China and lots of animals were dying or getting very ill. Anyone remember that???
We're not in America and so I don't know if we were getting catfood make by our companies who were sourcing the same supplier in China or not, but my cat was sick and she refused to touch food made by 2 brands that she'd been happily eating for years.

One thing the whole experience taught me was that CATS KNOW. Yeah, cats can be finnicky and fussy but when your cat straight out refuses to eat something they've enjoyed for a long time, you know something is up.

And my cat doesn't like fresh meat these days. She'll sniff it, have a bit of a play with it and leave it. She prefers her fresh food cooked not raw. So I don't know what's going on with the pet food supply chain, but it seems there's funny goings on.

reply to post by Flighty


with perishable cat food i take it for granted that if my cats dont want to eat it there is a good reason to throw it out and serve fresh food

both of my cats eat dry food.
but if i give them meat or something,
they'll also gobble that up, no problem. lol

They probably just thought it was a treat.
Something they never get, that is 'good'. lol

Lots of cat treats are actually just like dry cat food..
I think they just saw another cat getting it, and wanted some to.
It's different, they like it.

chillax homie.

now there's conspiracies against our pets?

c'mon, we have way more than enough already. lol

Yes i agree. For a long time my and dont eat wet at food. and still eat dry. So i gie my at "table food" and it likes it alot more better sapien food. I saw my at likes to beg at kind of food.

Our cats prefer biscuits, which is fine by me, I am fed up with find a whole load of fly eggs on their food when I get home from work in the summer.

As for addictive substances in biscuits, I don't really care, as long as the cats are happy, I am happy.

If you are so concerned with your cats eating this then stop, they are still living things and eventually they wills start eating meat, they aren't stupid like humans and have a very good sense of self preservation.

If you are happy with the food they are eating, carry on, if not, change it.... simple as that