How do you wean a kitten off of canned cat food?

Ruthie

My kitty is spoiled. I got him when he was 11 weeks old and he refused to eat kitten chow. I had to feed him canned cat food. He is now 6 months old and will only eat the hard kitten chow at night when I lock him in my bedroom for the night. In the morning and in the afternoon he refuses to eat it and will beg and beg for canned food. Any tricks to get him to eat dry food all the time?



Madonna

Good for your kitten! he obviously knows what is good for him and what is not! Nutrition since there are so many bad things out there is very important to your cat’s healthContrary to what you may have heard, dry foods are not a great thing to feed a cat. Dry foods are the number 1 cause of diabetes in cats as well as being a huge contributing factor to kidney disease, obesity, crystals, u. t.i’s and a host of other problems. Food allergies are very common when feeding dry foods. The problems with it are that they are loaded with carbohydrates which many cats (carnivores) cannot process. Most of the moisture a cat needs is gottenout of the food and 95% of it is zapped out of dry foods in the processing. Also, most use horrible ingredients and dont use a muscle meat as the primary ingredient and use vegetable based protein versus animal. Not good for an animal that has to eat meat to survive. You want to pick a canned food w/o gravy (gravy=carbs) that uses a muscle meat as the first ingredient and doesnt have corn at least in the first 3 ingredients if at all. Fancy feast is a middle grade food with 9lives, friskies whiskas lower grade canned and wellness and merrick upper grade human quality foods. Also, dry food is not proven to be better for teeth. Please read about cat nutrition. http://www. newdestiny. us/nutritionbasics… http://www. catinfo. org/feline_obesity. ht… http://maxshouse. com/feline_nutrition. ht…



Neta

Good! Im glad youre taking Kens (and others) advice and will stick with it. Trust me, youre doing the right thing and your kittys health will reflect that.



Kasie

Start Giving It Every Other Day. Then After That Start Mixing It With Hard Food Every Other Day Then Just Give he Hard Food.



Sabrina

I had the same problem with my baby Ashlyn I spoiled her way to much when she was a kitten and would never eat hard food only canned food. What I did was mix some hard food in with the canned food for a week and then just stoppped giving her canned food altogthere and now she eats just hard food all the time. If they does not work just stop giving him canned food all the time he wont starve himself so he will eat the hard food if he has nothing elese.



Shane

Some canned food is good for them, my cats get canned food for breakfast and dry food is available all the time along with water, they also get another small helping of canned at dinner time. as long as you give canned food only at the same time every day and always have dry food available then if the cat is really hungry it will eat the dry if not then dont worry cause they wont starve them selves. of course if you reaslly want to go dry food only finish the canned food by feeding at same time each day only once till its gone then the cat wont have any choice but to go dry. but under a year they need a bit more still



Giuseppina

Um, canned food is actually better to feed your cat, so why would you try to take your cat off of it? You should mainly feed canned food with a suppliment of dry food. I feed my cats half a can of food twice a day, and then a small bit of dry food midday. There really is no proof that dry food cleans the teeth either. There are arguments for both sides, but in reality any cleaning it may do is not enough. If you just brush your cats teeth weekly and have the vet do a dental when needed, you will be fine. Some cats just naturally have bad teeth no matter what you do. I had my cats on a dry prescription teeth food at the advice of the vet and all that happened was I had fat dehydrated cats that had bad teeth. I moved them bad to their canned diet and they stabilized at a healthy weight, and we started to actually brush their teeth and now they are much better. Many stores and most vet offices sell sepcial brushes, finger slips, and toothpast for cats. You only want to use the the products for cats. My male actually likes the toothpaste so much that we have to make sure to put it away at night or he will chew through the tube to eat it.



Jeramy

Youve got it backwards - canned food is better. I dont mean that as a slam - plenty of people believe that and I did too once. Ive since learned better. Youve gotten the impression that canned food is more like a dessert than a meal, and dry food is the real deal. Its actually the other way around. Dry food - the majority of them - is full of carbs and is the equivalent of MacDonalds. Sure, some people can live on that and even thrive for several years, but its going to catch up with them. Keep your kitten on canned food. Its so much better for them! And for something like the 100th time, dry food doesnt clean the teeth. Canned food doesnt rot the teeth, cause diarrhea or any of that other nonsense.