Does your ragdoll eat wet food? | Wet Food | Ragdoll Cat Forum

I am interested in this also.  Mine won't eat Tiki-Cat.  Right now they eat Purina One dry and split a can of Fancy Feast for them twice a day.  They love it, but I'm not sure how good it is for them.  I thought Tiki Cat would be wonderful – even though it's expensive.  Mine are 11 and 9 months old and I would love to have them eating as healthy as they could.  I really don't know much about wet food, but would like to learn.

Success! I did some research and tried sprinkling Eagle Pack Holistic Solution on some wet food and he seemed to figure out it was edible! Not just a pile of stinky mush!! I believe the Eagle Pack is a lot like FortiFlora in that it mimics the coating on dry food to be more enticing, as well as having the probiotics. We actually tried the Holistic Solution for Tyco when he had runny stool and it helped a lot with that and now he has normal bowel movements. But we had a bottle left and he really seemed to like it so I thought I would try it instead of buying the FortiFlora. Worked like a charm!

The first day, I put a little wet food (Wellness Chicken & Herring) in a bowl with a sprinkle of the Eagle Pack on it and offered it to him before his usual dinner time. He sniffed around and finally licked it. I let him munch on the wet food until he was bored of it, then fed him his dinner (of Orijen). I did this again the next day and the day after, offering some wet first and then his dry. Today he actually ate some wet food combined with some raw Primal Food beef + salmon and then had just a little bit of kibble. So I'm slowly weaning him off the dry and moving him into a wet/raw diet!! What a relief!!

@angiedsmith – Is FortiFlora or Eagle Pack Holistic Solution available anywhere by you? I think it's possible the cats just don't realize that wet food is actually food! Maybe they just need a bit of enticing. The Eagle Pack worked like a charm for us and I had tried for quite awhile, and many different foods, to get Tyco eating wet food again. I will pick up some Tiki Cat next weekend and give it a shot again, too!

Which type of canned Royal Canin did you get? I'm guessing Kitten Instinctive? I'm not an expert on feline nutrition or anything!! But I passed up on Royal Canin as well for my own crew because of the ingredients as well. Not that I'm anti-RC. It's certainly better than a lot of cheaper foods on the market but I was uneasy about the powdered cellulose as a fiber source (RC reps say is it comes from various plant sources). If anyone else is reading, please correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think cats need as fiber to be added to their food. So this ingredient is basically a filler. I know they don't use this ingredient in all their foods but since kittens are so sensitive and are of course growing and developing, it's beyond me why they'd put it in the kitten food. And then wheat gluten and "corn starch modified" – what is that?! We've all heard a lot of advertising from pet foods as "grain free" but really – when would a wild cat eat grains? I dunno. I'm leery of wheat gluten and corn starch modified because they are unnecessary to a feline's diet. Rice flour…again, I can't think of what nutrition a cat will get out of rice flour… it's just a cheap filler. Calcium caseinate is a protein but your cat should be deriving its protein from animal sources. RC can technically say their food has X amount of protein but that would then include the animal-based but also the calcium caseinate protein! It's deceiving. Despite what sounds like all my RC negativity here, at least the first four ingredients are meat and liver so that's a huge plus (aside from the water that is). You're just paying a premium for a lot of other ingredients your cat doesn't need/isn't good for your cat. And if we were to analyze every cat food, we would certainly find a bunch of questionable or unnecessary ingredients, so it's not just RC. Pork isn't a very common protein source in commercial cat foods so I was surprised when I was doing my own research to switch to canned that Royal Canin has a lot of pork products in their foods. From what I can tell, unless you're feeding them raw pork (high fat), cooked pork should be fine. It's just a matter of personal preference, I think.

This info is from: http://www.catinfo.org/#Learn_How_To_Rea%E2%80%A6

That page is a fantastic resource for cat nutrition!

"The higher priced canned foods that I referenced above, have a muscle meat listed as the first ingredient. A muscle meat will be listed as “chicken,” or “turkey,” etc. not “chicken by-products” or “chicken by-product meal,” or “chicken broth” or "liver". “Chicken meal” is technically a muscle meat but the term “meal” denotes that it has been rendered (cooked for a long time at very high temperatures) and may be lower in quality than meat that has not been as heavily processed. A "meal" product is more commonly found in dry foods. By-products can include feet, intestines, feathers, egg shells, etc. and can be less nutritious than meat.

Avoid foods listing "liver" as a first ingredient.  Liver is a very nutritious organ meat – and should be present in small amounts – but it should never be the first ingredient as it is very high in vitamin A and D and you don't want to feed too much of those vitamins. Liver is cheaper than muscle meat so it will increase a company's profit margin when used in high amounts."

The site also says "Note that kittens do not need "kitten" food.  They just need plenty of canned, species-appropriate (low carb/meat-based) adult food.  Remember….there are no mice running around in the wild with "kitten" stamped on them.  Kittens eat just what their parents eat – just more of it on a per-pound-of-kitten basis." I personally abide by this – my kittens eat "adult" cat food, just a lot more of it!

I probably sound really obnoxious by now. I don't mean to be – just trying to be as helpful as possible. That page link covers a lot of information and is a really, really great resource for investigating the ingredients. I've read it thoroughly, several times, to pick up as much information as possible.

I feed my cats Wellness (Turkey & Salmon and for a treat Chicken & Herring – I say a treat because it's also a high quality food but it's terribly smelly … which the cats love of course…) and I rotate with Evo Turkey & Chicken. I get the Wellness because to me, it's a good balance between being affordable and high quality (grain free, high protein) and comes in 12.5 oz cans. It's cheaper if you can buy it by the case – which I do! And I alternate with Evo (13.2 oz cans!) which I also get by the case – changes it up a little for the kitties and helps them get protein from different sources for different meals. My kitties also eat raw (Rad Cat/Primal).

Anyway I have rambled on terribly long and I hope I haven't bored you or scared you away. I only recently learned of the importance of a wet food diet. Again, Royal Canin is far better than a lot of cheaper diets out there so don't be disheartened! Like I said, if you read all the labels on all the cans, you'd probably find questionable ingredients in all of them so I'm not trying to be anti-Royal Canin! I hope some of this has helped :) Please keep me updated! I am always so curious on what others feed their kitties!

Thank-you so much for your wonderful and very helpful information, I really appreciate it! I'm not going to buy anymore Royal Canin, the first time I gave it to Nicky he ate every bite. The second time, I put some warm water on it to heat it a little and he didn't want anything to do with it. The name of it is Royal Canin Adult Instinctive. Another thing I didn't notice until after we got it home was that it was chunks in gravy. If I had been able to read that it was in chunks (very small, but still chunks) I wouldn't have bought it. I mashed them with a fork as much as I could to make the pieces smaller and like I said, he ate it the first time. We have another Pet store in the town where we go to shop, I will just need to get there before they close this time.  They have a lot better selection to choose from there and if you want something she doesn't have, she will order it for you.

Once again, thank-you so much for your response, I am learning more and more about canned cat food all the time.  

When I picked up my ragdoll kitten, he was 11 weeks old and was on dry IAMS kitten food. IAMS is what I was feeding my outside dogs, had always feed them dry (4 years-old). BUT, I picked Sparky up on Sunday and had to rush him to the vet on Monday because he had a UTI and was constipated. I was giving him bottled water because our public water doesn't always pass inspection. He was drinking, but it wasn't enough. So at 12 weeks I changed him over to IAMS kitten food in a can. I wish I could afford to feed him GO! Cat or Merrick, but I can't afford $50 for 24 pack of 3oz. cans plus shipping. I know for my cat's conditions he needs a wet diet which I am providing. I am providing one he enjoys and has meat with as little grain as possible and it cost $19.20 for 24 cans. It may be considered a medium grade cat food, but how many of us are able to afford better than a medium grade diet for ourselves? I love my kitten. 

Don't let the food thing stress you out. I searched every food and every ingredient. I finally came to realize that my kitten was happy with what he was eating and most the ingredients were good for him. I was the crazy person with the problem.