I have a very fussy feline eater... (A healthy 3 year old Siamese, with stable weight). It has taken a while to slowly fine tune his diet and it now seems we have reached a good balance of food with high quality ingredients (based on csts.com reviews) and tastes that Felix approves, but I'm conscious it's a very varied mix of types of protein and cat food brands of shredded pieces in gravy. (Each food was slowly introduced - there were a number of others we tried which he simply wouldn't enjoy eating).
Felix eats 1 can pet day and on a weekly basis this will be: 4x cans of Scrumbles shredded chicken, 2x cans of Untamed Tuna/Tuna & Shrimp, 1x can of Lily's Kitchen shredded chicken with mussels.
On days when he wants more wet food (approx twice per week) he will also get a Churu broth /stew.
Felix also eats a spoonful of dry food at night, he's much less fussy about his kibble, so that's usually Scrumbles chicken dry food, sometimes mixed with Ziwi Peak venison air dried food.
No gastro issues and Felix is healthy and happy, but it just makes me wonder if it's okay for him to have such varied diet with various types / brands rotated within w week.
Hi Magda,
I don't think a rotational and varied diet is a bad thing as long as you're not seeing any digestive issues. These can be especially important with picky eaters. Changing diet can become a problem if a kitty is on the same food/nutrient profile for a long time and then you need to change it for whatever reason. If you don't change it with a slow transition, that diet change can cause digestive issues because the body got used to one thing for so long. The principle behind a rotational diet is it keeps the GI tract adaptable while still feeding a balanced diet.
If you haven't had the opportunity, make sure to check out our article on rotational diets.
@chris-vanderhoof That's amazing to hear, thank you. And yes, it's been a slow process to gradually introduce all the different elements (whilst also trying a few others along the way until we found a perfect mix).
Thank you for the link to the article! That's so useful!
That's such a valid point, thank you Kate. And I'm glad to hear this approach works for you too.
@magda_felix I'm glad Dr. Vanderhoof was able to answer your question. I just wanted to comment that I also feed my cats a rotational diet and it works well for us. The only issue is when I run out of the freeze-dried food I usually use and my cats go a couple weeks without it. If I'm not careful to start over with small amounts it upsets my one cat's stomach a little.