Next, I asked Dr. Pierson to talk a little about transitioning cats to a different diet – especially cats that have eaten dry food for most of their lives and are addicted to it. The transition can be surprisingly difficult, so I’m hoping she has some words of encouragement for people who want or need to switch their kitty to a better diet.
Dr. Pierson replied, “Oh boy. Patience, patience, patience, and more patience!” (Dr. Pierson and I are Skyping, and while we’re chatting, she happens to have in her lap one of her worst die-hard kibble-addicted cats!)
Back in the day, Dr. Pierson had several cats and she never fed canned food because she was, as she puts it, “a typically uneducated veterinarian” who thought dry food was best. At that time, she fed her cats a 100 percent kibble diet, which of course wasn’t a good thing.
She refers clients (and all of you listening and reading here today) to the page of her website called Transitioning Dry Food Addicts to Canned Food. It took her three months to get her own kibble addicts on canned food. A month or so after everyone was eating canned, she began introducing them to homemade. She reiterates that we must be patient, but she’s not met a cat yet that she hasn’t been able to transition to a species-appropriate diet.
Dr. Pierson says she’d be quite wealthy if she had a dime for every time someone told her that their cat would never eat anything but kibble. She tells them, “No offense, but you haven’t tried hard enough. Roll up your sleeves. Get busy. Prepare to sit in the middle of the room and cry. You’re allowed to use four-letter words like I did.” A couple of times, she just had to leave the house because her cats were grumpy. They were crabby at her. So she just left for a few hours, and when she returned, no one had died from hunger.
Hunger is the key word here, by the way. Hunger – not starvation. Cats can withstand 12 to 18 hours of hunger with no food. Cats in the wild sometimes get to eat only once a day (though on a typical day, they eat about 8 to 10 small meals). But feral cat caregivers typically only feed their colonies once a day, and the kitties do just fine. So treat your cat’s hunger as your friend. Don’t give in after 20 minutes to plaintive cries or a pair of pleading eyes staring up at you, or you’ll never get the job done.
Dr. Pierson says to read her transition tips linked above and just stick with it. Some people have spent six months transitioning their cats away from dry food. She doesn’t think it should take that long – but do what works best for your individual situation. In hindsight, she says it probably shouldn’t have taken her three months to transition her own cats, but she had some serious kibble addicts on her hands, one of whom was 10 years old and had never taken even a bite of canned food.
A word about the texture of cat food. Dr. Pierson says during the transition, it’s all about texture, texture, texture. Kibble-addicted cats are so accustomed to dry, crunchy stuff that getting them used to soft wet stuff takes a lot of work. She also says it’s okay to use some smelly fishy food at the beginning of the transition, though generally speaking, she recommends avoiding fish altogether. (So do I.) Fish-based cat food can contain fire-retardant chemicals linked to feline hyperthyroidism. There’s mercury in fish, and it also tends to be high in phosphorus. So there are a lot of reasons to stay away from fish – except during the transition if your cat seems to go for it.
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