A Battle of Wills

Bailey eats 2/3 of a can of Fancy Feast (3 0z can) in the morning and the same at night. Every night I put just enough dry food in his other dish to cover the bottom of the dish, so that he has something to nibble on in the morning and won't wake us up.

First I changed his dry food to dry diet food. Not too much of a problem. Then I started to cut back a little on his regular canned food. That led to some complaints, but we could live with it.

Then I cut back half of his regular canned food each mealtime and added the same amount of canned diet food, mixing it with the good stuff, so that he was getting the same amount but half of it was diet.

DAY THREE

That's when we hit a road block! Even mixing it with the good stuff, he did not like the diet food. At first he would eat a little then leave the rest and sit with his back to me for the rest of the day.

The fourth day he wouldn't touch his food at all! So we strengthened our resolve and became hard-hearted. No result. He nibbled some of his dry food rather than eat the diet canned food.

DAY FOUR

Then I got creative. I bought a small carton of the sippy milk for cats, which my other cats have loved. I didn't know if he liked it or not, because he is SO picky. He won't touch any kind of human food at all. I tried a little drop of milk on my hand. He sniffed it and ran away. The next meal time I put a splash on the tray . He sniffed it and ignored it and then ate some of the dry food. It was now three days since he had eaten much at all. Remember this is a twenty-one pound cat.

DAY FIVE

I got desperate. I knew he was hungry because he was now ASKING for food, which he never does. (Strange cat!). Anyway I just poured about a table spoon of the milk over his uneaten food
from the morning since he wasn't going to eat it anyway. . He sniffed it and walked away. BUT... a little while later I saw him eating from his dish and he ate almost all of it. SUCCESS!...So far...

DAY SIX

A clean dish!!

So all we have to do now is GRADUALLY increase the diet food and leave out the same amount of good food. The vet wants him to be about 14 pounds by September! There is no way! This cat measures almost 30 inches from the tip of his nose to the beginning of his tail. I will settle for 17 pounds. He is built like a mountain lion. Heavy and big-boned.

We shall see.