This is the story about a Sleeping Cutie named Aurora and her quest to find a new wet food…
Our rescue kitten, Aurora (Rory for short), is a picky eater while also potentially having a slightly weak digestive system. She’s currently fed a mix of freeze-dried raw food and wet food. When we first got her, she was on kibble/wet and was having a little diarrhoea, so our vet advised we should replace her kibble with freeze dried food, and change the wet food brand we feed her. This post is mostly about her wet food, but if you want to hear more about the freeze dried part click here.
The wet food we’ve been feeding her up until this point was what the adoption lady says she was previously being fed. We were thinking of keeping her on it since she loves that flavour, is used to it, and the other brands the vet recommended were more expensive for the chicken flavours (or the chicken flavours were not for all life stages).
We figured we could just keep her on that until she was an adult before transitioning her to Tiki Cat or Weruva… but things changed a bit too quickly after that.
We originally thought she wouldn’t eat tuna because she rejected the freeze dried ahi tuna treats, but this week I cracked open some cans of tuna for my hubs and I to eat and she went craaazy trying to get me to give her some. I gave her some of the water brine, diluted with a lot more water, and she loved it.
(To be fair, she has liked it in the past as well, and even ate a small piece of tuna I tried to give her back when we first got her, which is why we tried getting her the ahi tuna treats. I guess just with her pickiness about the treats coupled with us not eating tuna for a while we forgot about it and assumed she only liked chicken.)
We originally thought she wouldn’t eat beef because she rejected it at the vet’s, but Pet Food Express were giving out samples of the Vital Essentials Beef Topper, so we figured why not… and she actually enjoyed that too! So maybe her taste buds have changed recently.
Then all of a sudden, the brand we were getting increased their prices by 15%, so that was the final straw. We are now on the hunt for new wet food that she’ll enjoy, that is more affordable and won’t cause her any tummy upsets. I’ll let Rory take the review from here since she’s the one eating it :D
Hi… I’m Rory. Mum said I should take over this bit since it’s my food and I agree. I’m much more suited to reviewing this since I’m the one eating it! So here’s the deal:
Kiwi Kitchens Chicken & Mussel Dinner – The adoption lady said this was what I was fed before, so my mum and dad kept getting this for me. I loved it when I first got home, especially compared to that kibble stuff, bleh. But I started to get runny poops so they put me on pumpkin + probiotics. I was doing much better on that but the vet lady said the fat content is probably too high in this, so mum should try Tiki Cat or Weruva.
Mum didn’t think it was a big deal at first and she’d rather get a wet food brand that I’d actually eat, until she did more research and realised the fat content was 32% on a dry matter basis. Since then she’d been researching other foods to get me but she was taking her sweet time buying it! But I guess this one got super pricey so I am finally getting other foods now!
I like this just as much as the Tuna & Pumpkin for flavour – 9/10 for that. 5/10 for what it was doing to my body though :(
Tiki Cat Aloha Friends Tuna & Pumpkin – Yuuum! I’m glad mum finally got the hint with all my mewling for the tuna she’s been eating this week. She’s had so many cans this week and it’s not fair! That smell has been driving me insane and she never lets me have any. It’s about time I finally got my own. I licked up every last drop I could get.
I was in the middle of eating my freeze-dried food when mum brought this out for me to try. I loved it and finished it all immediately. I even stopped eating my freeze-dried food half way through to finish eating this first. I didn’t like that vet lady at first because she said I was overweight and that mum and dad should put me on a diet. But I guess since I got my tuna I forgive her now…
Mum’s relieved because this one’s got a bit of pumpkin in it. I haven’t always had the best digestion so she’s happy I’m easing in to a new brand with less fat and some pumpkin. Oh, and she’s extra happy because it’s the cheapest one she got too. She always says I have expensive taste but she’s totally wrong, I just have particular taste. 9/10.
This is the only one I’ve tried so far. Mum is going to give me a different flavour in a couple of days because I still have half a can to finish. She’s transitioning me into Tiki Cat slowly so I don’t get a tummy ache, which is fine I guess. I’d rather eat them all now but I suppose what she’s doing makes sense. I’ll be back later to review two more cans. She got me 6 more different flavours to try and I can’t wait!
Freeze-Dried Raw
Hello! Bobbie back again. Freeze-dried raw is incredibly expensive but if we are subsidising it with wet food it’s not too bad, and we want to make sure she is fed well (yep, we spoil her a bit, can you tell?) She is such a picky eater that when we first bought her treats, the only treat she would eat is freeze-dried chicken breast. Not even ahi tuna or any other mixture of treat.
Our vet tried to offer her multiple flavours of freeze dried food during our visit (pork, beef and lamb) but she also rejected all of them so we were worried she wouldn’t take to other freeze-dried raw foods too. Thankfully, it only took us one failed attempt at seducing her with Nulo’s Chicken & Salmon before she decided that she liked Stella & Chewy’s Chicken Dinner Morsels.
(Huge shout out to Pet Food Express, who have literally the best customer service – not only will they take any customer return if you buy the food and your pet won’t eat it and donate the rest of the food to a local rescue or shelter, but they also were kind enough to open a bag of Nulo’s in store so Rory could try it when I brought her in.
Then they gave me a huge discount to just buy the Stella & Chewy’s to take home and try with water, since that will affect the taste and the texture. But I was fairly confident that Rory would prefer it since it was just chicken, which she loves. She ended up accepting it dry when I opened the bag at home to give her to try.)
We now buy the 18oz bags from our local Pet Food Express because they do a buy 3 get 1 free deal if you purchase in store, which basically allows us to save $41+tax on about 3 months’ worth of freeze dried food for her. That quantity should last even longer once she’s a fully grown adult and no longer requiring twice the calories, and depending on the wet food brand, it might have even work out cheaper to feed her on this alone.
But now, hopefully armed with Rory’s reviews, we won’t have to!
Muchos love,