Thread: Food allergy

Hi Kittenskatie,
I would ask the breeder what food they were feeding the kitten, chances are changing the kittens food to fast is causing gi upset. Good luck Donna

here is what my breeder advised, when I brought mine home:
don't give any dry food in the first 12 months - it is much tougher on the stomach and too rich for them
don't give gravy pouches, gravy is very rich and also bad, especially (strangely enough) kitten gravy pouches, they are even richer than adult ones.
so, only wet food pouches, in jelly. Felix works absolutely, but we did try to find some that has a larger meat content - I found some with 70% meat for example but unfortunately I forget the name. The higher the meat content the better, as really cats eat meat, not all the other stuff they put in the pouches to make it look like they are having a balanced meal. For example, if you see something that has carrots and green beans for a more balanced diet, keep away as it's just marketing...
out of principle, I especially boycot Iams - their advert makes it sound like pouches of wet food are bad because they have water, when in fact it's the reverse, cats need water but don't drink enough as they don't really feel the thirst like we do. They also don't tell you of all the crap they put in the kibbles to make them stick together, and chances are that might be what your kitty is reacting to. They put ash in there, they put rice and gluten to make it stick....
Now mine is 3 years old - I started feeding her gravy pouches when she was one and a half - and indeed at first it kind of made for a rather stinky litter. Then when I started seeing her drink out of the tap (that's our routine, every morning we leave the tap trickling a bit for her to drink from) THEN I was reassured, I know she does drink, so she's allowed Royal Canin MC dry food as a complement - but only as a complement - I still give her 3 pouches of wet food per day, of which the little brat only eats half because after it's been in her plate for more than 5 minutes it's not good any more (she says) - I feed her the one she likes right now, Sheba duet... don't know if it's the best for her, but that's pretty much the only one she'll eat at the moment.
Also she loves cooked chicken and salmon - always has, even when she was little - so you may want to try that with your Baby (not from our plate, she gets her own, because we like oinions and garlic in ours and that is extremely bad for cats - so whenever I make chicken or salmon I have to keep a piece aside for her that I cook separately. I have to. she won't leave me alone until I give her a piece and gets extremely crabby if I try to hog the chicken for myself, going as far as stealing it from my plate while I'm eating. Hence her Pirate reputation.)

Hey there,

I am no expert and I haven't really had a cat with an allergy to food or anything but after reading Alekto's post thought I would add my 2p's worth

I have now had my 2 boys for 2 weeks and they are now eating raw food and dry food without any problems. The breeder had them on a mix of Royal Canin wet and biscuits, Iams wet food and felix which I personally wasn't happy with as felix hasn't got a great meat content and Royal canin is expensive. So I have slowly switched them over onto a raw meat and high meat content diet and they are thriving on it, if my scales are correct they have gained 1kg in a week!! I buy my raw meat from Natural Instincts online and it comes frozen and the boys love it, I then at lunch feed them Animonda Carny which I buy from Zooplus just to break up the raw meat diet. I then put down a small amount of Applaws biscuits as they are cereal free and have a high meat content, I personally haven't had any problems that Alekto describes and they love them and I am much happier them having these biscuits compared to Iams or Royal Canin as they have cereals in etc.

Now not everyone agrees with feeding raw meat to their cats but my 2 boys are thriving on it and their coats are gorgeous and silky. So perhaps you might wan't to pickup some raw mince from your supermarket and see if your MC takes to it. Don't feed them just the raw mince instead of your normal food though as it doesn't have all the nutrients that cats need, but it is a cheap way to see if they will even touch raw meat.

oh absolutely, don't get me wrong AFK, if Neevie didn't turn up her nose at raw meat she'd get that too (yes, I think as a complement, too)... I think the more meat the better... and raw still has a lot of moisture so can hydrate just as well as water - it's just that the few times I have offered her raw meat she hasn't touched it.
I just think that if kitty has tummy problems, then dry food, and kitten in gravy, is probably to be avoided for now till he gets better.
And KittensKatie, please note, this is the subject of debate on quite a few threads on the forum - so like Donna said above, have a read at all that... :-)

Don't get me wrong Alekto I wasn't criticising what you feed Neevie at all! I just saw you mention about no dry food in the first 12 months and thought I'd mention that I have had no problems with the dry biscuits I have been feeding, this could be because of the no cereal and high meat content in the Applaws biscuits. I also wanted to agree with you about felix and the iams food. In my opinion the felix is like our takeaways and the iams has a load of stuff in that isn't nutritious for cats.

I am just hoping my boys keep on liking the raw meat!