Depending on your cat’s issues, vets might have to prescribe some types of food from time to time. This will be done as either a type of lite treatment or as a way of providing your cat with the necessary nutrients. Even though this food will be of great help to your cat’s overall health, it doesn’t mean that the pet will understand and will be OK with the change in its diet. There will be some instances in which the cat will completely refuse to eat any prescription food.
A great thing you can do when the cat won’t eat the food prescribed by the vet is to use some flavor enhancers, try to offer the food at different temperatures, always keep a positive attitude, and use positive reinforcement techniques, and if none of these work, ask the vet to come with some alternative options.
If your cat is seriously ill it isn’t uncommon for it to refuse not only prescription food but eating in general. This is why it is very important to find a way of feeding the pet without forcing food on its throat, which could make things even worse.
Common reasons for cats to refuse prescription food:
- Timing
- Natural Preferences
- Type of Food
It shouldn’t be a reason for concern if the cat refuses to eat prescription food. All you have to do is just make tweaks and adjustments to the diet until your cat finds the food appealing.
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Remember that animals can’t tell you what they don’t like, so you will have to keep adding and removing ingredients from the diet until you find the perfect mix. With enough experiments, you will usually reach the perfect combination that would make the cat happy while also keeping it healthy.
Below, I’ll go through some of the things you can do if your cat refuses to eat the food prescribed by the vet.
What To Do If Your Cat Won’t Eat Prescription Food
1. Use Flavor Enhancers
Most of the time. prescription food won’t be the tastiest one out there.
Most of the cats will refuse this food mainly because they don’t like its taste. Just as you have a preference in terms of what you like to eat, cats will also have individual preferences. Even so, there are ways around this.
You can always try to add some flavor enhancers to your cat’s food to improve its taste. These are the easiest way of almost instantly improving the taste of the cat food and you will usually find them easily at the open market. Using just a pinch of flavor enhancers will usually be enough to do the job.
Before considering this approach, make sure you talk to your vet about it so that you don’t do more harm than good with these substances. Also, you should look for natural flavor enhancers instead of artificial ones because those made with a lot of artificial ingredients might be very bad for a pet’s health.
2. Keep a Positive Attitude When Figuring Out The Diet
This is a very important factor that some owners completely neglect.
It is always important to keep a positive attitude around a cat, especially an ill one. Cats will easily pick up on these details and if they feel a hostile attitude around them, they will have a harder time eating food, especially food that doesn’t taste all that great.
An ill cat will see the world around it in darker shades, so you will usually want to make things as fun around it as possible. Being fun and loving around the pet will usually make it trust you and give this food a try.
Cats need to trust you to eat things from you, especially things that don’t taste great. They are also known to pick up on emotions a lot faster than other pets, so you should try to make sure that you give off only positive vibes around them.
It might happen that you think the prescription food looks weird and you look disgusted when you give it to your cat. This will usually make the cat refuse to eat it as well. If this happens, never try to force your cat to eat it. You will only make things worse.
It’s really undesirable for the cat to consider something good for its health as a bad thing. This will turn any future treatment into a hard and complicated process.
3. Change the Temperature of the Food
Maybe the cat doesn’t necessarily hate the taste of the food, but its temperature. Changing the temperature of the food might make it more desirable.
The change might not have to be a big one either.
You might only be required to warm the food just a little to notice a big difference in how the cat enjoys it. Most of the time, it will usually be enough to just change the texture or the taste of the food using a little heat, for the cat to start eating it.
Cats are among those animals that have preferences regarding the temperature of their food and a difference in temperature will also come with a different taste or smell, making the food seem a lot tastier.
This is another aspect that will require a lot of trial and error, so play around with different temperatures to see how the cat likes the changes.
Conclusion
If your cat won’t eat prescription food, then consider the tips found in this article.
Don’t be discouraged if you can’t find an easy fix, it will usually take some trial and error before you find the best combination of flavor, temperature, and smell so that the cat actually likes what it eats.
A great thing to keep in mind is to implement these tips one by one. Don’t just push all of them together because then you won’t know what caused a change in your cat’s attitude.
