{"id":129,"date":"2007-11-03T19:13:00","date_gmt":"2007-11-04T00:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pegasuslibrarian.com\/droplets\/2007\/11\/and-i-thought-little-kids-were-picky-eaters.html"},"modified":"2007-11-03T19:13:00","modified_gmt":"2007-11-04T00:13:00","slug":"and-i-thought-little-kids-were-picky-eaters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pegasuslibrarian.com\/droplets\/2007\/11\/and-i-thought-little-kids-were-picky-eaters.html","title":{"rendered":"And I Thought Little Kids Were Picky Eaters…"},"content":{"rendered":"

This summer I learned of a cat food that’s not only all natural, but that’s also supposed to be really good for cats with asthma. So when all my travels were over, I chose a quiet week to switch Pippin’s food from his familiar Purina to the new food, Nature’s Logic. I knew all about starting with a little bit of the new and taking a week or so to slowly introduce more and more of the new food, so that first night I just added a teensy<\/span> bit of the new food. Yeah… that didn’t go over well. I was greeted by cat puke.<\/p>\n

At first I attributed the annoying upchucking to a combination of other stressors<\/span> plus the food, so I tried again the next night… with no change in the results. Maybe cats can’t change as easily as dogs, I thought, so I went online to look it up only to find the standard advise that I already knew wasn’t going to work for me.<\/p>\n

After a couple days of rest, I tried again. This time he upchucked and<\/em> decided that eating was for the birds. He just stopped. Even when I gave him a bowl full of his beloved Purina, he wouldn’t touch it. A day and a half later, out of desperation, I started feeding him his absolute favorite food in all the world, Fancy Feast, just to get him to take something in. Luckily that went over well and the hunger strike was called off.<\/p>\n

At this point, friends started telling me of their multi-month battles to change their cats’ food. Apparently, this isn’t all that uncommon. Also, it turns out that the main food don’t play fair. They spray the equivalent of cat-candy on their kibbles to make them more attractive. A pox on them.<\/p>\n

Given the general stubbornness of cats, the candy coating of the old stuff, and his willingness to declare hunger strikes, how was I to get this stupid cat to recognize that the new kibbles were food? Well, I put a bowl of the new kibbles a few feet away from his normal food dish. After a few days, he tried one… and didn’t barf. From then on, I waited to feed him until after he’d eaten one or two of the new kibbles. (I had to watch carefully, though, because if he ate more than 2 or 3 kibbles, he’d barf.) Maybe 2 or 3 weeks later, I started putting<\/span> no more than 5 or 6 new kibbles in with the old. And then, ever so slowly, I started transitioning this pickiest of picky eaters to his new food.<\/p>\n

It has now been almost exactly 3 months since our ordeal started, and this week, I think we’ll complete the transition. At this point, I’m just scattering 10 or so old kibbles on top of the new food.<\/p>\n

And Pippin? He is doing very well. He’s still not thrilled with the new food. He always sniffs it, gets a look of supreme disappointment, looks to me for mercy, realizes I have no mercy, and finally eats. But his coat is SO soft, and just recently he’s rediscovered his purr.<\/p>\n

The poor guy must have had sore lungs his whole life because he really hasn’t purred worth the name since he was about 8 or 9 months old. He used to do this raspy, squeaky breathing to indicate a purr, but this last 2 weeks or so (ever since he started eating more new food than old food) he’s started launching into deep, throaty, luxurious purrs. He wanders around the apartment purring. He curls up on my lap purring. He bats at toys purring. He’s just a purr-full little guy. I hope that means his lungs are healthier!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This summer I learned of a cat food that’s not only all natural, but that’s also supposed to be really good for cats with asthma. So when all my travels were over, I chose a quiet week to switch Pippin’s food from his familiar Purina to the new food, Nature’s Logic. I knew all about … Continue reading And I Thought Little Kids Were Picky Eaters…<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-living-with-cats"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pegasuslibrarian.com\/droplets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pegasuslibrarian.com\/droplets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pegasuslibrarian.com\/droplets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pegasuslibrarian.com\/droplets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pegasuslibrarian.com\/droplets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pegasuslibrarian.com\/droplets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pegasuslibrarian.com\/droplets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pegasuslibrarian.com\/droplets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pegasuslibrarian.com\/droplets\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}