Constant Change

Change can be good or it can be bad. I’ve learned that when something is working, it’s best to leave it as it is. Business companies tend not to do that because they want to make ever more money, and improvements are always being engineered to make customers buy more. Whatever the reason, there are usually problems when a food that a cat is enjoying - or at least eating - is changed.

This has happened with two of the foods consumed in the cosy apartment. I am most apprehensive of any alterations to Cammie’s food. With her allergies, she can eat only hydrolised nutrients; she is made ill by anything else. She can have only Z/D food, though fortunately, she likes both the tinned and the kernel varieties. Imagine my concern then when I saw this on the latest bag of the hard-food I purchased for her.

The formula had changed, and so had the size and shape of the kernels. I decided not to mix it with Cammie’s older food at first, as I wanted to see what effect the unadulterated new version had on her. The first thing I noticed was that Cammie seemed to like the taste of the new formula better than the old. Nonetheless, if it wasn’t made right, it would cause her to vomit - and keep vomiting.

But it stayed down. The new formula worked the way the old had. Since my princess liked it rather more than the former flavour, she ate more of it. I was relieved. In this case, a change had been an improvement.

I recently bought a case of Blue Wilderness ‘turkey’. After his initial period with me, this became  the only tinned food Neville would eat. He consumed quite a good amount of it at every meal, then would take himself to the hard-food bowl for his second course.

The most recent purchase, however, showed a change. The food, a pate, was less smooth than previously, and grittier. Nevsky continued to eat it, but in decreasing amounts, and with reluctance. During his time of eating the Blue Wilderness turkey, I had been experimenting with a wide range of food, to see if Neville would try something else, in case he went off his staple. Fortunately, I found that he likes another turkey flavour, that produced by Koha. Though he could subsist on hard-food, the soft has a better effect, aside from the nutrition.

The point is, of course, not that Nev likes another food, but that he stopped liking his former favourite. The formula had changed, at least so I believe. It may just be the case that I bought, and I will buy individual tins later to test the theory. I would prefer to be wrong.

The changes wrought by manufacturers, for whatever reason, double the difficulties in feeding felines caused by the finicky animals themselves. Sometimes I wonder if the makers of cat-food know much about the animals at all.