Hi Jennifer. Your case is very difficult. Yes, I think the reason your cat won’t eat another chicken neck is because the first one caused pain. You can try again (read how here) but pain is a great teacher. If you already used t/d (which generally works the best) then any other dental diet is probably not going to help either. My only other alternative suggestion is to try small bones from other species, but of course I can’t vouch for the safety of these. Many vets believe that the carbohydrate levels in cats food may be contributing to the development of odontoclastic resorptive lesions but evidence is lacking (mostly because nearly all cats eat high carb diets!). Therefore, without any hope of success, you could try my advice for creating a low carb cat diet as a last resort.

You’ve already done the hard part by identifying an adverse food reaction. There are plenty of restricted diets available at vets that you could add to the other items to make it a healthier diet overall. Otherwise it’s just trial and error which can be bad news for the cat!

Thanks Dave. I agree that the veterinary diets could be made better but with diets like k/d for example, the benefits of prescription foods in kidney disease are well documented. The regular diets I featured, let’s face it, aren’t perfect either but our experience is that they are well-tolerated and provide a good health baseline for most cats. Certainly better than the old days before cat foods!

Thanks Dave. On this subject although I acknowledge that corn can be an allergen I would respectfully disagree. Most data we are aware of implicate animal proteins at least as much as plant proteins. Our experience with food allergies is that they are rare and unpredictable in the extreme.

Corn is a common culprit of allergies, especially if a cat (or dog) has been fed a single brand of food over an extended period. I rotate foods, which I feel is an excellent way of balancing out a diet and avoiding the development of allergies and intolerances.

Chicken necks are a fantastic supplement, I feed one every other day. Very cheap, nutritious, and natural for a cat to eat. I’m also with you on using human grade mince as opposed to pet mince – safer, and in most cases it’s also cheaper.

I look forward to reading more of your articles.

Dave

Our T1 diabetic cat cannot tolerate any carbohydrate and so he is on an extremely low carb diet. A high protein low carb diet is the only thing to help regulate the blood insulin levels.

We have also observed that cats may need to eat a little more without the grains filling up their bellies.