Unabashed bribery is sometimes a necessity when trying to entice a cat over to a new diet. Employing this bit of culinary trickery can mean the difference between abandoning your effort to serve a healthier diet (out of frustration that your cat won’t eat it) and actual success making the transition. Bribe foods should be used as sparingly and briefly as possible – with their use steadily decreased and eventually stopped altogether so as not to create a new addiction.
The idea is to sprinkle a small bit of flavor enticement on top of the new food; a sampling of bribes that many report success with include:
- Dried/shaved bonito flakes;
- Purina Fortiflora – a probiotic (we’re using it here for its flavor properties in this instance) that’s formulated using animal digest, the same oh-so-tasty-to-cats ingredient that pet food manufacturers coat dry food with to make it palatable;
- A small bit of kitty’s soon-to-be-former dry kibble crushed in a mortar and pestle or clean coffee bean grinder sprinkled on the food.
Bear in mind that bribery is NOT always a necessity. Some of our purring friends dive right in to a diet with a new texture or flavor with no fuss and never look back. Still if you’re gearing up to change the diet, it’s a good idea to have one or more of these tricks up your sleeve at the ready.
