Having trouble working out my cats issue with her food.

She eats either Felix or Whiskers pouches mixed with dry food (60/40 mix).
She's not a big eater anyway, she never finishes a portion in one sitting. I mix up the flavours of food so she doesn't get bored but recently she's just getting really fussy - i place the food down and she sniffs then does the foot scraping thing at the side of the bowl and walks away.

Sometimes i change it straight away or sometimes i leave it out a while but more often than not i'm scraping it in the bin and trying again.

I don't think she's unwell as she's very active, she's playing and loving - just her normal self.

Any idea's why she may be suddenly fussy with her food?

Perhaps she doesn't really like it. Mine was a Felix jelly licker and ate dry food too. I got told off at the vets as she put on too much weight and was recommended a diet food. I took her off Felix and give her a small amount of cooked chicken plus the dry Science Diet Lite and she eats everything. No more maggots in the summer and no more stinky food to throw away. My recycle food bin hasn''t been used since I stopped feeding Felix. Recently I bought a tin of Science Diet wet food to see whether she would eat it. First time I put it down she ate it. Next time she had a bit of a lick and hasn't bothered since, so I haven't bought any more. For now, mine is happy with what she gets. I know how difficult it can be. Before the diet, mine went off her food, so I went to the supermarket and bought a sample of everything I could. Tried all and ended up back at the beginning with Felix again. I think in the long run I am saving money. I used to throw more food away than was eaten and although the science diet costs more and I have to buy Tesco value chunky chicken, at least it all gets eaten and I now have a much happier cat who is now back down to the weight she should be.

Ours has always been fussy and particular.
She also seems to go off stuff after a while.

Might be an idea to split the dry and wet food. Ours has dry food available as she wants it in the day - then we'll do a little bit of wet food at night in a separate bowl.

Might help you isolate where the problem lies - if the cat's gone off the wet food and it's mixed in with the dry stuff then it might put them off the dry one as well.

I wouldn't feed a cat Felix or Whiskas.

Try some chicken instead.

That sounds interesting - is the chicken ready cooked or value chicken you cook yourself?

My cat wouldn't touch felix, she literally looked at it then she reversed away from her bowl. I can see why, it foul. Cheap nasty and vile. She loved the kitten Hills science Tuna flavour dry food and when we moved her to Adult version and she wouldn't eat it. Get it online and it's much cheaper. £42 (10 discount) for a large 10kg bag of cat food. a 4 kg bag lasts us well over 3months.

Have you tried decent cat food as opposed to cheap rubbish. Our cat loved Royal Canin Savour Sensation made for fussy cats.

I get our cat Turkey carvery from the deli. She prefers this to boiled chicken breast chunks. This is given as a treat as it doesn't contain much nutrional value in it. She likes tins of salmon and tuna much too. Why bother having a cat and feeding it crap. If I were a cat and someone offered me naff food I too would stick my nose up at it.

My cat well fussy is her in one word so far senior Felix is working apart from when she tries to steal my kittens whiskers food lol however she refuses whiskers adult food !
I noticed you mentioned she scraps side of bowl, do u have more than one cat or pet with access to her food area ? Only because that's her marking her spot and another animal may of been there which makes her nervous (even though she may act normal) . When this has happened I have double cleaned area and food drink bowls and placed snack or meal on bowl with her only there to eat it .
If not a trick I do cause nutkin tends to even look at food but not eat it , is to place a small "new" food so I use small piece of chicken or some dreamies this works for mine about 9/10 times straight away .
Some cats I think like to test how far they can push you lol
Good luck x

I buy the Tesco Value Chunky Chicken pieces - pre cooked and plain - not the flavoured ones. Cost around £1.80 per packet which lasts almost a week. Since I have been giving her that, if I cook a chicken on a Sunday, she turns her nose up at it! I have tried other supermarket versions, but I think the Tesco one has more water content or something.

http://www.tesco.com/groceries/Produ.../?id=264786016

Whilst i appreciate your post - your belittling delivery leaves a lot to be desired. I take exception to your tone - i BOTHER having a cat because i want one and if you feel that Felix is crap then fair enough but don't try to make someone who does use Felix feel stupid for doing so.

Milley is very fussey with her food though even when she was a kitten we bought a bag of fish based dry food which she wouldn't eat. The wet food is very hit and miss she'll eat the pastey like wet food but is not very keen on the other stuff.

My cat is going through a very fussy phase. I even had her at the vets just in case. She's just picky and also a little overweight. She was a stray which I took in and did feed her on Felix and Whiskas initially until she gave the the "wtf is this crap" look and wouldn't touch it. I put her on HiLife Essentials from home bargains which is 50% chicken and she loved that, until once again she got bored. She won't really eat much cooked meat that I prepare for myself but loves to devour raw cut up chicken thighs. She still kills a lot of rats/mice/birds (inc someones pet budgie ). I bought some supplement powder to put on the chicken so she is getting all the right nutrients she needs.

I also buy online now from zooplus and get Animonda Carny and a couple of others. She can still be a little fussy with these but makes more of an effort. She has good dry food to graze on when she wants too. A little trick I use to get her to eat freshly put out food that she has turned her nose up, is to buy some cat-it in a tube and smear the food with that. It's a cat nutrient and looks like marmite. In fact the odd time you can put a small dab of marmite in her food to entice her. It does contain a lot of salt though, but for once in a while, it's fine.

Sorry Miss Dexter I didn't intend to belittle you, I apologise profusely. I often I don't realise what I write comes across differently to other people. It's my poor social skills thing which I think is mild autism related but it's no excusing my reply though. Sorry again.

My cat goes through phases of what she likes so I just buy whatever is on offer that week to keep things mixed up. Sometimes she loves felix, but other times won't touch it - and sometimes she eats the posh stuff, other times not! I gave her some prawns last night and she wolfed them down - I turned my back for a second and they were gone!!!

My cat does the paw-scraping thing too sometimes but I read somewhere that it's instinctive and that it is similar to what they do in the wild when they want to hide their food from other animals. So I took it to mean that he wasn't hungry at that time and he always eats it later on. Maybe if she starts scraping, leave it out for a bit rather than immediately replacing it and see if she goes back and eats it later?

My two would eat anything you put in front of them!!

They get Orijen dry food - 80% meat and no grains

I found my cat is fussy too, whiskas, felix, kitekat, she does't like any of them!

She didn't mind the asda brand but I stumbled across EveryCat by Jollyes, she loves it to bits. Between this and Iams dry food she is in food heaven.

She is always trying to scrape a tthe floor to cover it up too, however it only started recently so maybe its because she likes her food now!

We used to get our cats to clear their plates only if whatever we fed them was slightly warmed, it seems cats like their food the temperature of prey they have killed ! Worked a treat for all 5 of ours.

My cat loves those little individual foil trays of sheba but as it is an expensive way of buying it we give her one for her dinner and then for her breakfast and supper she gets either whiskas, felix or whatever is on offer in the supermarket, at the moment she is on tesco's own brand stuff and she licks the bowl clean. We tend to alternate so she doesn't get bored.

Could it simply be that you have given her something she really likes and she is holding out for that?

One of mine does this regularly. She is spoiled and really holds out until she gets her own way, which she usually does eventually. At the moment all she wants is Gourmet Perle gravy flavours.