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I wanna ask a question, but I'm not sure, if I should. I don't wanna have it downvoted to oblivion or even deleted. So I figured I'd ask here first. This is what I'd like to ask:

How to convince my cat to eat its enzymatically hydrolysed diet?

The situation

Our oldest cat developed a pretty nasty allergy to almost all foods. So she's given enzymatically hydrolysed cat food. If she eats anything else, she'll quickly get diarrhea (usually the next day) and the skin around her face starts itching badly. If she continues to eat the wrong food, she'll start scratching her eyes and ears until they'll start bleeding. Also she'll start coughing badly.

We've taken her to the vet numerous times and they suggested to either treat her with cortisone until the end or use enzymatically hydrolysed wet cat food. Cortisone works well, but then she's hungry all day and therefore stressed out. The food actually works pretty well, too. That's it, if she's eating it. However she really doesn't like it and eats almost nothing. Usually she gets 3 portions a day of 45 to 50 g each (1.4 to 1.75 oz). Yesterday she didn't even finish one of her servings.

I can understand her: the texture is like pudding and it's pretty sticky. Also the smell isn't good. I wouldn't want to eat it, either. Unfortunately it's the only food she can digest without facing the problems mentioned above.

What we've tried

Dry food

We also got us a bag of enzymatically hydrolysed dry food, since she loves to run after pellets thrown across our apartment. Unfortunately even a small serving leads to diarrhea almost immediately (upon the next litter box session).

Mixing it with water

We mixed and mashed it with water. This changes the texture of the food. It worked for a few days, but she eventually figured it out and now refuses to eat this.

Mixing it with other hypoallergenic food

I've mixed the hydrolysed food with some other hypoallergenic food (she got that before) at the ratio of 8:1. Unfortunately there was diarrhea in the litter box afterwards.

The question

What else can we do to make that food palatable to her?

Would that make a good question or will it be ruled out, e.g. for being too broad or opinion-based? Or attracting many different, equally valid answers?

Bonus question: Is this even the correct place to ask?

2 Answers 2

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This is absolutely a fine question to ask on Pets. Please ask it over on the main site.

I'm sorry that you are worried that your question may be downvoted, but I highly doubt this will be. Question will not be deleted unless there are serious problems.

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I think this question fits in the site guidelines and personally I will support it with an upvote if you post it, I think it's really interesting. It also shows a lot of effort on your side, as evidenced by you having listed many approaches you have tried so far. I don't think it would even remotely qualify as opinion-based or too broad; it actually sounds quite specialized. I'd only be worried that it might turn out to require highly specialized knowledge to be reliably answered, and thus it might just be left unanswered if nobody on the site has that knowledge - but I'd say that's the worst that could happen, I cannot see how this could attract any reasonable downvotes.

And yes, Pets Meta is the right place to ask whether a question is on-topic, you could also ask that on the Litter Box.

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