Introducing Kitten to Adult food

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I am trying to introduce my 11 month old to adult cat food. He eats Nutro Max kitten and loves it so I bought the adult variety and started to mix it up with the kitten but had an adverse reaction, actually needed a bath afterwards... The 2 products seems to contain the same ingredients, only the adult variety has less fat & protein and is larger in size. I called Nutro and they told me about the 30/70 - 50/50 and 70/30 ratio and said to keep him at 50/50 for 2 days as he is probably adjusting to the new food. Is this sound advice?

-- Anonymous, July 27, 1999

Answers

My advice would be to take it very, very slowly! Afterall, what is the rush to introduce him to adult food? It won't hurt him if he is on kitten food for a bit longer, given that he is 11 months old now. There is no absolute requirement to switch him to adult food, just because he is approaching a year old! IF he is now doing OK on the 50/50 plan, you may want to very slowly increase the adult formula (maybe by only 5% every few days), until he is up to 100% adult. However, if he is having tummy upsets with the 50/50 formula, drop him right back to almost all kitten food then slowly add the adult food, maybe only a few pieces each day until you are up to the 50/50. With a longhair cat, the last thing you want are messy digestive problems and more baths! Take it slow and easy! Just think what it would be like if YOU were used to eating bland food and then moved to, say, a Mexican diet!! Good luck.

-- Anonymous, July 28, 1999

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