Transition Your Cats to a Healthier Diet with Royal Canin

This post is brought to you by Royal Canin Cat Food. All opinions are our own.

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Feeding your cats a high-quality diet is vital to ensuring that they live a long, healthy life. Finding the best dry cat food for mature cats can be a bit of a challenge at times! One of my cats, Mally, just celebrated her 17th birthday! There was a point, though, where we weren’t sure she was going to make it past 12. About five years ago, Mally developed diabetes. The interesting thing about cats is that they can actually go into complete remission, as if they never had it at all. We had to test her blood sugar several times a day and give her insulin when needed. After about six months, she went into remission and has been fine since.

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Mally, age 17

One thing we learned when Mally had diabetes is how important it is to feed your cats the right cat food. Up until then, we were feeding our cats inexpensive supermarket brand dry foods and giving them wet food more as a treat. After a significant amount of research, we learned that this really isn’t the best diet for cats.

When Mal had diabetes, she had to be on a strictly wet food diet. We had three other cats at the time (two have passed on since then), so we had to transition everyone to a wet food diet. After her remission, we kept to primarily wet food, with dry food as a supplement. I think that has been part of the key to Mal’s longevity. Well, that and the fact that she is an indoor cat.

We are currently trying out Royal Canin Cat food for senior cats for Mal and my other indoor cat, Prue (age 10).  I was excited to get started on this campaign because I’ve seen Royal Canin in stores and knew they were a high-quality brand. The first week was spent transitioning the cats to their new diet. This is important because suddenly switching cat foods can cause digestive issues.

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Prue, age 10

Royal Canin: The Transition Period

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The transition period is spent phasing out your cat’s prior food and switching in the new food. In this case, we were switching Mal over to the Royal Canin Aging 12+ wet food and dry, and Prue over to the Royal Canin Mature 27 dry food.  Royal Canin has an easy transitioning guide on their website, so I followed that. The steps to transition your cat to a new diet are:

Days 1 and 2: Feed your cat 75% old diet and 25% new diet.

Days 3 and 4: Go 50/50 with the old and new.

Days 5 and 6: 75% new diet, 25% old food.

Days 7 and beyond: 100% new diet.

Following this plan helps ensure that your kitty does experience any nasty stomach upset. It also helps your cat develop a taste for the new food. Anyone with cats knows how very finicky they can be! I’ve had my cats turn their nose up at perfectly good food before just because they didn’t like the flavor. I guess I can’t blame them; I turn my nose up at perfectly good food for the same reason!

My biggest worry was that my cats wouldn’t like the new food. That’s always a possibility with them. Mal isn’t quite as picky as Prue, but she can be a challenge at times. Fortunately, they both liked their new Royal Canin food.

Now that my cats are transitioned to the best dry cat food for senior cats, I’m paying attention to see how the food affects them. I’m hoping to see a little more energy out of Mally. I understand that she’s an old lady cat, but I would like to see her play a little more! She needs to burn off some energy. She sleeps all day and meows at me all night! With Prue, she’s pretty energetic already. I think the benefits of the Indoor Mature 27 diet will be more internal. Prue lost her fangs a few years back and she needs something a little more tender than the dry food we were using in the past. I love that Indoor Mature 27 has softer kibble. Of course, I’d also love to see (or rather smell) a difference in the litter boxes! Or perhaps that should be I’d rather not smell the difference. Cutting down on litter odor would be a great plus!

Check back next week to see how we’re doing on the Royal Canin diet and learn more details about this great high-quality cat food! In the mean time, head over to Royal Canin to see what great nutrition they can offer your furrier family members. Connect with Royal Canin on Twitter and Facebook to keep up with news and offers!

13 thoughts on “Transition Your Cats to a Healthier Diet with Royal Canin”

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  2. We just got a kitten and I was torn on wet or dry foot. My cat who lived 22 years switched from dry to wet and lived a long and healthy life. Kitty eats both right now.

  3. Cute kitties!!! We don’t have pets right now (our rental agreement doesn’t allow it) but someday when we have our own place, our girls would love to have a cat (and a dog). When they do, we’ll be looking for good cat food! :)

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