I think Phoebe is exposing herself as a finicky eater.
After her surgery, she had a bit of an adjustment as she switched completely to wet food, and healed from all that trauma. She was finally eating all her wet food, morning and night (most days, which was still an improvement).
Then I took her in for the ear thing, and the vet said she'd lost half a pound. He wasn't concerned; he just figured she'd finally adjusted her appetite after the surgery, and that I should increase her to 1 1/2 cans of wet food in the morning and at night, and then weigh her again in a month.
Well of course, now she barely touches her wet food most days. I figured at first it was just the trauma from another vet visit and then 10 days of ear drops. But I swear, now she's just doing it to spite me.
Okay, not really. I thought maybe she's just tired of Fancy Feast, even the tuna flavor, which seemed to be her favorite. So I've tried other brands, and other flavors. Still the same - some days she'll do well, others it looks like she barely touches it.
Not wanting her to starve, I'll put out some dry food, and she eats that right away. So it doesn't sound like her appetite is the problem, it just seems like she's finicky about the wet food.
I'm hoping that's the case, that her appetite is actually fine and it's just that she's trying my patience, and that I don't have to take her in for a set of freaking tests or anything to figure out why she won't eat - because she will eat, just the dry food, and I don't want to resort to just giving her that because all I hear about now is how bad dry food is for cats (even though growing up that's all our cats ate, and they lived wonderfully long and fulfilling lives - but that's an annoyance for another time.
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What do you cat experts think?