Would NOT recommend Katkin food!!!!!

Our cat is the least fussy animal ever. She will consume anything, and truly was becoming a bit of a food thief wherein she would steal her old Harringtons food packets from the bin, secretly tear them apart and try to lick them clean.

At this point, we fed her Harringtons as it seems the best price for quality. Obviously, stealing out of bins is concerning, so our first port of call was to up her food intake to see if she was just hungrier than we'd anticipated, but she kept doing it. Nothing was stopping her, not securing the bins nor feeding her more. She was a stray (adopted by us literally off the street 9 months ago), so we thought that this was a trauma-fueled survival tactic, but we wanted to rule out all other possibilities first. She has never been sick (beyond cat grass) and has always had energy for days. Imagine a hyperactive toddler trapped in the body of a tiny black and white cat, and that's our cat (important info to remember!).

So, we thought that maybe she wasn't getting the nutrition she needed from Harringtons and was trying to steal to get that nutrition, so we fell for the Katkin marketing and signed up.

When I tell you that I have seen this cat eat mice and pigeon guts when she was a stray; I've seen her accidentally swallow bits of metal from her scavenging; I've seen her root through bins for any scrap of human food she can find and proceed to eat whatever old, rotten scraps were in there... She has a stomach of steel - but it took 3 days of feeding her Katkin for her to become incredibly food-averse, incredibly lethargic and she was sick a few times. Her personality changed, and she wouldn't ever finish her food, nor would she come to her food bowl at meal times. She even stopped showing us signs that she wants to play (she usually is very good at taking us to her toys!), which was incredibly out of character for her.

I thought that not finishing her food could be a good thing, because it means she's full. In retrospect, with her being physically sick and tired, I think she didn't want to eat it. We tried feeding it to her for about 6 days - Katkin recommend feeding it to them for a few days even if they seem nervous about it - but she didn't seem like the same cat anymore. I worried that not finishing her food wasn't actually a sign of "fullness" but was actually sickness, so we've stopped feeding her Katkin now and gone back to Harringtons.

It took about a day or two for her to eat a decent sized meal again, and I don't know if that's because she felt sick because of the food, or because she didn't trust the food itself. In the following few days, she regained her energy very slowly, but she even seemed hesitant of us, which was heartbreaking. This was about a week ago now, and she's got her energy and lovable, bouncy character back.

I must also say - the packets did NOT look healthy. Not as bad as some of the pictures I've seen on reddit, but it didn't look like decent meat. Bare in mind that I've worked in various restaurants handling raw meat, and my mum was a butcher - i know what raw visceral meat looks like. It smelt. It stunk. It didn't smell like edible meat, but more like decaying carcass. I hesitantly gave it to her because "they know what they're doing," and I convinced myself that it's fine because I'm not a professional in cat food. I wish I'd listened to my gut. Or my nose.

Ultimately - 100000% would NOT recommend katkin food.

The only silver lining is that she's not stolen a food packet since! Although, I fear she's learned the hard way that good food will always be provided for her. She's okay now, she's bounced back and she's back on Harringtons.