Much put out, I went to look for an alternative*. Of course, there's nothing even remotely similar (especially that nice big kibble size), and the packaging is all skewed to appeal to touchy-feely types ("would you feed your pet something you wouldn't eat") or sciency types ("scientifically proven!") or the mainstream (as seen on TV). It really put me off, but I ended up looking more at the touchy-feely stuff, since I'm more inclined to think esatz "pure ingredients" was slightly more believable than "science" that I didn't know the background for. The mainstream stuff I dismissed as the kitty version of junk food. Sure, I would like to live on Cheetoes myself, but for how long would that be? Granted, Dental Diet was a Friskies brand and though not advertised much, would have been found with the mainstream stuff. I purchased small bags of three different possible substitutes and put out a small bowl of each. Interestingly, the one I was slightly favoring is the one they've barely touched. The picture above (taken this morning) is the 12 hour results so far. Top to bottom are the catfoods shown below left to right. Interestingly, the boys seem to like the one with avocado in it. Hmmm!
UPDATE: The results are in. I originally gave them 50 g of each food. At the end of 24 hours, the following amounts remained:
Wellness Indoor Health - 48 g (boys ate 4%)
Blue Buffalo Indoor Health - 17 g (boys ate 66%)
Avoderm Indoor Hairball Care Formula - 9 g (boys ate 82%)
Looks like Avoderm is the clear winner, with Blue Buffalo an acceptable alternative. Wellness got a big "no thank you!" so I'll be dropping that off as a donation for the Cat Care Society.
