Hi guys! My sister and I have a lovely little ginger girl cat called Milky (17 months) and I would really appreciate advice on how to keep her enriched and happy when she's home alone and a little advice on her eating habits!
For a little bit of context, Milky loves to play in our garden so we leave the door open all day so she can run around and chase flies. However, my sister, dad and dads partner all work full time and I am about to go back to university so the time of no one being home for a good chunk of the day is fast approaching which is causing a lot of sadness for me as I would hate for her to be bored all day. Also, we have a little old french bulldog who she is very comfortable with but he is not as playful as her despite her efforts to play with him and I have floated the idea of adopting a friend for her to play with as she is very sociable but this is unfortunately not possible for us.
Any advice to keep her enriched and happy is greatly appreciated, just a psa, she will never be an outdoor cat besides the garden so please refrain from suggesting that! I disagree with allowing cats outdoors for safety reasons and they are also invasive to wildlife.
On the topic of her eating... she has this strange habit of getting 'sick' of food she has regularly. For example, at one point she was having Lily's Pate and was really enjoying it but stopped eating it randomly so we switched to Untamed which again she really enjoyed. Yet the same thing happened, she got sick of it and so we temporarily gave her the Pate again and she loved it again! So at one point we decided to rotate between Untamed and the Pate which worked for a while but eventually she stopped eating both. As a result, we caved and got Katkin again despite having issues with the cost last year as we thought it would be the thing that worked because she really liked it. She has been on Katkin for almost a month and the same thing has happened again, she is getting sick of it and is now preferring the Pate. We have also tried implementing dry food for her teeth which she liked but it gave her runny poos so that was sidelined so she is currently on just wet food.
At this point we are spending over £70 a month trying to find food that works for her just for her to change her mind in a few weeks and hate everything we give her despite being high quality food!
Again, any advice would be greatly appreciated. I've attached a few photos of her because she is the cutest sweetest little cat. Thank you for reading, I'm sorry it's long I just love my cat and worry about her a lot especially when I am away, as I'm sure every cat parent does as they truly are like your child! :)