We feed Wintermuse Nature's Balance Limited Ingredient Diet for the most part. She gets Duck and Pea dry food and 2 cans of wet food a day. To be honest, she doesn't eat them all. She's only 7 lbs and probably full grown by now. Very slender girl.
In addition, as a treat, we give her Soulstice shreds. She
loves the chicken shreds, but they give her gas, and it doesn't seem like much food in the can. However, when she gets the shreds, she cleans her plate, so I guess she ends up eating the same amount no matter what.
Gas and digestion is the reason we put her on LID (Limited Ingredient Diet). We originally fed her Pro Plan and Fancy Feast as per our breeder Evelyn's recommendation. Kitten's stomachs are very sensitive, so you should stick with whatever they were eating before you got them and not worry if they have some stomach problems the first days in your house. However, weeks went by and she still had gas and veryyyy loose stools. We took her to the vet, and they ruled out parasites. We switched her to LID, and it helped a lot.
However, even though she's now an adult cat with a mature digestive system, she still gets gas and loose stools. When we give her Soulstice as a treat, we can smell the consequences soon after. I've read on Petco.com that other people have this problem with Soulstice. However, if we deign to give her a tiny bit of our human food, the same problem results. She just has a super delicate system. I'm not sure if this is her or Egyptian Maus in general. Let me know!
Despite these consequences, and her thin appearance, she is a
scavenger. I've seen many people note that Maus love their food, and she is no exception! She wants whatever we are having - the mere act of seeing us put food in our mouths invokes her desire. (In fact, I use this in training her to do tricks.) However, once she gets what we have, she sniffs it and might not want it. She won't swallow things if she doesn't think they smell delicious. She'll just bat them around like toys. She'll also stare longingly at our dinner from her spot near the table, but she won't try to take it.
She's so adorable at dinner. We have a table with two chairs. She likes to sit in our laps while we eat and stare at our forks. She looks sooo sad and paws at the fork but never actually touches it. She wants it so badly but knows better. We recently put a tv-dinner table next to the dining room table so that Lou had a place to put pizza boxes, and I had an ironing surface. It's her new perch for dinner.
She'll sit on her little table and watch us eat. She'll reach out her paw longingly, but then drop it. She'll start to step on the table, but she knows she's not allowed, so her little paw wavers above it, then retracts. It's sooo cute. She wants so bad to be a good kitty, but watching us eat makes her so hungry! It's endearing to know she understands the rules and that they override her instincts.
Here is her patiently waiting at dinner:
