Labor of love, eh? Orphans are lucky to have YOU. That is heartbbreaking work, or can be.

I give my cat dry food and water, but by morning he has to have ?fresh? food. He leaves little clinkers in his bowl - partially eaten nuggets of Iams Adult formula - which are a mystery to me. For a cat that only eats dry food he sure can be picky.

I have one that always have to leave a few buts as well. Cats can be strange.

@BitFlipper Mine has gone right of her kibble biscuits and now won't eat most meat chunks - she used to love a casserole as well as fresh meats and ham. Having 3 teeth removed helped for a while but now even giving her the soft loaf type tinned food she often only eats a few mouthfuls and I end up having to throw the rest out because it has gone rotten. A U.K. friend reckons that the tinned food now is so poor in quality that it has an air life at room temperature of 10-15 minutes. One day I soaked her kibble in water to soften it. She ate some but then just left it. She does not appear to be losing weight and what little she eats is being passed out the other end normally but with lesser frequency than old. Mind you she is old.

@Zster Say that again and again! But wouldn't do without her.

@FrayedBear my vet is staunchly opposed to canned food. He says it's full of ground up bones and fish scales. My cat sometimes complains about the crunchies if the sit for too long, so I wet my fingers and stir them up to bring back their "aroma" and he likes them fine.

@BitFlipper Good tip. After writing the above I found that my old girl had been busy overnight and had eaten a fair quantity of kibble biscuits.