Wet food soft stools in cats — what to do next

So wet food didn't agree with your cat's digestion — that's more common than people realise, and it doesn't mean wet food is off the table forever, just that the specific food or the switch was too abrupt. Wet food is genuinely better for most cats: more hydrating, more satiating, closer to what they'd eat naturally. But if it caused soft stools, the protein source or the gravy/jelly formulation is usually the culprit rather than wet food itself. Before I point you in a direction — how old is your cat, do they have any known health conditions, and what wet food did you try when things went wrong?

That tells me a lot. Whiskas and Felix both use a lot of cereal fillers, artificial additives, and thickeners in their gravy variants — those are the usual suspects for soft stools, not the wet format itself. A lot of cats who react badly to those do absolutely fine on a higher-quality wet food with a cleaner ingredient list and no grains or gums. At six, your Tonkinese is in her prime adult years and hydration really does matter for long-term kidney health, so it's worth trying again properly. Can I ask — was she on any particular dry food when things settled down, and did you switch her to wet gradually or go straight in?

Both things were probably contributing — a cold-turkey switch is hard on a cat's gut, and those supermarket foods have ingredients that genuinely don't suit a lot of cats. The good news is you have a solid baseline with the Royal Canin, which means her digestion is working well. My recommendation is to try Lily's Kitchen Chicken & Duck Pâté pouches. It's a proper pâté format rather than gravy — no thickeners or gums, high meat content, grain-free, and the ingredients are genuinely clean. Pâté tends to be easier on sensitive stomachs than jelly or gravy formats because there's no carrageenan or added starch. Introduce it slowly — around 10% wet to 90% dry for the first few days, then build up over two weeks. Most cats who reacted to supermarket wet food handle Lily's Kitchen without any issue at all.

It's widely available on Amazon UK — a box of 8 pouches is typically around £6 to £7, so roughly 80p a pouch, which is noticeably more than supermarket food but not outrageous. If you're keeping her on Royal Canin dry as the base and just adding one or two wet meals a day, a box lasts a decent while. That mixed approach — dry for convenience and dental benefit, wet for hydration and variety — is genuinely what I'd suggest for a healthy six-year-old anyway. You get most of the hydration benefit without the cost of going fully wet. If the Lily's Kitchen pâté works well and you want to expand the range, they do several other proteins so you can rotate and keep things interesting for her.

I think she will — Tonkinese tend to be enthusiastic eaters and the slow transition really does make a difference to the digestive side. If she's still showing soft stools after a proper two-week gradual switch on the Lily's Kitchen, it's worth flagging to your vet just to rule out anything else, but genuinely that's unlikely given her clean bill of health and the clear pattern you've seen. Good luck with her.