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Originally Posted by RandomGemini
Have you considered TikiCat cat food? I tried to feed it to Porter, but we found out pretty fast that Porter is intolerant of fish and almost all of the TikiCat foods contain some form of fish. TikiCat is what Jackson Galaxy recommends as his preferred diet and you can mail order the stuff from Amazon or Petflow by the case.
As far as cats being afraid of outside, I hear you. Porter is also a rescue. My daughter adopted him from the shelter last year. He hates one of my dogs, but not the other. We have no idea why. When we adopted him, Porter had an infected wound in his shoulder that the shelter's vet had been trying to heal. It was from a fight with another cat. He'd lived outside for so long that he has clipped ears from all the cat fights he's been in and we know Porter was a tough customer. Cats don't make it to his age outside unless they are.
Now, Porter will not willingly go outside now that he has experienced the life of a dedicated house cat. He wants nothing to do with it, so the key to keeping his weight down is a process called "catification." Jackson Galaxy, again. He's awesome. He just put a book out about his catification technique. What it is, in a nutshell is designing your interior living space so that your cats have the ability to climb more and burn more calories. It involves using cat trees and putting up shelves on the walls... That sort of thing. It's fun to do and it saves us from the stress of taking Porter out on lead.
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I have not tried that brand.
My cats are not super fond of fish though.
They don't eat my leftover salmon, or ahi, or swordfish.
It's weird.
I'm leaning towards individually tailored meals. The owner of my local store, and vet are helping me map out meal plans, and we're going to try out several different food types.
My oldest cat is a poorly bred flame point Himalayan. Named Mango. He's 14 now, I got him when he was 8. His previous owner was, quite frankly, a coked out drunk.
He was fed a steady diet of cheapest food from the grocery, continuously forgotten outside, and taught to go to the bathroom on towels. Because litter was too expensive.
He'll only accept dry kibble, and maybe a single bite of whatever protein I'm eating. I'd really love to get his weight up a little in his old age. He doesn't like strong meat flavors, and barely grazes wet food.
He refused to be leash trained, but that's ok. His greatest joy is sleeping in the sun in my backyard. And it took over a year to redirect his bathroom attempts to the litter box and not our rugs.
Even now he'd rather wait patiently by the cat door for us to let him in to the litter box, than actually go in himself.
The middle cat is Dio. I found him and his brother in a bush, eyes not even open.
I ended up staking out all day looking for mama cat. I finally decided she wasn't coming. And took them with me. I found mama cat squished on the road about 40 feet away. His brother didn't make it through the week.
He's fully trained, and incredibly intelligent. Which is annoying honestly. When a cat matches your wit.
We go for long walks and runs, and he loves to play. A superb hunter.
He's also huge. Bigger than most of my previous Maine coons. At 30 pounds I think he needs to lose weight. I'm working with my vet to find a good target weight, but we don't agree on how much.
I say he's in need of 5 pounds off, but my vet says only 2 or 3. And that he is not a Maine coon, and I shouldn't try and hold his body to their breed standards lol.
He's much more accepting of actual meats. But his tastes match his hunting instincts, no birds or fish. Red meat always!
The last cat is Dorian. I got him on impulse while buying fish.
He was hiding behind his brothers, trying not to draw attention, while casting sidelong glances of extreme suspicion.
When I was 8 my family adopted an 11 year old cat who had been declawed front and back. She hated everyone vehemently. And turned out to be an incredibly sweet cat. I loved her, and she started lifelong affinity for suspicious angry cats.
So I took Dorian home with me. He was about 10 weeks. He came with gardia, promptly gave it to Dio and Mango.
His early infection left him with a somewhat delicate digestive system, and rancid farts.
He's timid and shy. But once he warms up he's incredibly cuddly. Overbearingly so... And a total dare devil spitfire. Except with the outside world. Leash training is slow, and he jumps into my arms and buries his face into my chest at every little noise. Even when I leave the backdoor open he prefers to sit right on the step and go no further.
He loves fish and bird. But not red meat.
He's also incredibly small. He's not grown past 6 pounds.
His small size and delicate digestion are his major curveballs.
I'm hoping that working with my vet and the stores new options, we can work out an optimal diet routine for all of them.
I was so angry at myself for not doing enough research in the beginning to give them better health and longer lives. 
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