Winning a dry-food loyalist over to wet food is a campaign of tiny, patient offers, not a swap. The dry bowl stays exactly as it was — that is the first rule — and alongside it, at each meal, set down a separate little saucer holding no more than a spoonful of wet food, briefly warmed so its aroma can do the persuading. Take the saucer away again after about an hour, eaten or not: you are not replacing her diet, you are auditioning an addition to it, in portions small enough that refusal costs her nothing.
Warmth matters because cats judge food largely by aroma, and cold wet food straight from the fridge smells of almost nothing. Serve the trial on a flat saucer rather than in a deep bowl, so she can approach the smell at her own angle without her whiskers folding against the sides. A rejected offering that sits out for hours teaches her the new food is stale as well as strange, which is one more reason to lift it promptly and try again tomorrow.
Texture Usually Decides Before Flavour Does
Many dry-food-only cats refuse chunks and shreds for weeks yet accept a smooth pate, because the texture is closer to licking than to chewing something unfamiliar. Work through formats one at a time — pate, then finely mashed food with a little warm water, then minced — and give each format several calm exposures before judging it, since acceptance often arrives on the fourth or fifth offering of a food she walked away from the first time. A smear of wet food on a lick mat, or a thin film mixed through a small portion of her dry food, lets the taste arrive gradually without changing the meal she trusts.
Keep notes on what she tried, in which texture, and how far she got: sniffed, licked, ate a teaspoon, ate half. Without the note, every helper in the house restarts from the flavour she has already refused twice.
Guardrails While You Persuade
Never let her go hungry in the name of progress. Cats who miss meals entirely can become unwell surprisingly fast, so her dry food remains available in full throughout the transition, and the wet share only grows as she eats it willingly over weeks. Weigh her monthly during the change; a cat who is losing weight while you experiment needs the experiment paused, not intensified.
If she refuses every format you offer, or her appetite for the dry food she used to love also fades, talk to your vet before pushing further — a sudden change in a cat who has always eaten well is a health question, not stubbornness.
Who Offers What, and When
The transition breaks down when each person improvises: one helper tries gravy chunks at breakfast, another offers cold pate at night, and nobody knows which texture got the lick yesterday. Agree one format at a time, one offer per meal, and record the result the same day. Put the daily trial into Care Teams in KinsLe, where the helper on duty is notified of their turn and a timestamp against the finished task shows exactly when each wet-food offer was made.