Pure Corporate Greed

Allergies

My cat has an allergy to tuna, but won't eat cat food that has meat in it - yep, he'll only eat cat food that contains fish. The vet told me once when I took him in so they could examine the eczema-like sores on his back that he was a 'fishy cat' with 'an allergy to tuna'. I asked the vet, how is that possible? Surely if he's a fishy cat he wouldn't be allergic to tuna? She simply shrugged and told me that 'it's inconvenient, sure; but completely possible.'

Cat Food

Thus began my hunt for cat food that he could eat without looking like he was suffering from a bad case of measles. I found a brand - Dine Melting Soups - and it had three sachets that he could eat without having his allergies triggered:

(I couldn't find a picture for the third; it was purple and also contained Bonito).

My cat and I were blissfully happy for about two years - he no longer chewed his skin every other minute, and I had something I could safely feed him. The sachets cost $1 each and he ate two a day - $14 a week, $28 a fortnight, $56 a month = $672 a year.

Of course, this was too good to last...

Product Changes

For a while they ditched the purple sachet altogether, and I was fine with that - so long as I still had trusty old green and yellow.

Unfortunately, though, they decided to change green and yellow; and sadly, they changed both the main ingredient and the packaging:

I'm not sure why the people over at Mars or Dine or Unilever or whoever it is that owns this subsidiary decided to make changes, but they did, and guess what?

My cat is suffering again:

It was hard to take this picture; he didn't want me to touch the area and thus he wasn't exactly sitting still. 

This doesn't really do the sores justice. They are red, weepy and obviously hurt him a lot. He chews at them all the time. I really feel bad for him. Obviously I have to stop buying this evil cat food. It's about his health more than anything else. 

The culprit, of course, was the TUNA.

Is tuna cheaper than bonito? 

Probably.

Are they trying to move from being a fancy, out of the ordinary 'treat' to a more normalised, every-day cat food? 

Certainly looks like it going by the packaging.

Have they just lost $672 a year? 

Abso-freaking-lutely.

Final Word

I can't believe they did this to me and my cat! I'm absolutely certain the motivation was nothing but pure corporate greed. They were already making a nice profit - $1 a pop is way too expensive for the tiny amount of cat food that was in that sachet - but was that enough for them? No! They had to make MORE profit!

I can tell it was some marketers idea too - you can see it by the change in packaging! I can just imagine them sitting around an oddly shaped conference desk in their sharp, dark corporate suits discussing how best to screw over the consumer.

"Well, consumers are idiots," says the woman with the Dolce Gabana glasses. "So we can pretty much do whatever we like and they'll continue to buy this product. We have their loyalty now." She smirks. The young man with the greasy hair scoffs. "How about we change the Bonito over to Tuna? We'll save thousands a year. Think of it."
"But the Bonito is what makes it so damn fancy," says the middle-aged man in the white suit. "If we change that, then we have to change our whole strategy. We can no longer be 'fancy pants cat food for lonely women who treat their cats like children'."
"Hmmm," (collective).
"I already told you," says Dolce Gabana. "We'll just stop being fancy. We already have them, like I said. They're morons with LOYALTY. We can do WHATEVER WE WANT now. They just have to sit there and TAKE IT."

Well, goodbye Dine. It was a nice relationship while it lasted. But now I tell you what I tell the men I date: you treat me like crap, I walk.

Here's me walking away...

In case you're wondering, I already have an alternative (and it's even more expensive - thanks, Dine!):