Why Is Sheba Beef Cat Food Unavailable

Courtesy Nib Hengstenberg

Barbara Hengstenberg has had problem finding specialty cat food for her pet.

Debra Bishop feels like she hits the lottery every time she finds Purina Friskies Shreds canned true cat nutrient on store shelves for her two rescue cats, iii-year-old siblings Max and Willow.

The chicken- and turkey-flavored meals are hard to notice these days considering of a widespread pet nutrient shortage. Canned cat food — from well-known brands like Fancy Banquet, Friskies and ix Lives — is the nearly elusive. Several factors are responsible, including pandemic-related manufacturing delays, bad weather, and an uptick in pet ownership and pampering.

The situation is reminiscent of final year'due south toilet newspaper sales surge, and the recent shortage of Grape-Nuts that had some fans paying as much as $110 a box through an online black market.

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Bishop says she oftentimes finds herself muttering under her breath equally she searches the shelves for something her cats won't plough their noses upward to.

"I'm conspicuously non the only one wondering what their kittens will eat," says Bishop, 51, who lives in Penfield, New York. "I've shared smiles — under masks — with other shoppers talking to themselves in the true cat food aisle."

'Customers are frustrated'

Chris Anthony, manager at Country Harvest Family Market in Palmerton, Pennsylvania, says his supplier sent an email in February stating that pet food producers Nestlé Purina and J.M. Smucker Co. were experiencing COVID-19-related supply issues. Supplies — including aluminum packaging — were scarce and the companies no longer could meet demand, a situation expected to last at least until May.

"One delivery we'll get some Fancy Feast and diverse flavors, and the next delivery we don't become anything," Anthony says. "Our customers are frustrated. They're tired of the whole thing."

The United Kingdom is also dealing with a national shortage, with 1 supplier now rationing merchandise to be certain as many pets equally possible tin be fed.

Lots of reasons for shortage

Natural pet food manufacturer Freshpet has reported manufacturing shutdowns due to severe winter storms. Other companies are running into bug with labor, machinery and packaging.

"There's and so much that goes into making a production, and if there's a break in whatsoever function of that process, it causes a problem," Anthony says. "Increased demand doesn't help, either."

PetSmart attributes its shortages of wet food, both in stores and online, to people calculation pets to their families throughout the pandemic.

"We are committed to doing all we tin to help pet parents feed and care for their pets, and are actively working with our manufacturing and shipping partners to ensure supply is increased to better meet the current need," says Erin Gray, PetSmart's senior managing director of corporate communications.

The aforementioned diet is necessary for some

For Frosty, a rescue true cat who has belonged to Barbara Hengstenberg and her married man, Nib, for vii years now, eating the same diet is of import for his astringent gastrointestinal bug.

Hengstenberg, 59, said she was nervous when she couldn't find Frosty'southward preferred 9 Lives Meaty Paté Super Supper canned food. Luckily, he weathered a couple of days with a substitute make better than expected. Hengstenberg, of Carry Creek, Northward Carolina, now stocks upwards on his usual fare on the rare occasions she finds it. (He eats in his own room, congenital specifically for him with a tiled alcove for the litter box, wooden cabinets and counters, and cat-themed artwork.)

"We don't take children, so our pets have always been very, very special to us," she says.

A long search ends successfully

Not everyone is noticing the scarcity.

"I've seen it on the internet, but we've got cat food out the wazoo hither," says 1 clerk at Nashville Pet Products in Nashville, Tennessee.

But for those like David Saltz, 49, of Auburn, Massachusetts, searching for Fancy Feast's Classic Tender Beef Paté has been a tall order. He has two cats, and the older one, Tiger, is "very picky." In the commencement of his search he scoured Google and every possible brick-and-mortar store — from pet stores to large-box and dollar stores — inside fifty miles, all with no luck.

"I tried literally every other diverseness of soft canned true cat nutrient in the store — including a few cans of some mode overpriced, niche, microbrew, small-batch, all-natural, wild-creature-canonical, non-GMO, grass-fed (did I mention ridiculously overpriced?) canned food," Saltz says. "Almost all were turned down. Just occasionally would she eat a bit of a particular flavor, and I would go buy more of that kind, but she was having none of it."

Saltz even posted a plea on Reddit. When someone in the thread noted that Chewy.com had the food dorsum in stock, he immediately ordered a case. The next day, when he went back to the site to guild more, information technology was sold out again.

Finally, a few weeks ago, Saltz found the favored Fancy Feast on Amazon. He ordered two cases and signed upwardly for automatic deliveries every ii weeks. He besides fix upward an alert on Chewy.com.

"Tiger is happy again," he says.

Robin L. Flanigan is a contributing author who covers mental health, didactics and human-involvement stories for several national publications. A one-time reporter for several daily newspapers, her piece of work has also appeared in People, The states Today and Education Week. She is the author of the children'southward book M is for Mindful.

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Source: https://www.aarp.org/home-family/friends-family/info-2021/cat-food-shortage.html

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