My 14-year-old healthy cat will not eat wet food. She will occasionally eat a very few bites of chicken or venison, if it is shredded very finely, or a few tsps. of milk or broth. There is no way to tell her Meow Mix is not food. As far as she is concerned, it is the only food, outside of a mouse or a baby rabbit. My vet suggested baby food ground chicken. Kitty was not impressed. The vets’ cats adore it.
I’m not a cat person (by that I mean I have never owned a cat other than one we had when I was a kid and she was not really mine, just the family cat) so I’m not an expert on them by any means. But I remember learning, when I worked for a vet, that cats can get very specific about things like food shape. That’s why cat food companies make their foods in certain shapes, so that the cat will learn to like that shape and then be more difficult to change to another food. Now, this may or may not be true, but it’s what I was taught. For some reason I thought it was interesting enough to recall. I do know cats can be finicky enough that they will starve to death simply because they do not like what they are being fed. Dogs on the other hand WILL eat, eventually even if they are not crazy about what you are feeding them. The old saying is, no dog ever starved to death in front of a full bowl of food (unless of course they were sick).
Oh, one other thing we always tried with sick animals or ones that were refusing food that sometimes worked was warming the food a little. Sometimes it helped to get them to eat. (I don’t mean HOT of course, just warm).