Kitten food.

Sorry I've read through the discriptions of the different forums and I'm not exactly sure which one this should go on so I'm going to give it a go here since the discription said somethign to do with kittens.

My 10 week old kitten is ALWAYS hungry. When ever we go into the kitchen he runs in like he's been starved for days.

He's eating about 2 pouches of kitten food (plus biscuits) a day and would easily eat more if we would give it to him. My mum gives our year old cats (back at home) 2 pouches a day also.

If he is hungry then I don't want to deprive him food but I also don't want to make him ill by giving him too much food and making him fat. This is my first time caring for a cat away from home and I want to do it all right.

How much food should I give him? The box says to give at the most 2 pouches a day and 30g of buscuits. He easily eats that, I wouldn't doubt he could eat another pouch.

By pouch, do you mean a pouch of wet food? If so, maybe you should try giving him more dry food and less wet food. If he's anything like my kitten, then he'll keep eating wet food til you stop him, lol. Wet food to cats is like candy to kids. :\\

I always free-feed all my cats and have no problems with them getting overweight or anything. Maybe you should try giving him 24 hour access to dry food and just give him wet food as a treat rather then a main course.

Hope that helps.

Oh yeah, I could be wrong, but if I remember correctly, you should feed kittens less food, more often. So, if you feed your adult cats 1 pouch 2 twice a day, then you should feed your kitten about 1/2-3/4 of a pouch 4 times a day.

I could be wrong, but I do believe that's how it's supposed to be. I'm sure if you read the container your cat food came in, it will tell you how much/how often to feed your kitten.

Originally Posted by TortieBaby

Oh yeah, I could be wrong, but if I remember correctly, you should feed kittens less food, more often. So, if you feed your adult cats 1 pouch 2 twice a day, then you should feed your kitten about 1/2-3/4 of a pouch 4 times a day.

I could be wrong, but I do believe that's how it's supposed to be. I'm sure if you read the container your cat food came in, it will tell you how much/how often to feed your kitten.

Click to expand...

The box says that they're to have up to 2 packets in 4/5 meals a day and thats what I'm trying to do. I'm at home at the moment so there is no problem doing that. But we've been easily doing two packets (plus the dry food which he eats around) and every time we go near the kitchen he runs in crying like we're starving him to death! I don't know, I don't want to make him fat so I'll stick to what it says on the pack but I just really want to check if I should be giving him more of if he's just being a bit of a pig! lol

Well, if I call my cats for wet food(I just say, "Here kitty kitty kitties!") they will all act like their starving to death and it's the end of the world.

So, maybe it's just that your little kitty REALLY likes his wetfood and every time you go to the kitchen he thinks he's going to get wet food.

hi congrats on the new kitty
i always free feed my cats ( by that i mean leave out a dish of dry all the time)a good dry food. make sure the first ingredient is a meat ( not ex.. chicken by product or chicken meal) but it should just say chicken. also just give him or her one can of wet per day with the dry. as others have said the wet is more of a treat and the kitten like a child with candy will eat as much as she can. hope this helps and good luck with your new kitty

Yes--do some research on good foods for your kitty. Ours were fed crap for their first years out of ignorance, and I still feel terrible.

Personally, I'm not an advocate of free-feeding, ESPECIALLY if you have a hungry little cat. That's how ours got extremely overweight. (We have a very greedy food-monger over here.) If you have cats that do fine at determining how much they need, and can choose what to eat on their own, then it's fine. Mine can't seem to practice that sort of judgment.

Feel his sides. Can you feel his ribs, or is there a cushion of fat? If there's a fatty cushion and you can't easily feel them, it's time to cut down on the food. If you can feel his backbones or see his ribs/etc, he is way too skinny, and needs as much food as he can eat. Kittens are constantly growing.. so he's probably not overweight. If he's underweight, I'd say give him as much as he wants, and if he's normal then keep at whatever you're doing.



As for the food you're feeding... as a previous poster said, get to know your ingredient labels. You don't want anything with "by-products" in it, and avoid grains if you can. Avoid generic terms like "animal" or "Fish" or "poultry" or just a specific body part that doesn't say what animal it came from. Generic things like that are almost always lower quality, and if it's labeled "animal _____" it can legall have any animal in it. Avoid things with added salts and flavorings if you can--they're as good for your kitty as they are for you. BHA, BHT, ethoxyquin, and menadione are also poisons commonly put in pet foods to avoid. Do a little google of them, and you'll find out exactly why you don't want them in your kitty's food!

Good luck!

Hi,
congrats on the kitten! I'm also raising a couple of kittens for the first time (so I'm not an expert by any means).

I have heard that you should pretty much feed kittens as much as they will eat and I'm trying to give mine about 50/50 wet and dry food at the moment.

I'd suggust a couple of things, as stated in the post above this one, make sure that the foods you are feeding have good meat ingredients listed first, and try not to feed foods that use animal-by-products or chicken-by-products, (or at least don't list them very highly in the ingredient order). You also want to avoid grains (esp. corn and white rice) as much as possible, so if you have a choice between a food that lists three meats first, then a grain (i.e. brown rice) that will be better than a food that lists, say, one meat then "ground yellow corn" or "ground yellow corn" first, etc.

You might want to try a pate-style wet food (canned) as these seem to have more "meat" and less "liquid" (or at least they mix it up better). You can buy in fairly big cans (5.5oz, some have up to 13oz I've heard). You can also segment the can into 1/6th, 1/4th, etc and see how much he will eat at a time.

Also, are the pouches you are feeding specifically kitten food? If so, great, if not, some foods say that they will work for both kittens and adults. The key is how much % of protein and fat they list...The higher, the better in both reguards (esp. for kittens). You also want as low of an ash content as possible. With dry food, you can add up the percentages of all the ingredients and subtract that from 100% to get the amount of carbohydrates in the food...you want that percentage to be as low as possible too. I think you have to do some other math for wet food because of the water content.

HTH,
Art

Thank you everyone for your advice. Thanks to reading this we've decided not to give Jake TOO much food.

The packets of kitten food that we have (good quality stuff) say up to 2 pouches a day (we're not using tinned food, i've no idea why, just a habbit from living at home I guess) So this is how we've been doing it for the past two days and I'd appretiate some comments on this if thats ok just so we can check if we are doing this right.

Half a pouch with fresh water and some biscuits at 5:30 (when my boyfriend gets up)

Another half pouch around 11 or 12 (or whenever I get my fat ass out of bed hehe)

I'll give him some biscuits around 3ish if he's crying for them (which means if i dare go in the kitchen for a drink)

Another half pouch at around 4 or 5 with some fresh water and a few biscuits

and then

Another half pouch before bed (so around 11)

Granted everytime I go in there Jake will come in there and cry at me like he's starving to death but I've noticed now that he'll even do that when he's got WET kitty food left over!

Just wanted to check that routine will be ok for one so young pleasE?