more feeding questions

my tabbies

Ok my question tho simple is a tuff one....... i have 3 cats, 2 are finicky eaters who nibble, and are quite slim..... the 3rd is a lil piggie, how do i feed them? any ideas?

p.s. the 3rd cat the lil piggie mallie, needs to lose weight, while my others need to add a bit...

I would feed the lighter ones separatly from your other one. That way they would get more without the other one also getting more. You could give the one needing to lose weight a little treat so he won't feel left out entirely. Good luck!

thanks for the ideas.... tho i have created a problem for myself, u see my two older (thinner ones) have never had a feeding time, they eat whenever... im wondering since mallie (the chub) was adopted from the spca and housed in a foster home if she had to compete to get the food, and now she thinks she needs to gobble all of it up?

Ah....such a common problem!!! It's weird, in the wild, cats do not "graze", they eat a meal and then that's it until they catch something else. But domestication changes things. I know many recommend separate or timed feedings, but I know that can't work for many - including me.

I had a similar issue when I had an adult and a kitten. My adult was abused and neglected and she will freak out if you mess with her food. If she has a feeding time, she will gorge so much she vomits. If you limit her food in any way she will do this. I also tried starting them on a raw diet, and nope. As raw diets require you to feed at certain times (who wants to leave a bunch of raw meat lying around?), it just didn't work. She doesn't like you to decide when she eats. She has the issue like you described in your last post as well - she had an issue with thinking she needed to eat as much as she could in case later I stopped feeding her or someone else would eat it. I tried limiting her food but that made it worse. Eventually what I did was put so much out she couldn't possibly eat it. I put tons of bowls out where she normally ate and a bowl downstairs near their litter area and bowls in their playroom. I overwhelmed her with food, and I think maybe that, coupled with time (we've had her for years and she has never gone without food) finally sunk into her brain that she was not going to ever starve here.

What food are you feeding them now? How old are they all, and any health issues other than the 2 needing to gain and the one needing to lose? What sort of exercise do they all get? It would benefit them all - the chub would get the needed exercise and burn more calories while in theory the thin ones would also gain health benefits and most likely also get an increase in appetite. So many things could be going on - ie the chub eating out of boredom, and the thinner ones not eating enough out of lethargy. Or not being able to get to the bowl cause the chub is always at it LOL.

For us, what worked was moving to a high quality adult food. It seems to satisfy my adult "binger" faster than other foods and it provides a high level of nutrition to both cats. They also both get lots of exercise. We still free feed but I'm not having the issues I was on other foods. My theory on that is that Poppy the binger was receiving some signal in her body that there was something nutritionally she needed more of, which was why she ate so much. I find that this denser, more nutritious food has worked wonders on them.

They are eating Natural Balance which is available at Petco. There are a lot of great foods out there on the market, depending on what is available to you and other factors.

Hope my rambling made some sense and is of some help!

yes thanks so much... many ideas... i feed them dry kit and kaboodle.. ( i just fill the bowl) and then at night they get canned food, im thinking the canned food should be cut back, they get plenty of exercise playing and running, the thinner ones, micah is 2 and myah is 1 yr old ... Mallie the chubby one is 7 months, she was extremely thin as a younger kitten,
I think the problem is that micah and myah, eat a few bites of the canned food, then throughout the nite Maliie cleans up the leftovers...does the xtra weight come from free feeding the dry food or the additon of the canned food?

Canned food generally helps put ON more weight, then dry food.
You can try to stop the free feeding, just for now, give them all meals in the morning with dry food, and one more time in the evening. Make sure you are feeding them the appropriate amounts for their size and activity level. Let them eat for about 15 minutes, if they walk away from their food like they are done, pick up any remaining food and put it away.

Some animals who only have the chance to eat at certain times of the day will take advantage of that, and will learn to eat when it is offered to them, and all of it.

Your picky eaters also might not like the food. Perhaps you could try another brand, a better more healthy brand? There are many recommendations we could give you here for that. The cats could get fuller faster, need to eat less, and just all around could get healthier.

Cats under one year should be eating kitten food, adult cats should be fed adult food.

Offer your thin cats a teaspoon of wet food every day, if they finish that teaspoon, then give them more. As for your fatter cat, just feed him dry kibble most the time, you can of course give him occasional treats.

From the photos shown on your site, your cats all look to be a normal weights.

thank you AngelzOO... for all the great info.. well the kitten is the fat one lol, i had her on kitten food then switched when she started getting so chubby, i will try to post a new pic of her cuz shes bigger than both the others now... what dry food do u recommend?

http://www.geocities.com/my_tabbies/mallie.html

Curly: This is from a previous post I made. I'm not sure what stores you have around. I personally will not feed IAM's/Eukanuba, even though it's readily availible. Because they do animal testing and are over priced.

Do you have a Petsmart or Petco, or any good petstores near you? Or can you only buy food from places like Walmart or your local grocery store? If the cat you get is under 1 year old, make sure you feed it kitten food, or food that is high grade and appropriate for both adults and kittens. You can also order online, a good place is www.petfooddirect.com
I don't know what your price range is however.


From Petsmart, the only foods I personally would consider feeding:
Authority
Bil-Jac
Natures Recipie
Nutro Maxx(and Nutro Natural if they have it.)
Pro Plan (You can try this food, but I've heard bad reviews about it, it gave one of my cats a urine problem too.)

From Petco:
Avo-Cat Breeders Choice
Natural Balance
Pet Gold
Royal Canin
Sensible Choice
Vitarx
Wysong

Good foods... and foods I would personally bother to feed.
Innova
Solid Gold
Maximum Nutrition (Walmart Brand)
Wellness
Pinnacle
Evolve

There are soooo many more, if you find a food that interest you or that you can afford, just tell us the name of it here and we will give you a full run down of the food and tell you if it's any good or worth buying.

Couple Guidelines:
1.) The first 5 ingredients are often the most important
2.) Buy a food that starts with a MEAT
3.) Foods labeled with Chicken or Lamb, are better then foods like Chicken By-Products, Meat By-Products.
4.) Foods with out corn in them are better, corn is only a filler.
5.) I do not buy foods with BHT & BHA in them, as they are cancer causing agents. Natural preservatives are much more healthy for an animal in most cases.