Kitty Eats Too Much, Too Fast

Wasn't sure if this belonged in Health, Nutrition, or Behavior, so... here's hoping.

My kitty Adolf, just under a year old, has a bad habit of eating his food way too fast and making himself sick. I've tried giving him smaller portions, but I don't know how to make him slow down. Any suggestions?

Dry food or wet? You could try lifting his food (on a platform, etc) or putting in golf balls or similar so that he has to eat around them and can't just inhale?

Im assuming you are feeding dry, switching to wet normally cures this behaviour, but if that's not an option then try the following.

Feed him on a flat plate, elevated from the ground (ie. on a phonebook) and buy LARGE kibble, the best I've found is california natural. All these things will force chewing. Some people suggest putting golf ball sized balls in their dish, but I found the flat plate much more effective.

Good Luck!

I found my abandoned kitten when he was 6 weeks of age. Obviously, he was separated from his mother too young. Anyways, my buddy had a similar habit--just devouring the food when I fed him. To get around it, I started hand-feeding him whenever I was home and it was feeding time. I would give him one kibble every few seconds. I did this for a few months and conditioned him. Realize, I wasn't always home, so it was a hybrid of hand feeding and normal feeding over a long period of time. He is now in much better control and doesn't devour the food when I feed it to him in his plate.

I would say give both my suggestion and the others a try.

I have the same issue and it happens with wet food as well-- more frequent meals is what seems to help here (although since our switch to raw no regurgitating)

Leslie

I have a 3 year old male who is obsessed with food. I have to feed him in another room so he separated from my other cats. Even then he will eat too fast then cry to get out so he can eat the other cats' food. I finally found a product called SlimCat by Multivet. It's a ball about with adjustable holes. It requires the cat to work for the food and slows them down. It's worked really well for my little guy. I've now got two more of my cats using the ball for feeding and it's been a big help.

If you are feeding dry you can try switching to a food with larger kibble that they have to crunch. If it is small enough where they don't have to chew much like SD regular adult kibble, they will eat too fast

We had a shelter 'please adopt me' cat in the lobby of our animal hospital once who was a little too tubby and he would wolf down his food and then barf. Switching him to smaller measured portions of food with larger kibble helped immensely.