meal times

How do I get them to get it?

I put the bowls down and took them up at 6:30 It's 8:30 and I just did it again and had to carry Attitude in here from the bedroom and had to carry Nuts to his bowl. Nuts ate a little and has walked off. Attitude is being a pig and ate more of hers but no where near enough. They are getting 1/4 cup twice a day, not sure if it's enough Nuts is a very skinny cat, if he starts dropping weight I'll feed him more. Attitude has got to lose some weight, she gain half a pound in a week(from 10.1 lbs to 10.65 lbs), but I'm sure that's because of the addition of wet food so I could give her the forti-flora. Vet tech told me to leave it down for 1/2 hour and whatever they don't eat to toss. I didn't say anything but I don't think so, I pay too much for the dry NB to throw it away, I might as well take dollars bills and toss them in the trash if I do that. I'm sorry I don't feed cheap crap and I'm not throwing good food away. Well the cats outside get Meow Mix or Cat Chow, which also helps if we forget to take up the bowl and one of the raccoons helps him or herself to the food(not the raccoon's fault, if I could get an easy meal as a raccoon I'd do the same and eat the cat food, it's a free meal I don't have to expend any energy to consume) plus it 'fattens' them up so they survive winter, I have the fattest outside cats anyone has ever seen, but they are all like lifting a feather, they are not heavy at all. I think a lot of it is their winter coat, especially Mama since she has a full winter Maine Coon coat, I also can't afford to feed them premium food which I'm sure you all understand, my 2 plus 6 or 7 outside cats. The woman who doesn't feed her animals appears to have got a new cat who comes to eat here and is terrified of people if he sees me so much as glance at him through the door he or she(please let it be a he, he's don't get pregnant) runs off.

I'll be giving them their PlaqueOff in their dry food or going down a feed if I give them wet food.

How much is a safe weight loss for a cat, they want her down to 9 or 10 lbs. I know if she loses too fast I'm not going to have to worry about her being fat because I either won't have a cat anymore or I'll have to deal with a cat with liver failure and obviously I'd really rather not have to deal with that.

I'm going to be weighing her weekly so if she starts dropping too fast I need to get in contact with the vet so I need to know what a healthy weight loss amount of would be over the course of a week or a month or whatever time frame.

I mean do I put the bowls down again later(since it's time to take them up they ate like nothing) or do I just make them wait until dinner time and give them a 1/4 cup or do I give them a 1/2 cup(if I do that I'll just add 1/4 cup to their bowl so whatever they don't eat now just has 1/4 cup added to it.

Also, do I need to be strict about them each eating out of only one bowl, they like to swap bowls, I already chased Attitude from Nuts'(who decided it was nap time) bowl.

Is it ok to leave down their dinner until morning, I have to add L-Lysine to at the very least Attitude's bowl and I kind of need her to consume it(which I'm sure she will since I'm adding it to the top of her food) or if she eats it she eats it if she doesn't she doesn't.

I need some help on this. How long can they go without food before I need to worry? I don't want them to get in trouble but I don't think less than 12 hours would hurt them(I plan on feeding them again around 6 PM and it's 9 AM right now.)

Also, if they start eating do I delay taking the bowls up, Attitude just decided she wanted to
eat

Edited to add: what is a good feeding schedule: every 12 hours or can they go from 6 PM to 9 AM or should I just feed them at 9 PM so they don't go more than 12 hours without food? I doing 9 AM because that is the time I get back from taking my son to school and once back I can give them only 30 mins to eat otherwise I'd be feeding at 7 or 7:30 when I left and not getting back until 9, which is obviously longer than the 30 min I was told to leave the bowls down.

I don't see the point of doing this with dry food but I assume they know what they're talking about.

I am so confused.

Taryn

First of all its gonna take a week or so for them to figure out the schedule. Second don't stress they'll feel that. Third they will figure it out, mine consume their food in 3 minutes, I do 3 meals a day as 2 didn't cut it for us. I wouldn't go more than 12 hrs without food mine get fed at 7 am, 5 pm and about 9 pm. Try and schedule them on 4 meals if you can and then cut back to either 3 or 2. Also mine must maintain their own bowls the point of scheduling is maintaining how much is eaten. One eats behind a closed door the other two on opposite sides of the kitchen.

Leslie

I left their bowls down after their evening meal. We had a 9 hour power failure because some idiot took out a power pole and snapped it in half and I wasn't about to kill myself putting the bowls back up, I had to do it to grab them. Of course Attitude ate too fast and I swear it sounded like she puked behind the TV but I can't find any puke and I looked everywhere(I couldn't do it immediately since there was no way I was going to be able to do it without electricity to see what I was doing.)

I did have to carry them both to their bowls. I had to give up on keeping them on their own bowls they swapped bowls about 5 times. I just couldn't do it in the dark. I did just take the bowls up now that we have power and I'll try again tomorrow.

They also prefer to 'graze' than take it all in in one sitting, I'm not even sure if they could without puking and I think Attitude would do so. They like to eat some let it settle then go back after 30- 60 minutes and eat a little more. It is funny they leave all pet food bags alone(Spaz would rip them open if I so much as put the bag on the floor despite the fact that she had the exact same thing in her self feeder, she didn't gorge or overeat she stayed at 7.5 lbs which was a perfect weight for her), don't touch the container their food is in(unless it's the outside cats' food, face it Cat Chow or Meow Mix smell really good to them, but that is only when I fill it) if I left it open they'd play in it instead of eating from it. If food falls on the floor of course they'll eat it but I consider that fair game.

I just hope they get it and Attitude doesn't decide to gorge on it and make herself sick.

Free feeding is so much easier and less stressful. Attitude got fat because I'm an idiot, I know I overfed her I put too much in their bowls since I've reduced it I wonder if I could free feed with the lower amount of food. I have halved the amount of food they eat(from 2 cups or 1 cup each to 1 cup or 1/2 cup each). I don't know I'll give them 2 weeks to see if they get it and see if Attitude can not make herself sick. If not I'll only give them half of their daily food in their bowl and let them eat that then at a predetermined time add the other half of their food.

I know it was my stupidity by overfeeding them, not them grazing as they wanted to.

Taryn

I am about 5 seconds from losing it. I put Nuts in the bathroom and guess who has decided to scratch at the bathroom door despite the fact that they have food and it's the exact same thing(well Attitude's has L-Lysine but that is the only difference) I moved her food outside the bathroom door I hope she'll eat instead of trying to force her way into the bathroom to eat Nuts' food. I had to separate them since they refused to eat their own food. Attitude needs the l-lysine not Nuts.

Attitude has decided it's playtime. She needs to freaking eat, she had less than 1/4 cup of food yesterday and Nuts ate even less than Attitude. I've gone from one extreme to the other. Do I leave the food down so they eat at least something? or Do I play hard ball and hope they eat at some point today when I put down their bowls(next feeding is at 9 AM, right now it's around 3 AM.)

I'm worried that Attitude is going to ignore her food when it is down into liver failure. I think I need to switch up cats and put Attitude in the bathroom for the 9 AM feeding in hopes that the bathroom is boring enough that she'll eat.

Darnit this is frustrating.

How long is too long for her to keep doing this? At what point do I declare this failed, I want this but not if it compromises my cat's health? or At what point do I declare it a success and see if I can feed them in the same room?

I think Attitude is now eating, this is nerve wracking. We lost Maude to liver failure because she stopped eating 1 month ago today so this is extra scary having them not eat. Her death has scared me to the point where I worry if they don't eat when I put their food down their liver will fail and they'll die.

Any help would be really appreciated. Am I doing something wrong or is this just the process of getting them used to being fed on a schedule? Please help me. Like I said Maude's death has me really shaky about them not eating when I put their food down. How do I quit worrying about this? If we hadn't just lost Maude to liver failure I know I wouldn't be as worried.

Taryn

OK, first of all relax and take a few deep breaths. I totally get that you are stressed because of Maude's death because after my Molly died Abby just had to so much as look at me wrong and I was freaking out.

I'll be honest and tell you I have no experience with getting a cat to lose weight or in feeding multiple cats. I did have to switch Abby to a low allergen food a few years back and she hated it. It took time and lots of trial and error to get to the point we are at today where she finally eats the food and likes it. Some of the things that worked for us was the type of container you put the food in. She ended up eating the wet food only from a flat dinner plate. Some other things we tried was mixing water into the wet food and also switching flavors until we found one that agreed with her.

We have a lot of members that have experience with this and I am sure one will be along soon.

My boy had to lose some weight - what worked for us was (a) talked with vet to figure out a good, measured amount of dry and wet food to put down (she worked out calories based on foods' labels - to my surprise, was way less than I would have chanced on my own). Depending on the composition of the food, cat's size and metabolism, a quarter cup dry might actually be sufficient. My boy at 12 pounds gets slightly less than 1/2 cup kibble, and I bet the vet is going to take that down a bit, as he's getting older. But, I'd work with the vet on portion size.

(B) - my cats are nibblers - what my vet suggested was a measured feeding of wet food morning and evening (and yes, not leaving the wet out more than 30 minutes) and leaving measured dry food out all day for them.

Dante did lose 3 pounds over a number of months, which for him was significant. My cats both have the same food - when I have had to add meds to the foods, I've done it with the wet bit, since I could supervise that a bit better.

Try to stay calm, and your vet should be happy to talk with you re modifications you might need to make with your own cats - stressing yourselves out is not good either!. Weight monitoring is a big deal with most vets these days, and most will be enchanted to talk with a concerned owner - my practice offers free weighing by a tech and recording in the file to owners these days.

The vet tech said 1/2 cup spread out over 2 meals of 1/4 cup each twice a day. I had started feeding them 1/2 cup about a day before I took the 'Tude back. I was feeding them each 1/2 cup but since their bowls were empty I worried they were still hungry(I was worried about growth they are Maine Coon mixes and are only 8 months old so they are still growing.) Yeah, stupid me. Also Nuts is big but that is body size wise he is thin and long, him being 10 lbs looks good on him. I'll see how they are doing in a week, if Nuts starts dropping weight I'll have to adjust something at least for him. I think it was me overfeeding them plus adding in the canned food while Attitude was sick trying to get the forti-flora into her. Not to mention Attitude is spayed and Nuts is intact until I get the money to neuter him. It seems like every time I get the money someone(always Attitude; Nuts has never seen the vet for anything other than routine visits for shots) gets sick and has to see the vet.

They also love to eat out of each others bowls so I worry that Attitude might still overeat. When Paul put the bowls down again Attitude ate from both bowls. There wasn't much left in either one though, they had ate the majority at 3 AM.

I'm also sick as heck, I had a crappy birthday(it was the 4th, and I did not ask for a sewing machine from my parents), our power was out for 9 hours last night, so dealing with trying to set a feeding schedule is stress I don't need.

I also thought it was weird to do it with dry food, I had heard only doing the feeding schedule with wet. It was also the vet tech who told me this, I'm wondering if she was talking about wet(but then again why did she say 1/2 a cup so 1/4 cup twice a day) due to the toss after 30 mins thing. Nuts was also whining to Paul earlier that he was hungry, that was when he put the bowls down again(this was at 11 AM, I was asleep.)

Would it be better to just leave the dry down and see if Attitude still loses weight so they aren't hungry during the day? Like I said all the vet said was she needs to be 9-10 lbs, the vet tech was the one who told me to schedule them and like I said I'm beginning to think she was talking about wet food and not their dry.

I know that they know what they are talking about so I'll see what happens. I think I might need to reduce their feedings to twice since, as I said, they ate most of their food at 3 AM. I'm just thinking the expecting them to eat 1/4 cup of dry food in 30 mins is unrealistic. Like I said Attitude tried it last night and I still swear she puked behind the TV but I still haven't found anything, so I'm wondering if she ate it. I know dogs will but I don't know about cats.

Taryn

I keep seeing Vet TECH in your posts , Have you talked with THE VET? Techs are very helpful but not always right in all info the give

My vet too thinks you should leave down dry for 30 mins and if they don't eat it, throw it away, but then her cat scrafs down anything you put in front of him. When I had a cat on a diet, I measured their food carefully and that is all they got for the day. If they wanted to graze on it they could, if they wanted to eat it all they could.

I found that activity level was more important for weightloss than the actual timing of feedings (although I would not leave it more than 12 hours because mine would be sitting on your head screaming for food). With Scully we played with him all the time, 10-15 mins with the laser here, putting his food on top of a cat tree so he had to climb for it, hanging a piece of string with a cat toy from my belt loop so he followed me around the house.

As far as having 2+ cats and different needs, sometimes you just have to feed them separately. At one stage we had one who needed to gain weight, one losing weight and one on special food. When we were not home, they were all confined to separate rooms with just Magnum and Boomer out having run of the house (I lost so many rolls of toilet paper locking Autumn in the bathroom)

If you do not want to toss dry, keep a tupperware container and put it back into that and use it for the next feeding, I would toss uneated wet, but dry will be fine.

Here's a quick suggestion about the Lysine for Attitude...rather than mixing it into his food, since you're so concerned that he's not getting it or that Nuts it going to eat out of the bowl and you want to make sure Attitude is getting all of his Lysine, how about if you just mix the Lysine into teaspoon of wet food and give it to him as a treat? Something you know he will eat all at once right when you give it to him? You can even give Nuts a teaspoon of wet food at the same time without Lysine in it so they both think they're getting a treat.

Another option is to get a bottle of Lysine pills from a pharmacy and give it to Attitude if he'll eat it in a pill pocket.

Either way, that will eliminate one of your problems - you won't have to worry about who's eating out of what bowl at feeding time.

Nuts eats his food in the bathroom and I give Attitude hers in the living room. Attitude is a pig so she'll eat some of Nut's as well as hers, even if she hasn't finished her bowl.

I put the lysine(the gel) in her dry food and mixed it in and she did eat it even though in the beginning I could tell she was trying to eat around it which is why I mixed it in with the food so she couldn't avoid it.

Now if I could get them to eat twice a day instead of 4 times. I don't want to have to wake up at 3 AM to feed them. They don't finish all their food(and Nuts never eats all of his anyways) if I only feed them 2 or 3 times a day. Hopefully they will eventually get to eating everything in 2 servings. I will say that there isn't much left over after they eat, they get whatever is left over at their next feeding.

I just need Attitude to lose weight and Nuts to either stay the same or gain. His 10 lbs looks good on him for his size. Attitude is (obviously) more petite. Like I said the vet(and yes that is the actual vet not the tech, even though she said the same thing) says she needs to be 9 or 10 lbs.

Taryn

what food are you feeding? I am asking to get a calorie level... 1 to 2 lbs should take a few months

look up ensyfl for lysine... it is a paste and thus you give it like hairball goo

For the L-Lysine, I would just mix a powder in the water, and let BOTH have it... It will be great for both of them. In my house it goes right in the water fountain... problem solved.

You want to minimize the stress... If by giving the L-Lysine you are adding stress into your routine, then IMO it is time to rethink a strategy, otherwise you are defeating the purpose... Adding the powder to the water will completely take care of it.

As far as the diet.... Here is what I think.... Attitude is still considered a kitten as far as a Mane Coon goes... She is only 1/2 pound over her weight (if over at all, because that might be based on the average cat, and a Mane Coon is NOT average), and considering she is under 1 year old and will grow until she is 4 years old..... IMO She will grow into it... I seriously wouldn't worry about it right now...
There is also a big chance that this vet tech is used to the regular cat, and not a BIG cat like a Mane Coon...
So... I think you might be worrying about something and she might be just fine...
I would just Measure free feed at this point - measure a QTY, and leave the food out during the day...
Maybe a higher protein, lower carb food will also help...

Anyway, just my 2cents for what is worth... or not... But I do think she will grow into it... Remember, Mane Coons can weight almost twice as much as the regular cat.... So...

Attitude is fat(even for a Maine Coon), she does need to lose some weight. The tech said the breed doesn't matter, even though I figure she will eventually grow into her size I'd rather have her the right weight now and have her gain as she needs it rather than continue to get fatter than what her frame should be. She said 10 lbs and the vet said 9-10 lbs. Like I said Attitude will eat hers and what ever Nuts doesn't eat. Attitude has a fat pad on her stomach so she does need to lose weight. Like I said they said 9-10 lbs which is high for any regular dsh I know, especially an 8 month old. They are going off her frame size, not what breed she is. Tech said 10 lbs, vet said 10 or maybe even 9, so at most she needs to lose 1.5- .5 lbs so she doesn't have that much to lose. She is also very active(she is a kitten and has her brother to play with, not to mention a love for a plush mouse) so she will hopefully lose it fairly quickly(at a safe level obviously.)

I am feeding both natural balance ultra premium(the regular stuff, pink bag.)
http://www.petco.com/product/7953/Na...NaturalBalance

They each get 1/2 cup daily.

Feeding Attitude the lysine isn't stressful, it was getting in the routine that was. The gel is nasty to deal with but I will deal with it until it's gone.

I do need to separate them to eat since Attitude will eat both hers and whatever Nuts leaves behind.

I know I was overfeeding which is what caused this, reducing what I feed I'm sure will fix it. She weighs more than Nuts and Nuts is a bigger cat than she is body size wise. She gained over half a pound in 7 days when she was sick so that only made it worse, overfeeding dry and then adding in wet was a recipe for a very fat cat.

This is her at 10 lbs, she was even tubby then and that was a half pound ago.


This is Nuts a few weeks ago but around the same weight, he's the right size.


Taryn

If it were me ... I would get a second vet opnion, pictures are hard to tell but neither by my eye look "fat" ... I also would suggest a HIGHER protein and fat food be mixed in ...

Originally Posted by sharky

If it were me ... I would get a second vet opnion, pictures are hard to tell but neither by my eye look "fat" ... I also would suggest a HIGHER protein and fat food be mixed in ...

Click to expand...

and the position she is in is a hard one to judge also. She does not look fat at all... Not even sitting down like that.

If I flip her over you can see the fat pad and she has got even wider than what she in those pictures. I also trust my vet, he(well his dad actually) has been my vet since 1984. They kept Abby going during her final years. They have my total trust. Also, no one used fat except the vet tech. Vet said her fat pad was too big(even though he found it more funny than anything.) He said 9-10 lbs would be an ideal size.

I know pictures are hard to look at and tell if an animal is fat unless they are really fat. I can't get good pictures of her size, this is about as good as I can get. This one is also older but you can see how wide she is and you can see her fat pad. She has gained since then.



I know Nuts isn't fat in any way shape or form, if anything he's too thin.

This is her from the back taken about 10 mins ago:



Her and Nuts, as I said Nuts doesn't have a weight problem, taken 10 mins ago:



Sharky: I could use a suggestion for food, I do need it to be about to same price as the NB, I'm stretching my budget as is to buy it.

Taryn

let me think, what are you paying for the NB at what size bag?... And IMHO the fat pad thing is likely right one... and ideal = perfect ... ie you and I are seldom at the ideal wt for us... Most are over or under ... Fat pads are a good thing for a growing kitten... Without a decent fat pad I would likely have lost two of my five at a serious illness time

I am sorry... But not even if I try REALLY HARD can I see Attitude as a fat cat in need of a diet...
But anyways... All the best on your your ventures there!