Wet only feeders

I feed 8 cats/kittens all wet. They live on a farm so may eat a bit more than house cats. I feed them Sophistacat, Friskies, and Priority wet but would feed them better stuff if I could afford it. They get 50-55 ounces of wet food a day split between all of them. There are five kittens who are 4-5 months old and 3 one year old cats who each wiegh around 10 lbs.

Milo, Mikey, and Nightmare also eat all canned. They each wiegh (or should...Milo is underwieght) about 12 lbs. Nightmare and Mikey get a 5.5 ounce can of wet food a day and Milo gets 6-7 ounces of wet food a day.

Milo eats Precise, Solid Gold, and a tiny bit of Science Diet canned.

Nightmare and Mikey - you name a brand, they eat it. They get 60-70 differant kinds of canned food. Differant varieties and flavors.

Everyone else gets all raw or are switching to raw.

a 10 lb cat eating premium wet should get roughly 5.5-10 oz ( most cats that are adults eat if only wet roughly 3/4 of an oz per lb, ie 7.5 oz for ave 10 lb cat

I believe if feeding kitten SD likely is one 3.3 oz can per 3 lbs.. or one 5.5 to 6lb per cat per day

normally a kitten will consume double what an adult of the same wt would

When Hope was on Wet only she got one can a day of Hills Z/D, and she is 10.5lbs. Never lost weight, and never went hungry. But this is prescription, and Hills is known for being calories dense. Now that she started going finicky on it, I started complementing the calories with Dry Z/D.

3oz wet with free dry would be ave... ie most cosume 1/2 cup dry and 3 oz wet as kittens roughly 4-6 lbs

I have one cat on a totally canned diet. Jack eats one 5.5 oz can of food per day (1/2 in morning, 1/2 in evening). He currently eats Avoderm or Wellness, but I'm about to start playing with lower calorie foods.

Jack weighs 17.7 pounds. He should weigh about 12. He's been eating one can a day for many years. If I cut down on his food he acts like he is starving to death.

I start cats off on one 5.5 can of wet food per cat, per day and then adjust from there in accordance with the cat's physique.

Of my three oldest cats, one gains weight easily, one loses easily and one maintains very well. Back when they were eating wet (all six are on raw now), they shared one 5.5 can three times a day; Allen, the cat that maintains, got 1/3 of the can, Meghan, the fat cat, got just under a third, and Rachel, my high-metabolic girl, got just over a third. All three of the cats were right around 9 pounds apiece (9lbs, 9oz; 9lbs, 13oz; and 9lbs respectively).

Currently, I have two fosters, Oscar at 16lbs, and Andy at 8lbs 6oz (as of this morning). They share two cans per day, divided into three meals. Initially, I split the food evenly between them and fed only two meals, but the big guy put on weight and the little one lost it, so now the same amount of food is fed, but it's split into three meals (I'm sure Oscar - glutton that he is - was gulping down his food and then finishing off his slower companion's meals, too). Their weights are slowly adjusting, with Oscar's dropping and Andy's rising. They both have a bit more to go before I adjust their foods one more time, most likely giving Oscar about an eighth or a quarter more than Andy. That should be about the right maintenance level for these two.

Remember that it's not about calories when it comes to feeding cats, it's about bio-availability. Were I to change what I'm feeding Oscar and Andy (see below for their current menu), I'd have to adjust their amounts according to how they actually reacted to the new foods, not according to any differences that might show up on the food labels.

Here's what I'm feeding the fosters:

Wellness Grain-free:
Core Chicken, Turkey, & Chicken Liver
Core Salmon, Whitefish, & Herring
Turkey
Chicken
Beef & Chicken

Natural Balance:
Ultra
Indoor
Venison & Green Pea
Duck & Green Pea
Chicken & Liver
Turkey & Giblets
Grain-free Chicken & Green Pea

Hope you find some of this helpful!

????? Can you please explain that?...

Sure!

Cats, as you know, are obligate carnivores, which means they evolved to eat animals - to get all their dietary and water needs through the bodies of their prey - and their very specialized digestive system is beautifully engineered to do just that.

Unfortunately (for most of today's cats), that means their system is very inefficient at processing non-animal-based products such as grains, fruits and vegetables. Calories from those foods are not readily metabolized into energy for the cat; instead, most of them are converted into sugar and then stored as fat (this stresses their systems and wrecks havoc on their bodies, but that's another topic). Calories from animal-based products, on the other hand, are converted directly, easily, and very completely into energy.

So a cat eating X calories a day can - and quite often will - gain weight if those calories are anything other than animal-based and, conversely, that now overweight cat can be switched to a higher-calorie diet and actually begin to lose weight if the calories in the new diet are provided through animal-based products.

Since each commercial product contains a different mixture of caloric sources (a single commercial product can even differ from batch to batch, or can to can), comparing the total caloric count of one product against the total caloric count of another doesn't yield a true picture of how those products will be metabolized by the cat(s) in question.

IMO this is a bit radical, and if it was true, then it meant cats eating an all wet commercial diet would be overweight, which is clearly not the case; actually, quite the contrary.

http://dels-old.nas.edu/banr/briefs/...tion_final.pdf

note page 7

http://www.ehow.com/about_5459849_ma...cats-need.html

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_c...oes_a_cat_need

http://maxshouse.com/feline_nutrition.htm
Energy Requirements for Kittens and Adult Cats


\t

Age
\t

kcal/lb body wt
\t

kcal/kg body wt

Kittens:
\t

10 weeks
\t

113
\t

248


\t

20 weeks
\t

59
\t

130


\t

30 weeks
\t

45
\t

99


\t

40 weeks
\t

36
\t

80

Adult Cats:
\t

Inactive
\t

18
\t

40


\t

Active
\t

20-30
\t

45-65


\t

Pregnant
\t

45
\t

99


\t

Lactating*
\t

56--145
\t

123--319


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/13/sc...3qna.html?_r=1

Calories and need is one of the few areas that both holistic and conventional vets appear to agree on

Hmmm, I would think that would only be the case if wet food contained primarily non-animal-based protein. I haven't done any in-depth research on canned food ingredients in over two years, but there were many varieties back then that had more meat-based protein than plant-based (Wellness, Evo, Nature's Variety, Go!, etc.) and the overall trend has continued in that direction.

That cats need calories to live is a given. Observing how many are in a particular product to estimate how much to feed a specific cat when the amounts are sourced from a variety of products and differ in the mix of those products from variety to variety (and, as I mentioned earlier, even between batches of the same variety) is like comparing apples and oranges.

Better to watch how the cat reacts to a given product and adjust how much you feed based off the kitty herself.

Not really Auntie... Cats tend to maintain a healthy weight on canned food - with or without grains.
I do personally believe in quality, and refuse to feed junk, in any form of food, but a great way to keep your cat in shape is to keep it on wet food... That's well known....

you do realize that you are likely feeding 30 cal per lb in a ave mix of raw ( ie made by you?)

batches do not vary that widely ( we have seen some issues like forgetting a pre mix)

It truly is a apple to apple as gram to gram calories are = in carb and protein that is something a First grader knows...one fat calories are different in they are double plus 1 density

the Variances are already built in ( ie 15-20 for a less active , 20-25 for moderate and 25-30 per lb for very active )

I feed multiple brands and flavors of food to Nightmare and Mikey. Each day they get a 5.5 ounce can which all vary in the amount of calories. The brands vary from low quality like Friskies to high quality like EVO 95%.

Both of them, if you wanted to go by "calories" to feed, would be needing ~3 more ounces of wet a day than they are getting.

Clover was a very skinny cat until I switched to raw feeding. She couldn't gain wieght even getting 2-3 times the amount of wet food as everyone else. No health problems, so no reason that she would not be able to gain wieght. Then I switched her to raw - and she very soon started to gain wieght until she was at the perfect wieght for her size. She still gets the same amount of raw as all the other cats (about 3.5 ounces a day) and hasn't had any problems keeping up her wieght since.

I think there's a misunderstanding here.... I strongly advocate for wet food over kibble; I feed it to my fosters. I wish kibble would go away like, tomorrow.

Grains do have a large negative impact on the quality of a food, but I'm actually not referring to grains at all here.

Let's try this. Say you have a 10 pound kitty and, according to whoever's standards you care to use, that 10 pound kitty (let's call him Jim) requires 1500 calories a day to maintain his weight.

Cats convert animal-based protein directly into energy, so if you gave him three meals that contained 1500 calories and consisted of strictly meat-based protein (say, chicken in the morning, rabbit for lunch and quail for dinner), all 1500 of those calories would be counted as useful for Jim.

If, however, you gave him three plant/vegetable/fruit-based meals that also contained 1500 calories, most of those calories would be wasted or converted into sugar and stored as fat. Jim's digestive system would be stressed and upset and Jim would be both tired and hungry. Too many of those meals and Jim would likely end up overweight and undernourished.

Now, there are few, if any, commercial products that match either of the above scenarios. They are all different combinations of animal-based and non-animal-based products. The only calories doing our kitties any good are the ones sourced from animals - but there's no telling what that caloric number actually is. In addition, that number changes from variety to variety and, even, from batch to batch within the same variety.

Since it's impossible to determine how many animal-based calories are in any given product, it's best to adjust portion sizes by the actual cat's reaction to the food. If Jim plumps up, reduce his portions; loses too much, increase his portions.

It's the counting and comparing of caloric content within and between products in order to determine portion sizes that I consider inefficient, not the feeding of wet foods. (Wet foods are so much healthier for cats than kibble, it's crazy that kibble is still being sold as a "food" item for kitties. *shakes head sadly* But that's a topic for another post, or 20. *smile*)

Ok, THIS is the OP question:
Auntie, we all know what you think about raw.
I am not taking about Jim, Jen or Janet. Her, mine, and our cats here at TCS do not live in the wild either - they spend most of their times laying under our beds... leading a very different life from wild cats...
To say that cats eating commercial wet food become overweight, is simply not true.
IMO this is going way way way off in a tangent here, and not helping to answer the OP at all...
So, you might want to PM her about the Raw thread and have this discussing there?
I understand you are passionate about raw and you want all cats to eat raw, but IMHO it is really not helping the OP here.
Can we go back to actually answering the OP question?

Wow.

I wasn't answering the OP's question with my last two posts, Carolina, I was answering what I thought were legitimate questions from you. I also never talked about raw, only commercial. With a raw diet, you could certainly count calories - but, I'm very sad to see - you weren't really asking about counting calories.

I most assuredly, quite clearly, never ever said that.

Regards.

Holland weighs around 7 pounds, and she gets 3oz wet in the morning, 3oz wet in the evening, and a quarter cup of kibble for free feed during the day. I usually feed her Friskies, because it's the best I can do with my budget at the moment. I will give her Fancy Feast wet as an indulgence every now and then.

Also, she is EXTREMELY picky... she will NOT eat "pate" style, it has to be grilled, chunky or flaked. And she will NOT eat beef, she prefers poultry and seafood... If I dare to give her pate or beef, she will sniff it and look at me like "what the hell do you expect me to do with THIS?!?".