Switching from free feeding to scheduled feedings

I've been free feeding my cats for a long time. I mainly started to do it because I had foster kittens coming and going and they supposedly need to have free access to food. It's not working well though. I now have two boys (brothers) that are definitely obese and a couple of others that could lose a pound or two. I have to get them on a schedule and I have to get the chubby guys to lose weight. But how do you do this with so many cats (10 currently) that are used to being free fed?
I'm hoping someone could give me some tips on how to switch them over to scheduled feedings? As it is now some of them eat a little here and there but with only two feedings a day they have to eat more each sitting. Would they just get used to doing that on their own?
Also, how do I make sure that each cat gets what he needs and not more? I could stand and watch them while they eat but the problem with that is that my two chubbies are not socialized cats and they will not relax and eat while I'm around. They are the ones that needs supervising though.
How long do I leave the food on the floor before I take it up?
Would it be enough to feed the kitten two dry food meals and two wet food meals a day?

I'd really appreciate any tips or suggestions. I have a feeling that I'm going to have problems.

Thanks

Start out at 4 to 5 meals a day. Divide the full total of the amount each cat can have per day by the number of meals.

Pick the locations that the cats are the most comfortable in. If you have skittish cats that are comfortable in the bedroom, feed them their meals in there and the others out in the kitchen/dinning room. Further separate them based on who eats quickest or won't stay to their own dishes. You may have to put someone in a bathroom. Put the food for the slowest eaters down first and the fastest eaters down last to try to even things out, too.

You get them to finish their serving by them being hungry enough to finish their serving and not being feed more than they need at a time. When a cat walks away (and not away to someone elses food), pick up any left over - or if wet food and not a lot (two bites), give it to your kittens or most active thinner cats.

Now, have your overweight cats all seen the vet recently? Because you consider 1-2 pounds overweight to be a little chubby and say there are others that are obese I worry that the heavier ones are very heavy and cannot be put on a diet by you alone, they must have a vet supervising this at all times. You can run into liver and blood sugar issues if you don't do this correctly. (plus they need to be checked for diabetes)

With 10 cats its going to be a nightmare.

The only way I can think to do it unsupervised is to use a shock collar w/ cat doors to section off the home and have autofeeders available. That way the cats only have access to their own feeder.

For supervised, you could:

1) Feed them separately. Can put them in separate rooms, or just have one feeding room that they take turns chowing in. Otherwise the dominant and or most food-motivated ones will steal and gorge themselves.

2) Get a bunch of food distributor balls, and hope that cats don't try to share one and each will be hungry enough to roll their own. For each roll, only a very small amount of kibble is released, so a fat cat can't just wolf it down and then steal someone else's.

Regarding the switch from free feeding to scheduled feeding, I just did it cold turkey one day to the next, and had no issue.

They used to have wet morning and night w/ free access to dry, and so I simply changed wet to morning and afternoon, and give them dry out only before bed.

I haven't made the switch to scheduled feedings myself. Every time I try it, half of them "scarf and barf", I suppose it takes a while for them to get used to eating so much at one sitting. I just don't have the barf-cleaning patience to wait them out.

But I got some advice on it from someone with 30-ish cats. She said that she just puts a full pan out twice a day, and lets them eat at much as they want, until they all walk away from the food, then she puts it away until the next mealtime. She doesn't try to measure it out or feed them individually or anything. She said that this keeps their weight in check, just as much as if she measured it out. That not having the food available 24/7 makes the biggest difference. I don't know if it'll work the same for your cats, but that's one piece of advice anyway.

Originally Posted by Willowy

But I got some advice on it from someone with 30-ish cats. She said that she just puts a full pan out twice a day, and lets them eat at much as they want, until they all walk away from the food, then she puts it away until the next mealtime. She doesn't try to measure it out or feed them individually or anything. She said that this keeps their weight in check, just as much as if she measured it out. That not having the food available 24/7 makes the biggest difference. I don't know if it'll work the same for your cats, but that's one piece of advice anyway.

Click to expand...

That is pretty much how I do it at my house.

That sort of feeding would eventually kill three of mine…

I forgot to ask the OP, what are the ages on the overweight kitties? Any seniors?

Buddy tried the "trough" feeding method, but we literally had "night and day" reactions from four of the cats. The two white ones, especially the smaller female, were more of nibblers. And his two black cats, both fat but one comically obese, would scarf until bursting at times.

Double problem is the white cats are brother and sister and quite active with one another, and the fattest two black cats will only play as long as it doesn't involve moving and mostly sleep.

His other cat is anti-social and doesn't leave his bedroom very much and attacks any other cat that trespasses, so at least it was easy to feed her separate according to weight.

Definitely the easiest route though if it works.

We have 8 cats and made the switch to (almost) all wet food, no free feeding. We had a couple of false starts with it, because our oldest four are going to be 9 soon. As kittens/young cats, they hated wet food, so it took a few years just to get them eating wet food.

Everyone was great at self-regulating until we adopted Billy (2008), and he just munches, munches, munches.... We tried a measured free feeding -putting out the right amount of dry food (taking into account the calories they were getting from their wet). But Billy stayed overweight and Spooky, Lazlo, and Shelly definitely lost a little weight. So that didn't work.

Then along came Chumley (this past summer), and he's got allergies.

So we really had no choice at that point.

We went with feeding them 4 times/day.

They revolted at first. They did NOT eat all their food at any feeding. They're just so used to nibbling a couple of bites a gazillion times a day - they just didn't adjust to the idea that their food was going away and not coming back LOL. So I took to handing out "treats" of their kibble during the day to them as they asked for it - to everyone but Billy, Ming Loy (also overweight) and Chumley.

The hardest part was overnight.

Then Lazlo started vomiting.... yes, he had a problem with hairballs... but we've since figured out he really can't go longer than 2 hours with an empty stomach. As cats stomachs are empty within two hours of eating, this means he needs food at least every four hours. We work from home, so can (usually) make this work. When we have to head into NYC for work, they all just have to miss meals.

Anyway, what I do at night is keep a baggie of his kibble under my pillow. When he comes in and wakes me up by meowing in my ear, I put a small handful of kibble out for him on my bedside table. When piggy Billy shows up (like immediately), I push Bill off the end of the bed, and throw a piece of the large tooth treat kibble stuff at him (science diet t/d) so it hits him (the first time I did it he flew about two feet up in the air, it was hysterical). Then I keep him busy while Lazlo eats by tossing one kibble at him each time he's about to jump up on the bed. Bill gets about four of those (thankfully he chews) down while Laz eats.

So... until Lazlo's tummy adjusts (if ever), I am sleep deprived. Hopefully I won't be for the next... 10 or more years. But if that's what it takes.....

You also need to figure out how many calories they actually do need. We've been controlling their intake for three months, and Billy hasn't lost much weight. Turns out that we need to feed him at the level of an "inactive senior" (15 calories per target weight pound). We'd been feeding him 20 calories per pound, and that just wasn't low enough. And Billy's four.

Ugh - I feel your pain! I was trying to figure out how to do the same thing w/ 10 cats - no more free feeding. But with so many cats w/ so many needs I just didn't know how to make it work. And like yours, some of mine are under socialized, some are temperamental around other cats, etc.

Now I'm up to 12 cats in the house and have come up w/ a marginally workable solution. They live in "family groups" as follows: Twitch/Lily/Molly/Margo/Eden upstairs - Ophelia & Squishy office - Tab/Gumby/Dory/Lola downstairs - Slinky/bathroom (for now). Lola comes & goes between floors. Downstairs they are free-fed a measured amount (meaning once the set amount is gone it's gone, no re-fills until the set time). But, they have to work for their food based on the location - they don't just walk up to a bowl & graze. They must climb up to the bowl. In the office I have polar opposites. Squishy is 'Mr. Friendly I'll eat everything in my bowl the moment it gets filled' & Ophelia is 'Ms. Shy I'm afraid of my own shadow & can only eat 2 bites at a time'. Squishy is a fatty & Ophelia is a skinny. Squishy gets a measured portion in his bowl 2x/day. Ophelia has a bowl up high that only her tiny body can get to that is kept filled (pre-measured amount, but she's never eaten her entire daily ration in a day).

Lola is almost 2 years old & always skinny - always moving. She gets extra meals of whatever we can get her to eat whenever we can sneak one in.

Upstairs they get a set amount of food for 30 minutes, then it's picked up (in addition to wet food 2x/day).

So there are a variety of options you can try & everyone's household is different. Or hopefully someone sparks an idea in you that you can make work in your household.

Thanks for the tips. We'll get this figured out somehow. Most of the cats eat in the cat room while a couple have chosen to eat in our bedroom. I can't feed them in the kitchen because of the dogs. I'll probably continue to feed them where they are being fed now and tweak it as we go.
I just tried to get the cats to eat a meal but it didn't go so well. All the bowls where pretty much empty so I figured they should be hungry. As always all the cats came running when I brought out the cat food bag. I put about 1/3 of a cup in each bowl and most cats came to eat. But most just ate a few bites and walked away. The food was down for about 20 minutes and when I went to pick it all up not much had been eaten. I guess it's going to take some time for them to realize that they have to eat at meal time or they won't eat at all.

The two obese boys are almost 2 years old so they are by no means old. These are my semi-feral guys and that makes it very hard to get them to the vet. To get their shots I take them to a spay/neuter clinics that puts them under by using a tranquilizer gun. I can't handle them and with strangers they act pretty much completely feral so getting blood tests done on them is pretty much out of the question. Unfortunately I can't afford to get both put under and have blood work done right now even if I could find a vet able to do it. I'll talk to my vet about them to see if she has any suggestions but with them being young and not showing any signs of anything being wrong I think they'd do fine if I just reduced their food intake a bit. I hope so anyway.

Yeah, that young the only potential problems that pop to mind would be crystals and diabetes developing. But if they haven't had a problem with crystals from an all-dry diet yet, they may not ever - and it's early enough (I expect) that if you can get the weight off of them, you can avoid diabetes.

And yes, it will take them a little while to realize the food isn't around to eat all the time. THAT'S when you'll have the fun.

Just do your best to stick with it. They learn - if you can ignore the whining inbetween meals!

I have it pretty easy right now with my cats feeding schedule. I do not free feed. They get three meals a day with two very small snacks in between. Pip, perk, presie, and perla are all pigs and fast eaters. So scheduled feedings are easy. I just do litter boxes and sweeping while they eat so I can supervise. Sometimes Presie will leave his dish and go to Perks to eat his up and then finish his . So I have to watch them. Pip is a bit slower than the kittens, so he eats on a counter all his own. And I give him a head start by giving him his bowl first.

Magilla eats in her own room and is not a fast eater. But I take her food up after twenty minutes if she hasn't finished. The other cats are waiting at her door to hopefully finish her food for her. I honestly have no idea how I would be able to feed her with the others. They are so aggressive and fast at eating that Magilla would never keep up and probably feel intimidated. Plus she is so skittish with noises and things going on around her that I can't see her being able to eat with the group downstairs. So she will probably always have to eat in private somewhere.

It is so difficult with multiple cats and scheduled feedings but I think it is the best way especially if they need special diets or supplements. Separate rooms or feeding areas might have to be the way to go with so many

Well, Ziggy'smom, you definitely have a challenge in front of you. Awesome of you to take that step, though.

I have six cats: two sets of siblings and an ex-abused boy.

My first set of (three) siblings are pretty laid back except for Rachel, who is an incredibly slow and light eater and will stop eating if she's at all disturbed. Meghan, her sister, gains weight just by looking at food and needs carefully measured meal portions.

The second set (two) are gulpers and runners and one of them, Spencer, will steal food off others plates if given half a chance.

Ralph, the abused boy, has been with me a year now and still does not believe that food will appear at regular times - he will hoover food of his plate and anyone/everyone else's, he will eat until he can't move, and he will eat practically anything.

I have never free-fed, but I was having trouble controlling what was eaten by whom... Meghan was fat, Rachel was too thin, Ralph was gaining weight at an alarming rate, and everyone was anxious and nervous during meals - there was a lot of bopping and hissing going on.

My (final) solution was to crate train my cats for mealtimes. This might be considered an unusual step by some, but it's been a godsend to me. Everyone's weight is maintained beautifully, and - HUGE PLUS - everyone feels secure and safe in their crates and eats everything I offer them, without either gulping or hesitating, even Rachel.

I have cloth covers on the crates, too, which likely creates that warm sense of security.

Spencer and his sister, Heather, are still kinda skittish (I trapped them at 12 weeks of age and they still carry signs of their feral beginnings) and I was afraid I'd have trouble getting them to eat in locked crates... but they took to it like they'd been doing it all their lives.

This might not work for you (ten cages is, after all, a LOT of cages), but if you have the space for it, it's worth a thought.

Good luck!

AC