Switching from free feeding? Help

My cats have always just been free fed with a bowl of dry food down. I now do feed wet as well.

But one of my cats is obese He is a huge fatty lol When I last took him to the vet she explained that I really needed to put him on a diet and stop free feeding. But I kindof shrugged it off as impossible for my cats. Well since then he has gained alittle over 7 more lbs.... (he did get fixed though but still wow) And it is obvious that I really need to do something before he gets any worse.

I have 4 cats. All indoor. Along with my fatty, one is just ever slightly underweight (the vet says healthy though), one alittle on the bigger side and one normal weight.

So I decided I would switch from the free feeding to actually measuring out the food and giving it to them @ specific times of the day.

I have alot of issues though where I am not sure how to go about it. Having 4 cats surely doesn't make anything easy lol

I decided for right now I would split it up into 4 times a day. I have the amounts already for each of them. Though the vet told me to to straight cut the fatties to the normal amount and I am thinking maybe slowly lower his instead? I know not everyone is ok with dry food but I still like giving it to them. So twice a day wet/twice a day dry.

I guess I will have to lock them up in different rooms to prevent stealing of each others food, which 2 will do.

Today when I did it one straight snubbed the food, the same food he always eats lol He just apparently is like screw your schedule! lol Should I offer it again in a few mins or just make him wait until the next scheduled time? The other cats didn't finish all of theirs either. I am sure that will change as times goes on and they realize that is all they are getting. But should I save the food and add to their amount at the next feeding or just only give them the scheduled amount?

This is day one and all of the cats besides driving me insane are also in cranky moods & having been at each others throats hissing & growling at each other even!!! Which honestly they don't get along that well anyways lol but this is surely not helping.

Also I feel bad about them going all night without food. I can give it to them right when I wake up and right before I go to sleep but that still feels like so much time without food.

my last question is what do you do if you have to travel? Like every holiday and a few family events we travel to my inlaws. It is only two hours away from us but we often leave in the afternoon, stay the night and come back the next evening. Sometimes (very rarely) do we stay 2 days. I have no one here to feed them while I am gone. We would just make sure to leave extra food and water out. With Easter in just a few days this perhaps wasn't the best time to start lol But it is something we will have to deal with again so... Will leaving out the food mess them up too much or will it be ok? I am afraid to leave out just the amount they should get because fatty will eat it all and others will go without.

Advice on making my husband understand that he has to stop "sharing" his food with them, even if it is cute..... lol

Any other advice to make this process go easier I would love. I like my vet alot but they were not very helpful in ideas lol.

btw I do play with my cats alot. The fatty is actually very playful & i have active toys and tons of other solo toys for him. I make him run all over its not helping.

Switching to a schedule from free feeding is hard especially with multiple cats who need to eat different amounts. My cat still will not eat a lot in any one sitting, so we are 5 feedings a day after 3 months. I would like to get it to 3 or even 4, but progress is being made. When switching to a schedule it really helps to offer a diet high in good quality animal protein. This helps satisfy their hunger more. When I fed my cat low quality dry and canned, she would ask for food every 2 hours. Now that I've switched to raw, she rarely begs for food outside of meal times.

As long as they are getting a minimum level of callories that you're comfortable with, then I would try to let hunger work in your favor. A good rule of thumb for indoor cats is 20 calories per pound per day, so if they have two thirds or three fourths of that a day, it's fairly safe, but you can't starve cats into eating because of the risk of faaty liver disease, especially with obese cats. They are much more prone to fatty liver. That's a good reason to make sure that you take weigbt loss with an obese cat very slowly and carefully. Read mschauer's thread on Mickey. There's a lot of great info on there about weight loss for cats.

I feed my cat right before bed and right after getting up, but yeah, she's not always happy about going 8 hours without food, so I get woken up early sometimes. You could leave some kibble out overnight but I'm not sure how you would prevent one from eating it all unless you put him in a separate room with his own food/litter.

As for traveling, that is tough. You can hire a petsitter or try to make friends with your neighbors who have pets and try to come to some sort of reciprocal arrangement?

I'm not sure how much work you want to put it into it, but if you read Carolina's transition thread, she built a feeding box that only allowed the cats she wanted in to feed there. Your cats would need to be microchipped though if they aren't already. It's really quite ingenious.

As for advice about your husband feeding them scraps from the table, just gently remind him that obesity can cause lots of health problems in cats just like in people, and given how much you both seem to love your cats, I'm sure you want them to lead long healthy lives.

Good luck and keep us posted. You are doing a good thing for your cats, especially the obese one.

A good rule of thumb for indoor cats is 20 calories per pound per day, so if they have two thirds or three fourths of that a day, it's fairly safe, but you can't starve cats into eating because of the risk of faaty liver disease, especially with obese cats. They are much more prone to fatty liver. That's a good reason to make sure that you take weigbt loss with an obese cat very slowly and carefully.

Click to expand...

Hi Kisami!

Some very important advice there from vball91........you can not "wing" it when 'putting cats on a diet'. You and I are able to fast and our body can draw on and 'burn' our body fat to sustain us. Cats are different - unique - in that their livers did not evolve with the necessary enzymes to metabolize body fat. The liver will try, but, being unable to process the fat, will become fatty itself (hence, the name 'fatty liver disease'). That's a life-threatening condition - and, it does not take long for a heavy cat to start down that road.

So, how to do it safely?

There's a Veterinarian's site with an article on this - all you need to know is here http://catinfo.org/?link=felineobesity

You got good advice from White Shadow and VBall. I also have 4 cats but none of them are over weight. I feed them a 90% wet to a 10% dry diet daily. The dry part of their daily diet is separated into 3 different feedings in between their main meals of wet food. For the kibble, I use an automatic dispenser. The last kibble allotment is dispensed at about 2 am and their next wet feeding is about 7am. There is another kibble feeding in between their 7am feeding and 4pm wet feeding. Then one more at about 10 pm. This has really worked out well in household. You might have to make something else work with the obese cat in the house. I guess if possible feed him in a different area. The catinfo.org site will give you a lot of useful information too. :nod: