My kitten Grace is 7.5 months old and has always been a voracious eater. The way I've described it is she's like a dog for food, dancing, begging, and would eat until she pops if given the chance, just like a dog. For some time now she's been eating 8.5 ounces of high quality (all meat) canned food a day, over the course of three meals, and that has kept her happy. She is not underweight or particularly overweight (maybe just a hair over, but if so not much...she looks good, vet says she's good). In the past I've adopted mostly adult cats. The two kittens (now adults) I adopted four years ago were and still are kind of indifferent to food, meaning they happily eat their food, but they're casual about it, so I didn't have this issue with them.
The last couple days, Grace has still been her usual enthusiastic self at feeding time and gobbled down her food, but she has left varying small amounts of food in her bowl. A couple times it wasn't a lot, she just didn't lick the bowl spotless like she usually does, and one meal she left maybe a tablespoon of food. It's not a lot of food, it's just that her bowl usually looks like it's been through the dishwasher. Everything else about her has been normal, it's not that she's ill.
Is she trying to tell me that it's time to start reducing her food to more of an adult level, like gradually toward about 5.5 ounces or so, like my other cats (who are all healthy weights) get? I don't want to start reducing her food earlier than I should, and I will certainly continue the current level for at least a few more days to see what she does, but if she continues leaving little bits here and there, should I start slowly cutting back?
The last couple days, Grace has still been her usual enthusiastic self at feeding time and gobbled down her food, but she has left varying small amounts of food in her bowl. A couple times it wasn't a lot, she just didn't lick the bowl spotless like she usually does, and one meal she left maybe a tablespoon of food. It's not a lot of food, it's just that her bowl usually looks like it's been through the dishwasher. Everything else about her has been normal, it's not that she's ill.
Is she trying to tell me that it's time to start reducing her food to more of an adult level, like gradually toward about 5.5 ounces or so, like my other cats (who are all healthy weights) get? I don't want to start reducing her food earlier than I should, and I will certainly continue the current level for at least a few more days to see what she does, but if she continues leaving little bits here and there, should I start slowly cutting back?
