Overfeeding?

Hello everyone! Many people have to deal with picky cats, but mine is the opposite. He's a big cat glutton! Thankfully, he'll eat anything I give him. Unfortunately, he always seems to be demanding food! I don't want to over feed him, but he always acts like he hasn't eaten in a week or something...

He's 2 years old, and last time I took him to the vet a few months ago he weighed 10 pounds...he's gained some weight since then and he's a little pudgy now, but not too overweight or anything. I feel like his over eagerness for food makes my family feed him when I've been trying to keep him to two meals a day, and it's lead to his weight gain. 

Here's his feeding schedule btw:

In the morning around 6 or 7, my dad feeds him his dry food (Orijen). I tell my family to feed him half a cup per meal if I'm away, but he fills the bowl...(Felix doesn't eat all of it, I just put the rest back).
I wake up around 10 and Felix will come and very vocally beg for more food, so usually I give him a few treats. He'll continue to very loudly beg for food throughout the day until he gets dinner, which is either more dry food when I'm not at home (I work a night shift) or about half a can of wet food if I am (Nature's Variety Instinct 5.5 oz cans). When I get home from my night shift around 1 am, he comes up and begs for more food.

 I asked once about his seemingly endless appetite to the vet, who just said he was growing boy. Btw, she said he was in great health...his 10 pounds were optimal and he didn't have any parasites or anything. 

Is this amount of food okay? The way he always begs for food just breaks your heart...it's really hard to say no to him. Being the overly soft cat mom I am, I always worry that he might actually be really hungry, even though he's getting a bit pudgy.

Any advice is appreciated...

Orijen has a LOT of calories in it. It's good food ( I use it too, but high in calories). 1 cup of Orijen Cat & Kitten has 500 calories in it, so half a cup is 250 which is way more than most cats need in total calories for the day. Typically cats need around 20/cal per pound of weight to maintain their current body weight. 

With cats that are always hungry the best thing is to feed them smaller meals more frequently. What you need to do is find out how much he weighs and then figure out how many calories you're feeding him and how many calories you should be feeding him. If you can't be home to feed him multiple small meals per day you might look into an automatic feeder. 

It might help your family to put a smaller size measuring cup in his food bag/container that way all they have to do is scoop it out and into a bowl. I'd suggest cutting down his morning meals to 1/4 a cup. 

Thanks for your reply, missmimz! I'll have to sit down with someone who's good with numbers and help me figure it out, lol. I can't believe I didn't think of an automatic feeder...thanks for the suggestion.

I've been thinking of introducing him to a diet of commercial raw & canned once his bag of orjien starts to runs out, but I've been looking around the forum and it seems like there are automatic feeders for canned food as well?

Yes, brands like Catmate and Petsafe are popular. All can be used with dry or canned food, except for the gravity type Petsafe feeders. There are various ways to keep canned food from drying out / spoiling quickly such as adding water to the food or freezing the food into measl size servings and putting the frozen food into the feeder to slowly defrost.

There are various charts that list the content of cat foods. For canned foods, the most popular one is http://catinfo.org/docs/FoodChartPublic9-22-12.pdf There's also http://www.petobesityprevention.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/Cat_Canned_Pouch_Foods.pdf For dry foods, try this one http://www.petobesityprevention.org...Food-Calorie-Counts-December-2011-Dry-Cat.pdf

Note that the calorie amount listed is usually per cup for dry food and per a certain size can / pouch (3 oz or 5.5 oz or otherwise stated).

A 10 pound cat needs roughly 200 to 250 calories daily. Some may need more or less. The general rule is 20 to 25 calories per pound of ideal body weight daily. And don't forget the exercise

Pompy said:

 
Thanks for your reply, missmimz! I'll have to sit down with someone who's good with numbers and help me figure it out, lol. I can't believe I didn't think of an automatic feeder...thanks for the suggestion.

I've been thinking of introducing him to a diet of commercial raw & canned once his bag of orjien starts to runs out, but I've been looking around the forum and it seems like there are automatic feeders for canned food as well?

Click to expand...

Raw and canned is really awesome and great for cats if you can afford it. I have several kittens so i feed some kibble as a snack but their main meals are wet or raw. Good luck! 

Great suggestions up there! 

Just something I'd like to add: my cat, depending on the season and even on the time of day, will eat more. Like last winter, this winter, my cat eats about 25% more than he does regularly in the summer. I'm assuming this change is because it's cold where I live and maybe it takes more calories to keep warm. Or it might be his natural instincts to bulk up because of the cold.

He's also "young". I've had this dilemma too. My cat seemed to always be hungry and many lovely people at TCS have told me it's because he's a teen and still kind of growing. The breed might even play a factor in how much is needed. Just keep an eye on his body shape and spread out his meals. You could even add some water into his wet food to make him feel a little more full without the extra calories. 

I'm so excited for you to start feeding raw and/or wet food! I hope it's successful and your kitty will love you for it  

Thanks for the replies, everyone! I'm pretty confident in switching Felix over to raw eventually, because so far he hasn't turned down anything. Adding water to his canned dinners is a good idea, I'll try that!

Also don't worry LTS3, he's a pretty playful cat and he gets a few rounds of playtime and exercise with me every day.