Weight Management Food

tallyollyopia

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A few things I need to tell you first of all. One, our house has six cats; Momma, Princess, Slipper, Asia, Spot, and Ra. Second of all, before two years ago I'd never had a cat, wanted a cat, or researched cats, so my knowledge base is a little patchy and I tend to compare them to dogs, just because that's what I'm familiar with and they're both four-legged mammals. Third of all, I just switched to a new cat food.

Let me back up. Back when we had dogs (both fixed), when they reached a certain age we switched them from normal food to weight management food; not because they were getting fat (which is hard for active outside dogs to do), but because it seemed to fill them better and keep them full longer. Working on that premise I switched the cats' food to weight management the last time I needed to get more dry food (they're on a mixed dry and wet diet). Don't get me wrong; they love it--but they don't seem to get full  eating it. Where they were previously going through four small bowls of dry food a day, now they're going through almost ten. It's a huge  increase, and they still seem hungry all the time.

So--what am I doing wrong? Do they just like the new food, or are they really hungry all the time? I don't want them to get used to eating so much in a day and then switch back to the old food (that just seems like a recipe for disaster), so what should I do?
 

paiger8

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What brands are you feeding them? Higher quality food has less fillers so they'll need to eat less of it. Cheaper food has a ton of fillers, so cats eat more.

Have they been wormed? That may be another reason that they're eating so much.

And I honestly wouldn't bother with the weight management food. Dry food is more carb filled than wet, so if you see them getting heavier, the easiest thing to do would to feed less dry and more wet.

And Dogs have a totally different required diet then cats. Dogs are omnivores, cats are carnivores. They need lots of meat, and minimal veggies.
 
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tallyollyopia

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I've been feeding them Purina One, since it's the only brand in Wal-Mart that has meat as the first several ingredients. And only a couple of the cats are getting significantly heavier; the rest are pretty lean. 

And yes, they've been wormed. With Momma cat the problem started after she finally stopped lactating. (After we got her fixed she began lactating in insane amounts, and I worked hard to make sure she didn't get milk fever, which I was warned was a possibility.) And I'm not sure that Princess is fat, as she simply seems to have changed shape a bit. As a kitten she looked more like a Siamese cat with calico coloring, and now she looks like the average house cat.
 
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lisahe

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I couldn't agree more with everything @Paiger8 says! It's protein that fills up carnivorous cats in a good way, not the fillers (usually carby ones) that are used in lots of foods, but particularly dry. (We went through this with our previous cat: we also fed her Purina One weight management food but it had the opposite effect for her, too.)
 
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tallyollyopia

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I was feeding them the regular salmon and fish flavored food, and I switched it to the chicken flavored weight management for cats that have been fixed.
 

missmimz

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Weight management food is a gimmick. I'd put your cats on higher quality dry food, they'll eat less of it because its more meat and less fillers, and it'll be better for them long term.  Anything you can buy at Walmart in terms of kibble is garbage and full of carbs. 
 
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tallyollyopia

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I don't have a whole lot of options for buying cat food here. My choices are Wal-Mart, Target, and Petsmart, and I'm boycotting Petsmart at the moment. (Black Friday really, really  ticked me off.)
 

missmimz

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I don't have a whole lot of options for buying cat food here. My choices are Wal-Mart, Target, and Petsmart, and I'm boycotting Petsmart at the moment. (Black Friday really, really  ticked me off.)
What about ordering online? Amazon? Chewy? Petsmart is better in terms of food than Walmart or Target. 
 
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tallyollyopia

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I don't like ordering pet food online; here's why: back when I had birds (they escaped and have probably died), but one of my little feathered babies had a rare allergy to typical food and had to be fed a rice diet only. Naturally, none of the stores around here carry it and I had to get it online. The first two times I ordered it, from different sites, it reached me battered, the plastic broken, and the food inside that gotten wet. When I get the food in the store I can see that the packaging is intact, and feel whether or not the dry food has gotten wet. (This is because the dry food will stick together becoming a solid mass that will release a smell that makes the humans in the house gag, except for me, who has no smell.) I finally found a website that sells and properly packaged the bird food for transport, but their cat food is far too expensive (S&H are determined by the weight of food and while their transport service is reliable, it's also expensive. To give you an example, S&H on a three pound bag of bird food was fifteen dollars.)
 

missmimz

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I don't like ordering pet food online; here's why: back when I had birds (they escaped and have probably died), but one of my little feathered babies had a rare allergy to typical food and had to be fed a rice diet only. Naturally, none of the stores around here carry it and I had to get it online. The first two times I ordered it, from different sites, it reached me battered, the plastic broken, and the food inside that gotten wet. When I get the food in the store I can see that the packaging is intact, and feel whether or not the dry food has gotten wet. (This is because the dry food will stick together becoming a solid mass that will release a smell that makes the humans in the house gag, except for me, who has no smell.) I finally found a website that sells and properly packaged the bird food for transport, but their cat food is far too expensive (S&H are determined by the weight of food and while their transport service is reliable, it's also expensive. To give you an example, S&H on a three pound bag of bird food was fifteen dollars.)
Well, a lot of us here use Chewy.com and they are beyond excellent. Shipping is free over like $49 or its like $5 I think if you order less. I order from them basically weekly without incident. 
 

2cats4me

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A few things I need to tell you first of all. One, our house has six cats; Momma, Princess, Slipper, Asia, Spot, and Ra. Second of all, before two years ago I'd never had a cat, wanted a cat, or researched cats, so my knowledge base is a little patchy and I tend to compare them to dogs, just because that's what I'm familiar with and they're both four-legged mammals. Third of all, I just switched to a new cat food.

Let me back up. Back when we had dogs (both fixed), when they reached a certain age we switched them from normal food to weight management food; not because they were getting fat (which is hard for active outside dogs to do), but because it seemed to fill them better and keep them full longer. Working on that premise I switched the cats' food to weight management the last time I needed to get more dry food (they're on a mixed dry and wet diet). Don't get me wrong; they love it--but they don't seem to get full  eating it. Where they were previously going through four small bowls of dry food a day, now they're going through almost ten. It's a huge  increase, and they still seem hungry all the time.

So--what am I doing wrong? Do they just like the new food, or are they really hungry all the time? I don't want them to get used to eating so much in a day and then switch back to the old food (that just seems like a recipe for disaster), so what should I do?
Can you or even want to feed  canned food ? I finally got my two cats on all wet diet and they are much more satisfied  On a kibble diet they used to beg all day .. Also my male cat was a bit pudgy and he has slimmed down since switching to wet . My cats are super picky and will only eat Friskies Pate with a few kibble sprinkled on top . They have been eating it for about a month now and doing well . 
 

donutte

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Well, a lot of us here use Chewy.com and they are beyond excellent. Shipping is free over like $49 or its like $5 I think if you order less. I order from them basically weekly without incident. 
I concur, I have used Chewy quite a bit very recently, both for ordering regular food and prescription food for my kidney cat. Their prices are actually pretty decent too. I usually do a side-by-side with Amazon to make sure I get the better price, sometimes Amazon's is better. But nothing's been broken or has gotten wet so far. Including dry food I ordered. And mind you, the dry food was delivered the day after we had quite a bit of snow fall. The box got wet a little wet (we brought it in pretty quickly), the stuff inside didn't.
 
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tallyollyopia

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Can you or even want to feed  canned food ? I finally got my two cats on all wet diet and they are much more satisfied  On a kibble diet they used to beg all day .. Also my male cat was a bit pudgy and he has slimmed down since switching to wet . My cats are super picky and will only eat Friskies Pate with a few kibble sprinkled on top . They have been eating it for about a month now and doing well . 
Where we live canned cat food is much more expensive, ounce per ounce, than dry food, and finances are tight
 
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