Canned Food Diet and Schedule

tng218

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Hello, 

I was wondering how ya'll feed your cats/kittens? I've recently switched my cat from dry to canned food after reading multiple online articles about the benefits of wet food and the dangers of dry food. She's being fed Nature's Variety Instinct canned food 3x a day. In the morning before work, she's given 1/4 of the 5.5oz can and I leave the rest of that portion for her to finish throughout the day since I don't get home until 5. At 5 she's given another 1/4 of the can and once again, she'll be given another 1/4 of a can before I go to bed (around midnight). 

I do proportion feeding, so she has until the next feeding finish whatever she wants. There's usually some meat left in the bowl at the next feeding. 

I'm going to stick to this schedule for the next month or two to see how's she's doing and then gauge if I should lessen/add more to her diet or if I should do timed feeding instead. 

What do ya'll feed her kittens and how often?
 

molly92

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Sounds like a great feeding schedule! It really depends on the cat and your schedule how much they eat and how often.

My cat's on a diet so I weigh her about once a week, and she's slowly but surely losing weight. Occasionally I have to cut back a bit when her metabolism settles and her weight plateaus. She gets fed at 8 am and 6 pm, although she usually eats each meal over several hours. I feed Holistic Select, Whole Earth Farms, and Nature's Variety Instinct LID. Holistic Select I get the 13 oz cans so I spoon out about 1/3 cup for each meal. Whole Earth Farms she gets half a can per meal, and the Nature's Variety is a little more caloric so she gets 3/8 a can of that per meal. Right now she's at 12.4 lbs! (She was over 14 ten months ago.)
 

cocobutterfly

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Your/her feeding schedule sounds good. We feed her NVI also - the rabbit variety since that has the lowest calorie/fat count. Our cat loves eating a little too much and would most likely eat every morsel of food that was left out in one sitting until it's gone. So we have to give her controlled portions at each meal which looks like this:

6am:  2.5 ounce NVI canned rabbit or homemade chicken breast with u-stew

9:30am:  1 Tablespoon NV rabbit kibble with 6 freeze dried raw mixer

1pm:  1 ounce NVI canned rabbit

4pm:  1 Tablespoon NV rabbit kibble with 6 freeze dried raw mixer 

6:30pm:  2.5 ounce NVI canned rabbit or homemade chicken breast with u-stew

She wants food all day, but after dinner she never asks for food until the next morning. In total she eats about one 5.5. ounce can of NVI canned rabbit (162 cal.) and 2 TBS + 12 freeze dried raw mixers (~50 calories) per day (total ~210 calories). She weighs 9 pounds. Some days she gets all wet food, and on those days she gets a total of about 7 ounces of food (one 5.5 ounce can plus 1/2 of a 3 ounce can). That's about 200 calories.
 

sweetpea24

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Sounds like you have a good handle on her feeding schedule. I went to a conference on cat health and recent research has shown that small, frequent meals are better for cats as twice a day feeding messes up their urinary pH. So you are doing a great job!
 
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