Does this count as free-feeding?

When we first adopted our guy (neutered adult male) a few months ago, he was used to grazing on kibble all day at the shelter. We successfully transitioned him to four meals per day, three of which are wet and one dry kibble "bedtime snack". He never fails to polish off every last scrap of his kibble portion, but sometimes he'll snub his wet food before deciding to eat it. For example, I'll set his portion down in the morning and he'll sniff it, walk away, and then come back to polish it off in an hour or two. I've tried changing his mealtimes around thinking he wasn't hungry but he still does the same thing. Is he holding out hoping I'll give him kibble? He doesn't do this every time, maybe about 70% of the time, and he switches which foods he'll snub seemingly randomly (we have a bunch on rotation).

My main question is this: by me leaving his wet food out for hours at a time until he finishes it, am I essentially free-feeding but with wet food instead of dry? Is it just as bad for him? Should I be taking away the wet food if he snubs it? There's never wet food out 100% of the time, but he could eat a little and then have some left in his bowl for another three hours (he goes 6-8 hours between meals). I know the "remove any uneaten portion after 30 minutes" rule, but I can't stand to be throwing away such expensive cat food. I would just put it back out again, but he has to have omega 3 oil and vitamin supplements mixed in and they might get nasty sitting in the fridge until his next mealtime. 

Thanks in advance for your insight. I would hate to be undoing the progress we made with him by slipping back into a free-feeding schedule without realizing it.

To be honest, it's a bit of a grey area :lol3: In my view, though, the big issues with free feeding are that it's generally done with kibble, which isn't great for any cat, and that free feeding generally means zero portion control - making weight gain all too likely.

What you're doing, though, is properly portion meals of wet food...it's just that your guy takes a while to eat them. A fair number of members (me included) do the same thing for various reasons, and it works just fine so long as the food doesn't get too warm. Some cats really do prefer little and often 'mouse sized meals' - it's how they're designed to eat after all

One thing I would suggest, though, is that you find something extra yummy for his supplements, and literally use a teaspoon or two and feed that first. That way, you know for sure that he gets them all, and you can then put down his main feed.

Columbine said:

One thing I would suggest, though, is that you find something extra yummy for his supplements, and literally use a teaspoon or two and feed that first. That way, you know for sure that he gets them all, and you can then put down his main feed.

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Oh, true! I never thought about that because he always eats all the food eventually, but it would probably be better for him to get the full dose all at once.

Thanks for your detailed response, I completely forgot about the portion control aspect of meals versus free-feeding. It makes me feel a lot better about the weird little schedule we have going on!