8 week old kitten always hungry but vomits with addition of dry food

I have an 8 week old kitten who has been eating 1 can of wet food total a day. He is always super hungry though and constantly begs and even goes as far as to try and get our people food (which I don't let him get). I was told to supplement with dry food in between meals but he pukes it up every time he eats. He even goes as far as to eat my older cats food if I don't give him more. His canned food is expensive ($1.70 a can) so I am reluctant to give him more than he is already eating, which I was told is adiquite by several people. He has been wormed and appears to be healthy in every other way. He is a super playful affectionate little guy. I would just like to get this eating issue under control. He is eating Royal Canin 3oz kitten canned food, and we have been supplementing with Purena Kitten food. Ideally I would like him just to be on the dry food like my older cat, but we tried that a couple of weeks ago and he got super sick. Help!

One three ounce can a day is not enough. Maybe you can slowly switch him to the fancy feast can food. They have kitten turkey and white fish. I know Kroger in my area has them 20/$11 this week. He may have got sick because he ate to much to fast. 

I feed mine as much as they want when they want. I feed them wet and dry. I fill the bowl whenever its empty which is once a day and I fill it to the brim. I also feed a can of wet food 3-4 times a day. There is five of them so I will put a 5 ounce can out first thing in the morning then again a few hours later. I will put one out before dinner for us and one before I go to bed. 

At eight weeks they should be fed 4-5 times a day. 

You don't need to feed expensive Royal Canin exclusively. It's fine to add in some lesser expensive brands into your kitten's diet. Can you get Fancy Feast and Friskies? Both make canned kitten formulas that are good. Pet stores have other brands of kitten foods like Wellness and Blue Buffalo.

One 3 oz can of food a day is not enough food for a growing kitten  It's like feeding a newborn Human baby one 8oz bottle a day and then having to listen to the cries and screams until the next day's feeding. You need to feed your kitten more. Kittens should be fed as much as they want to eat. Can you feed more canned food throughout the day? Is it possible to keep the kitten confined in one room during the day so the other cat won't eat the food?

The Purina Kitten food may not be agreeing with your kitten's tummy. Can you try a different brand of dry food?

I could try a different food, but I have had little luck finding canned kitten food locally. The local pet store only offers some premium stuff in kitten food like science diet and Royal Canin, and everything they sell is super expensive. I did also try Walgreens and Pick n Save but they only had adult food in their canned section as well. I did try the wet science diet (which comes in 5 oz cans) but it seemed to make him sicker so I switched back to the Royal Canin. The only other local store is a tiny little Walmart with almost nothing for kittens besides the Purina Kitten Chow that I already got. I'm kind of stuck. Can he just eat the normal Friskies? Or does it have to be kitten specific?

Oh and my older cat hasn't been eating his food, so I'm not really worried about that. I have been breaking up his meals to 3 times a day, and more frequent feeding would be almost impossible because my husbands and my work schedule. I usually get him at 6am, my husband gets him between noon or 3 (he works overnight so this is usually when he wakes up). Then I feed him at 8pm or so before I go to bed. He is crated when we're not home so he doesn't eat all my older cats food.

Here's where I admit I'm blind. Since Friskies did not say for kittens specifically on the package I just thought It was only for adult cats. I just ran to the store and I guess I allows for kitten use in the instructions. I bought some and hopefully his ravenous hunger will subside with more feeding. I've never had a little kitten before so I didn't know how much and what to feed. The lady at the pet store told me not to feed him more than 1-3oz can a day. That's why I had been limiting him to that. Now I feel super bad.

8 weeks is too young for a kitten to be away from its mom, so I would ignore whatever the pet store told you.

Do feed more wet meals more frequently. You also should leave dry kitten food down constantly. The kitten is eating so fast that he throws up because he is so hungry.

Has he been dewormed?

Don't feel bad it happens. I grew up where they only fed cats once a day and that was table scraps. They thought if they fed them food they wouldn't catch mice. I feed mine Friskies and they seem to love it. They prefer the chunks in gravy but I give them a variety of patè and chunks.  

The good thing about the Friskies is that both of them can eat it. Wet food has benefits that dry food doesn't. If I could afford an all wet food diet for mine thats all they would have. 

He has been dewormed. He was a stray that I found in my yard at 6 weeks eating a dead rabbit and living under the neighbors shed. She wanted to close up the hole so I removed the kitten so we could do so. I don't really know if the mom was around or not. The neighbor had seen an older cat in her yard and the morning after I removed him from his hole, there was a cat in her driveway yowling. I took him to the vet and they said it was good I got him even know he was young because he was in pretty bad shape. He was coated in fleas (to the point where his toungue, gums, and paws were super white. Plus I live in Wisconsin and things are going to start turning cold here fairly quickly. The vet told me he probably would not have survived the winter as a fearal

Cellophanerock said:

He has been dewormed. He was a stray that I found in my yard at 6 weeks eating a dead rabbit and living under the neighbors shed. She wanted to close up the hole so I removed the kitten so we could do so. I don't really know if the mom was around or not. The neighbor had seen an older cat in her yard and the morning after I removed him from his hole, there was a cat in her driveway yowling. I took him to the vet and they said it was good I got him even know he was young because he was in pretty bad shape. He was coated in fleas (to the point where his toungue, gums, and paws were super white. Plus I live in Wisconsin and things are going to start turning cold here fairly quickly. The vet told me he probably would not have survived the winter as a fearal

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You definitely did the right thing! I thought you were saying you got him from a pet store. My mistake.

Cellophanerock said:

Here's where I admit I'm blind. Since Friskies did not say for kittens specifically on the package I just thought It was only for adult cats. I just ran to the store and I guess I allows for kitten use in the instructions. I bought some and hopefully his ravenous hunger will subside with more feeding. I've never had a little kitten before so I didn't know how much and what to feed. The lady at the pet store told me not to feed him more than 1-3oz can a day. That's why I had been limiting him to that. Now I feel super bad.

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Hmm... it looks like Friskies doesn't make a canned or dry kitten food But it's still fine to feed in rotation because it's formulated for all life stages. It says so right on the label. The Friskies Classic pate canned are best to feed. None of the dry foods are great ingredient-wise though.

Any "adult" canned or dry food are fine to feed as long as the AAFCO statement on the label (in teeny print) says that the food is formulated for all life stages. You just have feed more of the adult food to meet a kitten's nutritional needs.

Many pet store employees don't know much if anything about how to feed a pet properly So don't rely on them for good advice on what to feed.

Walgreens usually has Fancy Feast as does Wal Mart. I'm surprised neither of your local stores has it. Have you checked the grocery store?

Is buying online an option? Amazon has tons of cat food available as do pet supply specific web sites like Chewy.com and PetFoodDirect.com Are you in the US or in another country?

LTS3 said:

Hmm... it looks like Friskies doesn't make a canned or dry kitten food But it's still fine to feed in rotation because it's formulated for all life stages. It says so right on the label. The Friskies Classic pate canned are best to feed. None of the dry foods are great ingredient-wise though.

Any "adult" canned or dry food are fine to feed as long as the AAFCO statement on the label (in teeny print) says that the food is formulated for all life stages. You just have feed more of the adult food to meet a kitten's nutritional needs.

Many pet store employees don't know much if anything about how to feed a pet properly :dk: So don't rely on them for good advice on what to feed.

Walgreens usually has Fancy Feast as does Wal Mart. I'm surprised neither of your local stores has it. Have you checked the grocery store?

Is buying online an option? Amazon has tons of cat food available as do pet supply specific web sites like Chewy.com and PetFoodDirect.com Are you in the US or in another country?

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I was able to go double check the lableing of basic wet cat food. I was expecting it to advertise specifically as kitten food, so I had passed them by thinking that local stores just didn't stock wet kitten food. After reading the label more carefully I found that either food was ok for kittens. I wish they would have made it more clear on their packaging that kittens can eat it too. I bought Friskies, but I did consider the fancy feast. Both are readily available and I don't need to spend so much buying specialty "kitten" labeled premium brands. Good news though, the little kitty appears to be ok with switching to the Friskies and hasn't gotten sick since yesterday morning. I have been giving him larger portions as reccomended by everyone here and his food obsession seems to be diminishing rapidly. I was actually able to eat a slice of pizza with out him trying to take the food out of my mouth or off the plate. Thanks all for the good advice!

Great!  Can you introduce the dry food now too?  He really should have food access all of the time.

I'll give it a try tonight and see how it goes

It does not go well with the dry food. He has been eating like 2 cans of friskiest each day. I leave dry food out that he eats as well but his stomach has become very round and he got sick again today(it has been since the day before my last post since that last happened). He is still popping so I don't think has constipated. I have been adding a little bit of water to his wet food for hydration. He isn't puking up wet food. It appears to be the dry food? I am going to try a different kind of dry food but I think ill give him a couple days though to clear his system.

Little kittens have round tummies. I wouldn't be concerned about that. Do try another dry food though

Cellophanerock said:

I have an 8 week old kitten who has been eating 1 can of wet food total a day. He is always super hungry though and constantly begs and even goes as far as to try and get our people food (which I don't let him get). I was told to supplement with dry food in between meals but he pukes it up every time he eats. He even goes as far as to eat my older cats food if I don't give him more. His canned food is expensive ($1.70 a can) so I am reluctant to give him more than he is already eating, which I was told is adiquite by several people. He has been wormed and appears to be healthy in every other way. He is a super playful affectionate little guy. I would just like to get this eating issue under control. He is eating Royal Canin 3oz kitten canned food, and we have been supplementing with Purena Kitten food. Ideally I would like him just to be on the dry food like my older cat, but we tried that a couple of weeks ago and he got super sick. Help!

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Kittens have worms. It sounds like roundworm. You need to take your kitten to the vet to get deworming medication (along with vaccines). You should deworming until 4 months of age. The reason he is hungry all the time is because the worms are eating the food and thus, he is not absorbing the nutrients. And the round tummy is indicative of roundworm.

It's been pretty thoroughly covered here, but I wanted to add my 2 cents. I adopted my kitten in August and I was shocked at first at how much she seemed to want to eat! I thought she was gonna eat me out of house and home! Because of this, I adoringly call Ava my lil' fat fat. She was quite a bit older than your kitten is at the moment (she was 13 weeks then). She would eat 12-16 oz of wet food a day and a little dry during her growth spurts, and around 9 oz on a typical a day back then (this lasted a while!).

She has leveled off now to eat around 6-9 oz of wet food a day and dry food (around 1/3 cup). She is about 6lb? now and still growing strong. Kitten grow miraculously quickly and they need that fuel. From what I've gathered you basically just feed them what they will eat if they seem hungry up until a year old (as long as they aren't grossly overweight). A lot of people have suggested my cat may have worms as well, cuz she eats like such a fatty, but she's been dewormed too and gets Revolution treatment every month. The vet also said she has a perfect ideal body, lol! Yay for Ava!

So naturally all this eating can be super expensive, so what I feed is Purina One Tender Selects Blend Chicken (she never liked any kitten dry or grain free -- I tried), and she eats Fancy Feast pates ( I buy the big 30 packs for $15 from Walmart) and I buy 13 oz cans of Friskies pates from the Dollar Store. I feed her as much Fancy Feast as I can afford and the rest of the time she gets the Friskies Pates. I'm home a lot, which you may not be, but I leave a decent bowl of dry food out for free feeding, and feed her wet food 3-4x a day (usually when I eat, so she doesn't beg). If I'm having a broke week, I will give her 1.5 oz at a time and allow her to eat more dry food. 

*Note: Finding a dry food your cat is excited about is super important. I tried doing the super expensive grain free stuff and she wouldn't want it and would cry constantly for wet food. With the Purina, she loves the tender pieces mixed with the crunchy ones. Considering it has grains in it, it is very high in protein, and nutritional enough that I'm not too mad about it. 

Also for the large cans, I recommend buying silicone can lid covers from Amazon. They are super nice and a lot of them come with special can scooping spoons. It's super nice to keep the food fresh. I even use it for my food sometimes. I don't worry about keeping it in the can, because she eats it same day most the time, or the very next.

Overall I'd estimate I spend roughly $40 a month feeding my cat. This is more than I'd like, but kittens are high maintenance. Just be patient until they are a year old. Around that age they will start eating much less, because they will have nearly reached their full height and weight at that point. Good luck!