Advice on feeding different cats

gotpersian

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okay, I need some clever advice from those who may have been through this. I have four felines. Pele and Scarlet are male brothers, 2 years old this March. Bijou is a female, shelter adoptee, 1 1/2 years old. Frank Sinatra is a kitten, 12 weeks old. I free-feed them dry food and they get about a tablespoon or so of wet food each, every day as a treat. Before we got the kitten I had been giving them half and half of Nutro weight-management and Nutro hairball management because, well, they get hairballs (all Persians) and because Pele has gotten huge since his neutering (he's an emotional eater), as well as Bijou starting to look a little chubby. But since Scarlet isn't fat, I only gave them half weight-management formula. Well, obviously I can't continue to do this with a rapidly growing kitten!
And it's impossible to separate them as far as feeding. They've all been raised since weaning to free-feed. Any advice on how to ensure the kitten gets kitten nutrition while not enabling my couch potatoes to get even fatter?
 

yosemite

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I have no advice since I'm in the same fix. Our Bijou (male) is getting very large and his little sister is still a kitten. Naturally, he much prefers her food to his own. I've just recently changed them both over to adult food as Mika (his little sister) is now 7 months old.

PS - Love the name Bijou
 

okeefecl

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GotPersian,

I've moved your post to our Health&Nutrition forum, where you should get helpful advice on your feeding question. Good luck!

Christy
 

cirque

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Originally Posted by GotPersian

Any advice on how to ensure the kitten gets kitten nutrition while not enabling my couch potatoes to get even fatter?
Seperate rooms. I know it sucks, but we usually free feed here as well .. or at least did until our recent addition of "Buddy". He appears to be a cat that wants to gobble down as much as he can as fast as he can and bring it back up just as fast
I have had to start closing him into this room with me, feeding him in here with some dry food kind of slowly while allowing the other two cats to smell and hear their food being opened in the kitchen so they can go eat while Buddy is distracted and being fed himself. He also has a slight problem of scaring and chasing one of our other cats, so thats all the more reason to keep him seperated some of the time this early in their relationship. Sadly one of our other two is very scared most of the time, but hunger seems to be drawing her out as they realized there is not much free feeding and they need to eat when its available now. Good luck!
 

mikonu

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I had the exact same problem when I got Kionu. At that time, Kionu was 4 months old and Miko (9 yrs old) was eating Innova Lite (for older and overweight cats). I got the regular Innova formula and fed them in separate rooms for a week. After that, I let them eat in the same room under my supervision. At first they were curious about each other's food and would nibble a little here and a little there. If I caught one of them eating the other's food, I would say "A'ole", which means "No" in Hawaiian. After 2 weeks, they knew who's bowl belonged to who. They even knew what side of the food stand was their side. Once they're done eating, they just walk away. They don't even sniff each other's food. That method worked for me, so maybe it can work for you.

P.S. Obviously you don't have to train them in Hawaiian.
 

zanniesmom

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I think that your best bet is supervised meal feedings, as suggested above. The kitten needs at least three feedings a day and possibly four. Since your big kitties are a little too big, I would measure their food anyway. Divide it into three or four feedings a day and maybe by the time the kitten is old enough for free feeding adult food, at about six to nine months or so, everyone will have slimmed down, anyway. Or you can feed a food like Innova or Felidae that is labeled for cats and kittens, but not free feed, since the big guys would get seriously bigger. Becky
 
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