Too much food?

So I recently made a post about one of my 2 cats suddenly getting overweight, however I didnt weight him then, he just looked bigger. Well I decided to weigh each of my cats who will be 1 year old this month. My cat Aero who looks normal is 11 lbs and the other one, Ace is 14. He's the one in question for me.

I cannot afford to bring him to the vet right now, unless I purchase cat insurance which I'm pretty sure doesn't cover much. So for now, I wanted to try and figure out what it is that I may be doing wrong.

For the past year I have had them I have had dry food available all day long. The dry food is "Chicken Soup for the kitten Soul", and I have been feeding them each a 1/4 can of Merrick wet food every night at dinner time. And of course they always have water available.

Is this too much food? Is this bad food? I was told this was top notch food.

Hopefully some of you have some answers, I really need to work on getting my cat to his normal weight again.

Thanks in advance.

Continue with the dry, only instead of just filling the bowl, use a measured amount of food.
Increase canned food (better calorie source).
I'm assuming these are 6oz cans?
Give each cat a quater can in the morning and a quarter can in the evening.

Increase playtime.

Beyond that, there isn't much you can do without a vet.

Originally Posted by Arlyn

Continue with the dry, only instead of just filling the bowl, use a measured amount of food.
Increase canned food (better calorie source).
I'm assuming these are 6oz cans?
Give each cat a quater can in the morning and a quarter can in the evening.

Increase playtime.

Beyond that, there isn't much you can do without a vet.

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Yes, theyre 6 oz cans. I can start doing that in the morning and night then. Do you know how much dry food would be a good amount to put out daily?

Two cats share the same bowl?

Use two bowls, place them in different rooms, put in the amount of dry food your particular brand reccomends for adult cats in each bowl.

Unless your heavy guy is a binge eater, you should see a decrease in the amount of dry food intake, and then you can adjust the dry amount accordingly.

Originally Posted by Arlyn

Two cats share the same bowl?

Use two bowls, place them in different rooms, put in the amount of dry food your particular brand reccomends for adult cats in each bowl.

Unless your heavy guy is a binge eater, you should see a decrease in the amount of dry food intake, and then you can adjust the dry amount accordingly.

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haha my cats cannot grasp the concept of separate bowls. When i put their wet food down on the floor they'll both eat out of the same bowl unless I move one to it's own bowl.

I will try that though, hopefully it will make a difference.

thank you

Mine don't understand seperate bowls either, thankfully, I have no weight issues and can free feed dry.

Wet food though is 3 6oz cans all mushed up on a huge platter, pretty funny to see six heads down and six tails straight up

Good luck and hopefully this will at least help a little until you can get your boys seen by a vet.

Originally Posted by kane250

For the past year I have had them I have had dry food available all day long. The dry food is "Chicken Soup for the kitten Soul", and I have been feeding them each a 1/4 can of Merrick wet food every night at dinner time. And of course they always have water available.

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If that is truly the "kitten" stage food, you should take them off that formula and put them on the regular or even the light if you are concerned about weight.

I was buying the Chicken Soup once and messed up and got the kitten stage. Just what my one porker really needed!

Originally Posted by tru

If that is truly the "kitten" stage food, you should take them off that formula and put them on the regular or even the light if you are concerned about weight.

I was buying the Chicken Soup once and messed up and got the kitten stage. Just what my one porker really needed!

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Yes it was the kitten stage food actually. I thought you were supposed to give the kitten food for 1 year....? No?

Is kitten stage food more fattening?

It has more protein and uh something else I cant exactly remember... my vet said to to feeding our 9 month old cat kitten food (however she might be pregnant so we are going to probably wait a week or so and figure it out from there) He said she as very light (a little under 5 lbs) but she was in proportion for her build... anyway he said it could make her overweight... I think I read something on this site about someones vet seeing ovrweight 8 or 9 month old kitties...

Im honestly not sure what we do because we have 5 cats and not enough room is leave dry cat food (its small bites so kittens can munch on it) 24/7 and water and then once a day we give them 2 full cans of wet food with kitten food mixed up in it. Its the only way to keep our porker from eating all the kitten food... he is our oldest and he would rather eat the kittens food than his own... sighs... that's another story though
Best of luck to you


.Myles-Anthony

We can't free-feed our cats because Oz used to be a stray and still has the stray cat mentality: "I have to eat everything that's in front of me right now because there might not be more food later." We feed our cats twice a day, once in the morning when we get up, and then again before we go to bed at night. They eat both wet and dry foods, each cat getting a 1/4 can of wet food (Oz gets weight management, because he's a little chubby, and Spike gets preventive formula, both brands from Medi-Cal) and a 2/3 scoop of tartar control dry food (also from Medi-Cal -- it has done wonders for their teeth!) per meal. We've also considerably increased the amount of playtime we give Oz (and, consequently, Spike ... who really doesn't need any help keeping himself active!).

As a note, though, we didn't put Oz on the weight control food until our vet suggested it to us. I understand that you're trying to avoid that for the moment, due to financial concerns, but because there could be an underlying health problem that's causing the weight gain, it's always a good idea to check in with the vet. (Our vet only charges $20 for a weight check, so we go in every three months.) Also, you want to make sure your cat doesn't lose or gain weight too quickly, because this can be very unhealthy; I believe our vet was looking to have Oz lose a 1/2 lb every three months or so.

Finally, yes, you want to stop feeding your cats kitten food, although you probably want to make a gradual switch over to adult cat food (some cats can be picky about sudden changes, and it's also possible that suddenly switching cat foods will upset their stomachs). I think we've been feeding our guys adult cat food from six months on (Spike preferred adult cat food from the moment we got him, at four months old -- he would not eat any kind of kitten food we provided him, but would eat the other cats' adult food).

I completely missed that you were feeding kitten food still

Switching to an adult food is fine at around 7-8 months, or feeding an all life stages food from weaning to senior.