Our cat is nearly 11 years old; we adopted him from a friend a year ago. He's a rather large boy. I think the last time he was weighed he came in around 18 pounds or so and, absolutely needed to lose weight. We attributed his weight gain to the fact that a) he used to be partially an outdoor cat and no longer is so he isn't expending the same energy and b) he's eating better food and we might not be feeding him the right quantities of it.
My BF, particularly had a bad habit of giving into him in between set meals. I do not. I think this has stopped - well, I know for the most part it has because he was out of work for a long time and is now working again, and so, not home all day to give him more food! Looking at Casper, I *think* he looks like he may have dropped a couple in the past couple of months. Maybe.
Casper is known to also gobble food down and vomit it back up at times, so we don't tend to keep kibble out for him all day long "just in case" he does this when we're not home to clean it up. We do not, however, give him people treats frequently - maybe once a week and it's always only very basic food such as a small piece of plain chicken or fish. Never anything adulterated or filled with fattening people ingredients and, the portion is bite sized - not filling his bowl with it by any means. We do not even give him kitty food treats typically. He gets that maybe once a month at best.
Anyway, he's been on a dry food diet for about a year now and doing pretty well on it. He came to us being fed wet and dry, but both terrible stuff; I think it was Purina kibble and their canned also, Fancy Feast? Ugh, those canned meals were such garbage; filled with meal and fillers. Once we had educated ourselves better we took him off of all of it and began trying higher quality foods and eventually just switched to dry kibble primarily because he seemed to do better on it. Plus, every wet food we tried he didn't seem to be thrilled with (I think he was too used to the Purina since he was raised on it) or - they were SO expensive that we would just keep them as an occasional treat for him.
So, we have him on Blue's "Basics" for many months now. This is the one we settled on after trying several; including other Blue Buffalo types. We found the less ingredients for him, the better his vomiting was (it's not like it happens daily but even once a week is too much sometimes lol). On the "Basics" there are times when we find he can go for a couple of weeks without an incident which is great. We give him 1/4 cup in the morning; split into 2 servings usually so that he doesn't bolt it down. Another 1/4 cup in the evening. Both are probably a bit more than 1/4 cup; as they are heaping servings. So maybe a bit more than 1/2 cup of kibble daily. This amount was ok'd by our vet.
But, now I would like to add in some wet food. And the heck with the cost. Or partially. I'll try and catch the sales and stock up. I just purchased some small cans of the AvoDerm which I was highly impressed with. I mean, this was real fish in there, not junk. And he went crazy for it. Nom nom nom!
I got the 3 oz cans because they were on sale and to try them out it made more sense just in case he didn't like it. I liked these better even than the Blue Buffalo ones I had purchased as far as the quality of what I saw. I know I can't just give him seafood all the time as wet, I need to rotate with poultry/meat due to the possibility of urine issues (he already had a bout with a UTI earlier this year).
But I'm now confused as to how much I would feed him wet/dry if I add this into his diet. Looking at the 3 oz can in his bowl, half of that seemed quite adequate to me as a meal but, he certainly acted like he needed more than that by the time dinner came around. Of course it could have been a ploy
I don't want to give him the wet in the morning. The one time I tried doing that was one of the mornings he barfed and let me tell you having to clean up really wet regurgitation on the carpet as I was running out the door for work was not the highlight of my day. Kibble barf? Much easier to quickly clean up lol.
Thanks very much in advance for your help! Hope I made sense here.
My BF, particularly had a bad habit of giving into him in between set meals. I do not. I think this has stopped - well, I know for the most part it has because he was out of work for a long time and is now working again, and so, not home all day to give him more food! Looking at Casper, I *think* he looks like he may have dropped a couple in the past couple of months. Maybe.
Casper is known to also gobble food down and vomit it back up at times, so we don't tend to keep kibble out for him all day long "just in case" he does this when we're not home to clean it up. We do not, however, give him people treats frequently - maybe once a week and it's always only very basic food such as a small piece of plain chicken or fish. Never anything adulterated or filled with fattening people ingredients and, the portion is bite sized - not filling his bowl with it by any means. We do not even give him kitty food treats typically. He gets that maybe once a month at best.
Anyway, he's been on a dry food diet for about a year now and doing pretty well on it. He came to us being fed wet and dry, but both terrible stuff; I think it was Purina kibble and their canned also, Fancy Feast? Ugh, those canned meals were such garbage; filled with meal and fillers. Once we had educated ourselves better we took him off of all of it and began trying higher quality foods and eventually just switched to dry kibble primarily because he seemed to do better on it. Plus, every wet food we tried he didn't seem to be thrilled with (I think he was too used to the Purina since he was raised on it) or - they were SO expensive that we would just keep them as an occasional treat for him.
So, we have him on Blue's "Basics" for many months now. This is the one we settled on after trying several; including other Blue Buffalo types. We found the less ingredients for him, the better his vomiting was (it's not like it happens daily but even once a week is too much sometimes lol). On the "Basics" there are times when we find he can go for a couple of weeks without an incident which is great. We give him 1/4 cup in the morning; split into 2 servings usually so that he doesn't bolt it down. Another 1/4 cup in the evening. Both are probably a bit more than 1/4 cup; as they are heaping servings. So maybe a bit more than 1/2 cup of kibble daily. This amount was ok'd by our vet.
But, now I would like to add in some wet food. And the heck with the cost. Or partially. I'll try and catch the sales and stock up. I just purchased some small cans of the AvoDerm which I was highly impressed with. I mean, this was real fish in there, not junk. And he went crazy for it. Nom nom nom!
I got the 3 oz cans because they were on sale and to try them out it made more sense just in case he didn't like it. I liked these better even than the Blue Buffalo ones I had purchased as far as the quality of what I saw. I know I can't just give him seafood all the time as wet, I need to rotate with poultry/meat due to the possibility of urine issues (he already had a bout with a UTI earlier this year).
But I'm now confused as to how much I would feed him wet/dry if I add this into his diet. Looking at the 3 oz can in his bowl, half of that seemed quite adequate to me as a meal but, he certainly acted like he needed more than that by the time dinner came around. Of course it could have been a ploy
I don't want to give him the wet in the morning. The one time I tried doing that was one of the mornings he barfed and let me tell you having to clean up really wet regurgitation on the carpet as I was running out the door for work was not the highlight of my day. Kibble barf? Much easier to quickly clean up lol.
Thanks very much in advance for your help! Hope I made sense here.
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