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- Nov 9, 2021
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Hi! So I have a few questions regarding feeding my cat in general but the primary one is regarding taking her off free-feeding.
My Annie is currently 7 months old (approx.) and we have free-fed her dry food since we adopted her in late October, along with the odd wet food meal in mornings and evenings to make sure she's getting moisture in her diet. The 2 vets we've taken her to in the past have both said it's a good idea to free-feed her while she's still a kitten as she's still growing and needed access to food whenever she wants it. Since she's getting closer to a year old, I decided to do a bit of research into when I should start weaning her off free-feeding (to make sure she doesn't overeat) and some results came up around the 6-7 month mark. Is this true? If so, what's the best way to do it? Considering I still feed her small wet meals throughout the day. Lately she's been a bit fussy with her wet meals, she'll mostly only eat her wet meal right away at night before bed time but in the mornings, she'll favour her dry food so I'm unsure how to work out meals.
Another food related question I have is regarding mixing wet and dry food/meals when she reaches the point of eating adult food. Kitten wet food has been (or can be) expensive for us, but this should go down once we move her onto wet adult food as they seem to make more adult food than kitten food, and in larger portions. That being said, we're also aware of the cat food shortage going on right now and I'm not sure when it could end. Despite this, we're looking to cut some costs overall for financial reasons, and my husband said a big part of our spending is on wet food for our kitten, but I'm not willing to put her on a 100% dry food diet and would rather have a healthy mix of both so that the wet food lasts longer (and in turn reduce our spending), but she still gets a relatively healthy mix of both. How could I potentially go about doing this? Should we alternate days between wet and dry or just try to mix the two together? I'm conflicted. Thank you!
My Annie is currently 7 months old (approx.) and we have free-fed her dry food since we adopted her in late October, along with the odd wet food meal in mornings and evenings to make sure she's getting moisture in her diet. The 2 vets we've taken her to in the past have both said it's a good idea to free-feed her while she's still a kitten as she's still growing and needed access to food whenever she wants it. Since she's getting closer to a year old, I decided to do a bit of research into when I should start weaning her off free-feeding (to make sure she doesn't overeat) and some results came up around the 6-7 month mark. Is this true? If so, what's the best way to do it? Considering I still feed her small wet meals throughout the day. Lately she's been a bit fussy with her wet meals, she'll mostly only eat her wet meal right away at night before bed time but in the mornings, she'll favour her dry food so I'm unsure how to work out meals.
Another food related question I have is regarding mixing wet and dry food/meals when she reaches the point of eating adult food. Kitten wet food has been (or can be) expensive for us, but this should go down once we move her onto wet adult food as they seem to make more adult food than kitten food, and in larger portions. That being said, we're also aware of the cat food shortage going on right now and I'm not sure when it could end. Despite this, we're looking to cut some costs overall for financial reasons, and my husband said a big part of our spending is on wet food for our kitten, but I'm not willing to put her on a 100% dry food diet and would rather have a healthy mix of both so that the wet food lasts longer (and in turn reduce our spending), but she still gets a relatively healthy mix of both. How could I potentially go about doing this? Should we alternate days between wet and dry or just try to mix the two together? I'm conflicted. Thank you!