I have a query regarding how often and how much I should be feeding my cats.

I have 3 cats-one female aged 4 years, one male aged 3 and a half and a little male, aged 6 months.

I used to feed them go cat dry food twice daily and leave the food out all day and night so they could nibble and self regulate.

However, I realised this was contributing to my female being overweight. I switched them all over to wet food-natures menu and applaws because I read that it was healthier given the higher meat content.

Anyway, Ive had several difficulties since switching.

1) Its more expensive (although this isnt a major problem!)

2) As I feed all three cats twice daily and they LOVE the new food its gone quickly and there is no grazing, as such Ive had a few occasions when my youngest cat has been in the bin scavenging and even eating through bread packets and eating bread during the night.

3) Meal times have become an attack. All three cats are more eager for food so are jumping up on food surfaces whilst we prepare. The youngest even attacks our hands in a bid to get food quicker. Then we have to stand guard (time consuming!) as all three cats monitor (sometimes with hostility!) each others bowls whilst eating. The youngest is worst as he sometimes will dive straight from his barely finished food into eating the other two cats food which they just dont seem to be able to defend themselves!

Anyway, the main question is: how often should I be feeding them? does the little one need to be fed more often? if so, is this possible given that the other two cats will click on? how much does a cat need to be fed? at the moment, each cat gets fed 2/3 of a sachet twice a day.

Sorry for the long post but would like to get an overall consensus for how often and how much other people feed their cats of differing ages.

Many thanks

BR

hmmm, I think cats all have different appetites ... ours have voracious appetites and are always mooching around ... I'd say they have around 4-5 pouches a day and they have dried biscuits too, which they also guzzle all day. Ours are 8 years, 2years & 6 months. The kitten is always eating - I think this is due to him expending so much energy and growing. None of ours are overweight - they are all male.

I have 6 cats - 3 male 3 female - ranging in age from 2 years to 10 years. They all have meat at tea time and have 3 large bowls of biscuits to nibble at through the day - and none of mine are overweight. All cats will pick around food several times thorughout the day. However, when they have such different needs as yours this makes things more difficult. You could try seperating (although not easy I know!) the young one and then he might not be so eager to wolf his food and try and eat the others - also they would chill a little knowing that he isn't going to pounce any minute. :D

My lot (4, ranging from 15 and half to about 7 months, 2 toms and 2 queens) are fed once a day, directly before I go to bed at night, in their room before being tucked up in bed.

They have all of their food in one session- their normal food is a mix of Canin Exigent, Canin Outdoor 30 and standard adult biscuits- and treats (meaty cat food, meat, cat milk, goats milk or dried fish or chicken treats) all in their room with them, with more biscuits than they will eat in the next 24 hours available for them, along with a huge bowl of water.

They have Exigent and the Outdoor 30, which is for young fit cats which burn a lot of calories outdoors, because my oldest cat needs a little tempting to eat and she really likes those. They're high enough in calories and they're in a high enough proportion that if she only picks those out of her bowl and has a few treats then she's got enough to eat.

Experience has shown me that if I limit the amount of biscuits to the amount that they have to eat, or I don't include the high calorie biscuits then I find that the one who always gets pushed off (or doesn't really bother) from eating is Tiffy and she ends up losing weight really quickly.

My advice would be to weigh your cats and make sure that you are actually giving them enough food and then I'd take part of their diet back to crunchies, but make it a small bowl for grazing, rather than a major part of their diet. I'm amazed that you haven't had diarrhoea mayhem from all of the bolting of food that the competition brings on! The competition for food makes everyone rush what food they have, and that in itself makes them eat more than they actually want.

If you adjust for the fact that the adults will need far less calories and nutrients than the kitten, so it's natural for him to need to eat a portion which is much larger than the others. However, he's also young enough that he hasn't learned any proper manners yet and the others will also still be giving him the special treatment that cats usually give kittens, which means that they will back down from their own bowls and let him eat, even if they're hungry.

So I'd look at how you can get him full, independent of the others. If he has a full tummy but you've prepared the dinners away from him and not given him the opportunity to display the bad manners then hopefully things should improve for the others.

My cats also learned pretty quickly that they weren't allowed on the work surfaces when dinner was being prepared by their dinner going straight into the fridge or oven away from their reach when they jumped up- it takes a couple of intensive weeks, but they'll learn. Once you've gone through that then you should at least have a bit less violence going on when you're trying to prepare dinner.

i have 10 5 girls 5 male they have dryed food around 4pm then a pouch each b4 we go to bed they have bits of meat from my kids or me if we have a sandwich during the day all very happy and content :O)

My kitten (10 months) has two packets of meat (Felix kitten food) in the morning and one at lunchtime then biscuits around six which he picks at through the night but they're always gone by the time i get up the next day.

He recently got weighed for his worming tablet and was 3.5kg which i believe is about right so i think that's about the right level of food but i do know what you mean, it is hard to tell how much to feed.

i have 2 cats 1 female and a male i feed them when they ask for food and i just top up there biscuits when they need it i kind of spoil my cats lol cos they get about 4 pounchs a day and the vet said that was fine for my older cat but i should cut my 17 week old kitten down as he likes been indoors

My two just have a constant supply of kibble (and fresh water of course) and they also get meat/fish table scraps (bad idea I know, they are both very badly behaved at dinner time as a consequence!) They seem to eat the right amount as they're both a good weight, bright and active.

I think this suits us and them best as we are out long days at work, and they are both very active and in and out of the catflap (petporte, wonderful invention) constantly.

I would probably leave some kibble out for grazing and reduce the wet food a bit if I were you, maybe feed them in separate rooms if poss?

my cat is 5 or 6 months and he just has dry food, hes isent overweigh, infact hes lean and muscely, hes has it down all day and will usualy eat a full bowl of biscuits a day, and now and again as a treat he gets meat in his dry, but not very often just as a treat he seams ok and he is always greedy