I’ve recently adopted a cat who is about three or four years old. She seems to be content but lately when she’s been coming up on the bed for pets and love she seems to be thinner and I worry if I am giving her enough to eat.
Every day around four she gets a can of wet food and a fistful of dry food. Is this enough? Is this too little? Just right?
Depends on how big your cat is - my boys are both 14lbs + and get about 2/3 cup of dry a day. Wet food is mostly water, so it sounds like it’s not enough. The recommendations on the bags of food are generally too high, though, IMO.
If she doesn’t tend to gorge herself, why not try free feeding for a while and see how much she wants to eat?
She could be a female, shorthaired and not used to her surroundings.
You might have a phinikiky eater, too.
What does her breath smell like?
Lest you pass this by as a “my cat’s breath smells like cat food” joke, you should know that cats with kidney or liver problems will often smell…well, wrong. These problems are often also marked by sudden weight loss. If your cat’s breath (or fur) stinks, it may be a sign that there’s some other process going on, and it would be worth taking her to the vet for some tests. The blood tests my elderly tabby undergoes yearly cost between $50 and $100, but it’s worth it to know whether his organs are still functioning.
Im not really a ‘cat’ expert…but being a cat owner…this is what i do:
Fill one large bowl with DRY cat food, and leave it out…refill the bowl when empty. He only eats what he wants and when he is hungry. He is now 4 years old, and seems to be doing fine. We also did this with my other cat that we had for 17years.
IMHO I do not recommend SOFT cat food, from everything that i have read, it is not great for them. The hard stuff is better for their teeth!
porcupine and Raini are onto the short term solution:
If the cat seems healthy otherwise, try a gravity feeder, and let her eat as much or little as she wants. Fresh clean water’s also awfully good to have at hand, and a gravity bottle (with a small resevoir, so that it gets refilled often enough/doesn’t get stagnant in the bottle) is good for this, too.
Obviously, if the cat starts to balloon, you need to go back to limiting her diet. Keep in mind, also, that some breeds are visibly smaller/skinnier than others. For example, most Siamese cats, of any specific breed, look damn near anorexic compared to a lot of other cats. And not all Siamese look like the “traditional” chocolate point ones seen in pretty much every movie or TV show where someone owns a Siamese cat. We owned one for nearly a month before we discovered she was a Lynx Point Siamese, or something to that effect.
Kidney or liver disease can indeed give the cat “dragon breath.”
See: http://www.netpets.com/cats/reference/info/catkidney.html
If you’re seriously worried (whether or not the cat has noticable symptoms of anything untoward) hie thee both to a vet, of course. It doesn’t hurt to take a new adoptee to the vet shortly after you get them, no matter where you got them from. If the cat’s perfectly healthy, you’re still not wasting your money (well, for a basic checkup, at least) as the vet gets a set of basline stats on the cat, should she develop some “real” medical problem down the line.
Hope this helps.