I free feed Dewey dry food - it’s Iams adult formula for indoor cats, I think. (He does get wet food sometimes, but only as a treat and pretty rarely. Maybe once a week.) And he’s always crunching through his food and begging for more, so I’m wondering, is he going to get fat? Obviously it’s an issue with indoor cats - it seems like I see more fat ones than otherwise. Is there a simple guideline where I can know, he gets a cup of food a day or something? He’s about a year and a half old and has no known health problems. He’s strictly an indoor cat and gets I guess an average amount of exercise - sometimes he sleeps, sometimes he fetches the stick or attacks your ankles. I know I’m going to get all sorts of “it depends” answers, but what I really want is “feed ___ cups a day”.
For Smokey, I have an upside gallon “water” bottle filled with kibble that empties into a dish she can pick at as she likes. She has never eaten it all at once. Perhaps Dewey gobbles what you give him because he fears he’ll never get more unless he asks for it. If you get one of those feeder things (it has a sister piece for water) and Dewey learns that there will always be food, perhaps he won’t gobble it all at once
Some cats seem to have “starvation” issues - if they see food, they eat it because they’re sure it will be gone when they come back. Check the bag of food - it will tell you how much he should get per day for his weight. Don’t give it all at once, however - portion it out several times a day. Eventually he will learn that there will be more food and he doesn’t have to gorge when it’s there.
If being active at night is a problem, save a portion for just before you go to bed.
How’s he doing? Is he still wonderful?
Is there any indication on the food package itself? Our cats eat dry food too–Science Diet Light–and there is some kind of recommended daily measurement on the back of the bag.
Not that it would matter much. They never eat all that is in their bowls, and often return to nibble at it during the day. Still, regardless of how much is in the bowls, they often want us to get them more from the cupboard. I think they have it in their heads that it’s fresher if it comes from the cupboard (we do have one who feels that water tastes best fresh from the tap rather than sitting in a bowl). Either that, or they worry that someday, there won’t be any at all, and if we put some in their bowls, they don’t have to worry that day.
Part of the problem, as I see it, is that no matter what you feel a cat should be doing about food, he or she often has other ideas. And it can be hard to argue with a cat. Good luck!
Uh, guess I shouldn’t have thrown the bag away. 
He kept bothering it, so I got one of those plastic things, which is better all around anyway.
Yes, he’s still wonderful, although we about had cat fritters for breakfast this morning, miaow, miaow, miaow, miaow, miaow… through two doors. Aaron got in from work at 6:30 AM. It started then and didn’t stop until, like, 8. Luckily, Himself is working 16 hour days on a movie set these days so he was dead to the world, but I had to deal with the cat and the snoring on my day off, when I was going to sleep in!
A good qaulity dry food can be “free fed” to most cats. That is, they can have a bowl of it out 24/7. They will learn to eat just enough.
Then a small can once a day.
Zsofia may be able to free-feed later, but right now he seems to be on “eat it if it is there” mode. If a cat with this attitude is free-fed, you wind up with: a) an obese cat; b) a lot of regurgitated food on the carpet; c) both of the above.
Canned food (INO - IANAV) should be a treat only.
I feed Iams Multi-Cat formula. I would think you would feed slightly more daily than recommended for this formula.
Weight: 8lbs: 1/2-3/4 cup daily.
12lbs: 3/4 - 1 1/4 cup daily.
I give Little Bear a half can, twice a day, plus sometimes a third meal if he finishes the second early. And there’s always a bowl of dry food, which he just picks at now and then. He has no weight problem; in fact, he’s a little underweight.
It’s really down to the cat’s behaviour. My cat has food issues, and last year when I was travelling, she was given nine months’ free rein with a self-filling food hopper by the people looking after her. She put on 7lbs and became life-threateningly obese, unable to climb stairs or groom herself. The other two cats in the household remained normal cat-sized, but ours weighed the same as a two-year-old child.
We now have to give her less than 2oz of obesity-control pellets a day. She’s miserable, poor thing, but has lost 3.5lbs now.
Well, I never thought to check the bag of cat food, dumb me. I’ll check to be sure next time I hit the grocery store, but from the Iams website I think it’s somewhere between 3/4 cup and 1 cup. He weighs about 9 pounds, but he looks to me a little thin. We got him used, you know, and he didn’t come with a manual - he might have good reason to think that if he doesn’t eat it now he won’t get another chance.
Not an expert, but anecdotally that is not the case and I’ve had vets tell me as much.
Kittens, apparently, can’t really be overfed. Free feeding them makes sense as they will in fact eat as much as they need and burn any excess cavorting around.
But adult cats, particularly older adult cats with low activity levels, can easily get fat if allowed to eat to their hearts content. Certainly that varies from individual to individual - my previous cat, a dainty eater who lived to ~17, could be and was free fed throughout her life. My neighbor’s cat, who just hit nine and underwent a stressful move plus a new puppy to contend with, started vacuming out her bowl and has swollen up in a surprisingly short span of time.
- Tamerlane
We have four cats; one really fat male (he came to us that way – 24 lbs, and now down to 21 lbs). We feed roughly two coffee mugs full of dry food each day. We fill the bowl when it’s empty and it seems to work out to two mugs per day. The girls all weigh about 8 lbs each. They’re never hungry and never without food. Our chubby cat goes outside for an hour or so each day but spends most of that time sunning himself on the deck. Not much in the way of a workout.
We feed our cat the same indoor Iams as you, and she gets about 3/4-1 cup per day, and she’s in the 11lb range, but she is a big cat (although I’m pretty sure about 4lbs of that is just hair!) We feed her a 1/4 cup when we get up, then I toss in perhaps 1/8th to top it off just before I go to work, then she gets another 1/4 cup around our supper time, and one before bed. Sometimes another 1/8th or so will be added just to be sure she doesn’t come in to wake us up during the night, but when we do that, she usually still has a bit of food left in her bowl in the morning. She prefers it fresh, too. Same with her water, half the time when she’s circling and meowing at us it’s really just because she wants fresh water in her bowl - it’s getting that we switch it out 3-4 times a day! She also loves to drink from the tap in the washroom.
Cats are supposed to look skinny - when you run your hand along their side, you should be able to faintly feel the outline of their ribs. If the ribs are sticking out, then they are too thin, but if you can’t feel them at all, the cat is too fat.
Mine did the fresh water thing, too - it got so bad in the old house I just left the tub dripping. I bought a fountain for the cat suite - it’s a PITA to clean, but the cats love it. Something about moving water.
And it is funny how cats differ - I free-feed 8 cats. One is overweight, one is slightly pudgy (I am in shape! Round IS a shape - Bill the Cat) and the rest are normal weight.
I got a fountain for Dewey because he didn’t seem to be drinking much and I was tired of moving him out of the sink so I could brush my teeth, and he does drink more out of that than he did from the still bowl. (He still drinks out of the sink, though.) I need to get that extra resevoir thing for it, though - it makes a horrible noise when the water level gets below the intake valve, which it always does when the dog’s been at it. It’s amazing how much more the dog drinks, even though he’s a little dog.
I also use the IAMS Indoor cat formula. And I have the bag!
It says:
Weight of Cat Feed daily to maintain weight Feed daily to lose weight
4 lbs 1/3 cup 1/4 cup
8 lbs 2/3-3/4 cup 1/2 cup
12 lbs 1-1 1/4 cup 3/4 cup
16 lbs 1 1/2-1 2/3 cup 1 cup
22 lbs 1 2/3 - 2 1/2 cup 1 1/2 cup
(Let’s see if this keeps the columns lined up. After preview: eh, that’ll have to do.)
Shan (obligatory cat photo) fluctuates between 15 and 17 pounds (he was 17 1/2 when I got him) so he gets a bit less than 1 cup a day.
Looks like little Doozles needs to go on a “diet” now so he doesn’t turn into the giant butterball he aspires to be, indeed. We have the BF’s roomate’s cat as a model - when he sits up he looks like he’s incubating a sea urchin. The roomie claims he isn’t fat, he’s just a big cat. The cat is round.
In the public interest, it needs to be mentioned that putting an obese cat on a strict diet can actually kill it:
[EMAIL=http://www.ehow.com/how_2437_cat-diet.html]How to Put Your Cat on a Diet
“Forcing an extreme diet on an obese cat can cause severe hepatic lipidoses (fatty liver deposits). The greater the obesity, the greater the risk. Use extreme caution and consult a veterinarian before placing an obese cat on a diet.”
Thanks for pointing that out, Enter the Flagon. I’ve seen too many owners who are just horrified to find that their good intentions have made their cat critically ill.
For everyone else: if you find that your cat keeps begging for food even though he’s eating the recommended amount and isn’t losing weight, he could simply be bored. One of my three cats is a perfect example of this. Walk into the kitchen between mealtimes and he’d convince the Academy awards that he was starving to death. But pick up a laser pointer or wand toy, and suddenly food is the furthest thing from his mind.
YYMV