Is there something wrong with this Kitten?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

OK, set up, I have two adult cats, one rather fat (idleness due to having been born with only three feet. The other normal. I feed the two of them a ‘less-active’ dry cat food.Both seem to like it just fine.

Enter the new kitten. He’s cute & Frisky and all that stuff. He’s also very hungry and want so be first to the food bowl. No problem. But he is a kitten and should probably eat kitten food, rather than the diet stuff.

So, first day I pour out kitten food for him, he sniffs at it and eats a kibble or two whilst I ready a second bowl for the older girls and pour out diet food for them.

Kitten then races over to the new bowl and sticks his head under the stream of food to start eating their diet cat food. “???” I wonder. I pick up kitten and bring him back to the kitten food bowl. He sniffs at it and races back over to the diet food bowl.In the process shoving the older cats (who are still getting used to him) out of the way.

This happens for a couple of days. Then I think I am clever. I decide it must be the pouring food sound that attracts him. So I put the bowls on the counter and fill them. I place kitten food down first. He sniffs and eats a nugget or two. Then, when his attention seems rapt by the food, I place the other bowl for the anxious older females.

Let’s just say suddently the Kitten food was the kitten’s second choice, again.

This goes on for a couple of days. Then I think I am clever.
I pour out some diet food into the bowl.Then put a layer of kitten food on top, thinking he will eat that forst to get to the diet food.

One bowl is placed onthe floor. Kitten shoves his face into the bowl and sprays kitten food everywhere to get at the lovely diet cat food underneath. Female cats lap up kitten food now on floor, kitten eats diet food. Mr. Miskatonic sighs.

This happens for a couple of days. Then I think I am clever.I decide kitten just doesn’t like that brand of kitten food. So I go out and get a new bag of a different brand fo kitten food.

Suffice it to say, diet cat food is Kitten’s first choice.

I think naming the kitten “BucketHead” is becoming more appropriate, n’est pas?

2

He just wants what everyone else is eating. No worries.
Best name I ever heard for a kitten. A fireman was rescuing a momma cat and kittens from high atop a bridge girder and got a hold of one that did not like it. It jumped out of his arms and plummeted 100 feet to the bridge without a scratch. The fire department adopted it, naming it “Thud”

3

Heath, that very funny story reminded me of when I had two cats that would burn around the house chasing each other, and every so often I heard this loud ‘thud’ as one or the other would cannonball head first into the wall. For all their grace, it seems like cats go ‘thud’ quite frequently.

(Mr. Miskatonic, you might want to ask your vet for some advice. I think very young kittens need more fat in their diets, just like small humans do. She might have a better idea how to supplement the kitten until li’l BucketHead doesn’t need extra fat anymore.)

4

My cat prefers the diet (low-calorie) cat food too. In fact, just today I noticed that she tore a hole in the low-calorie cat food even though her bowl and cat food in it. I had to substitute her low-cal food because she ran out a couple of days ago.

5

I think it’s the kitten food itself. I have 3 adult cats. I feed the a can of food in the morning split between them and afterwards they eat dry food. My neighbor brought over a bag of kitten food today, knowing I had cats. I figured mine would eat anything basically. They won’t touch the stuff. It’s been there all day. They are begging me to put out something else.

My suggestion, just feed it what it wants and if you think it needs something more, make it something like a canned food that it can have for itself.

Just a suggestion, I just feed them, otherwise they are on their own.

Jim

6

I’ve got two cats who are brothers. Jim is slim. Bob is the Lord of Lard and has just been put on a diet.

Jm will break down doors to get to the diet food. Lardarse won’t touch it.

They’re just contrary. It’s part of being feline.

7

No… cats go ‘PULT’ as in the sound they make after being flung out of a Cat-a-PULT.

8

My cats do that too. The littlest kitten, Buffy wants Misty’s diet stuff. sigh Cats are strange creatures.

And Misty, when she was a kitten, wanted to eat my late Fluffy’s senior moist catfood.

9

Maybe you could try feeding them in separate rooms where the kitten can’t get at the other cats’ food? That combined with some bribery, like some canned food, would probably make everybody happy and forestall any hunger strikes. (If the kitten really doesn’t want to eat the kitten food, that might make for a bad day or two until he relents. I’ve known one cat that went on strike until she got so hungry she just had to eat.)

Not that I’d know very MUCH about picky cats. My current cat will eat anything. A couple of years ago I had to switch him onto prescription food, and to get him to eat it all I had to do was fill his bowl. He stuck his nose in, sniffed, and started to eat. The vet was astonished when I told him about it. I have a weird cat. (That stuff is EXPENSIVE. The alternative is worse, though.)

10

I had this problem too. Be careful about adult cats eating kitten food. It can give them diarrhea.

11

Ask your vet if it would be okay to give the kitten the diet food topped off with a couple of squirts of Linotone or some kind of prescription vitamin & fat supplement.

12

Definitely ask your vet about it, but I suspect it’s not a major problem. We had lots of barn cats while I was growing up, and they mostly went straight from weaning to regular old dry cat food. My mom would often take pity on the scrawnier ones though, separate them out where the big cats couldn’t get at their dining, and feed them the more expensive canned variety–your kitten may very well dig into that with enormous gusto.

Dog-wise, as our primary canine unit (a very gentle big collie/shepherd mix who barked absolutely ferociously at any strangers visiting and would calm down pretty quickly once one of us humans came out to deal with them, but who wouldn’t dream of actually biting them, and on the other hand was very emphatic about driving off free-ranging neighbor dogs from our territory, just a great combination of traits) started aging and losing weight and appetite, we started feeding her her normal dog food, but with gravy and fat and chunks of meat soaked into it. I don’t know that it added much to her span of days, but it probably made her last year more appetizing.

13

Don’t y’all know? It’s one of the Rules of Cat: “Food always tastes better when it’s eaten out of somebody else’s dish.”

Kittens should ONLY eat kitten food. Not adult food, not low-cal food. If you start giving the kitten canned food, it may get used to it and refuse dry food. Dry food is better for their teeth, and canned food makes their poop more stinky.

I would suggest closing the kitten in another room during feeding time. I have 5 cats, ranging in age from 3 years to 15 years, and some of them get regular adult food, and some of them get ‘mature cat’ food. They each have their food dish in different rooms, and I close all the door while they eat so that I don’t have to be the “food police”.

I think ‘Buckethead’ is a grrovy name for a cat- you can shorten it to ‘Bucky’ and suchlike. Is he doing any of the other cute kitten things like climbing the curtains or attacking your feet under the covers or getting stuck behind the refrigerator? :smiley:

14

That should be ‘groovy’ in the last paragraph, not grrovy! Arrrgh! Preview is my friend!

15

I’ve heard the suggestion a couple of times and it seems like it might be the best solution. Big cat took a big swing at the interfering kitten today.

And of course he’s doing kittenish things. If he wasn’t then I’d seriously be worried. :open_mouth: All except the behind the fridge part.