I’m in need of some cat advice. First a little background:
We currently have two cats, both of whom are about 2.5 years old. They are free-feeders–we just put food out in their dishes each day and they eat as they like. We feed them high-quality dry food.
Next week we’re bringing home a new kitten who will be 12 weeks old at the time. He’s still on kitten food. We don’t want to upset anybody’s routine, but I’m concerned that the two older cats will find the kitten food appetizing and eat it during the day while we’re at work. Can anybody who’s dealt with this situation give me some advice for keeping everybody happy? It’s not really an option to restrict their access to each other’s food, because once the kitten gets used to us, the house, and the other cats, he’ll have the run of the house along with them. We could try feeding the kitten in the morning before we leave and then again at night, but then he’ll probably fill up on the adults’ food and not get the extra calories he needs.
I’ve been in this situation many times. What I have found works best, although it is a big fat pain in the ass, is to feed the kitten separately, iIn another room, and watch him while he eats. I’d bet he doesn’t eat the adult’s food afterwards because the kitten food tastes a lot better. Keep an eye on him - as long as he’s gaining weight appropriately, he’s eating enough. You’re right, don’t leave the kitten food out - your adults will eat it and soon become little four-legged furry beach balls.
Also, it’s better for kittens to feed them at least twice, preferably three times, a day - not sure if you meant that you are only feeding him once a day right now. Just FYI.
About the only way I’ve come accross to do this is to feed them seperately. I know that’s not the answer you wanted to hear, but I haven’t found another solution.
When I got my second cat (he was just a baby at the time) I got him a second, cute little kitten bowl for his special kitten food. Naturally, he refused to eat out of anything besides the big kitty bowl (which was about 3 times bigger than he was at the time), and my older cat refused to eat out of anything but the little bowl. Didn’t matter which kind of food I put in it.
It might help if you make the kitten’s dining room seperate (and as far away as possible) from the adult’s, and monitor them the first few times you give the kitten food. If he gets used to eating there, and knows he’ll always have food there, it might stick. The older cats might prefer to just eat where they’ve always eaten, and will probably be a little territorial about their own food (at least at first) which might help keep the kitten away from it.
I would check with your vet about whether it’s actually necessary to feed kitten food. This relates to dogs, but my vet told me that nutritionally there is not that much difference between puppy and dog food, and that after a few months, it wasn’t really necessary to feed puppy food.
I have two adults that are free fed, and when I got my kitten last August I fed her separately. My vet advised me to keep her away from the other cats for 2 weeks for quarantine, so that part was easy. Kitten ate in a bedroom, adults ate in their normal place. My problem started after she was cleared health-wise and allowed with the other cats…she quit eating her kitten food, she actually liked the adult food better. At that time (after talking to my vet), I slowly switched her over so she was eating adult food too - it would have been very hard to keep her out of it without upsetting my other two cats.
The adult food seemed to be fine for her, she is a very large and healthy 8 month old now. But talk to the vet in case your kitten has special needs that would prevent him from eating the adult food.
Thanks, everybody, for the advice. Sounds like feeding separately is going to be the way to go–I guess we’ll just have to feed him in the morning and again when we get home in the evening…I don’t imagine it’ll hurt him to supplement his diet with the adults’ food if he wants to (we give them Katz-n-Flocken, an all-natural lamb-based dry food that they just adore). The two adults are very mellow so once they get used to him I doubt they’ll object.
The quarantine question concerns me, though–all three of our cats are purebreds (one of the adults and the kitten are Singapuras and the other adult is a Russian Blue) and have never been outside in their lives. We’re planning to take the little guy straight to the vet from the breeder’s before we even take him home, and we’re going to introduce them to each other slowly, but two weeks in this case seems a little long (not to mention impossible in our case–we don’t really have a place to keep them separated without making somebody very unhappy). If our vet recommends it of course we’ll have to figure something out, but when we got the two adults (on the same day, from different breeders) he said a couple of days was fine as long as they were all healthy.
winterhawk11, my kitten was found by me, outside, she was sick and had worms, and no record of any previous vet care. You vet might not ask you to quarantine if your kitten is coming from a controlled environment.
Something else to consider, some vets say that feeding your cats exclusively dry food can make urinary tract infections more likely. My brother has three cats one of which is crippled in her rear legs. He has to physically watch the other two or else they will steal her food every time.
We feed most of the cats strictly dry food (the kitten started on it right away). Our finnicky one was raised by someone else on canned, so we feed her separately. And it’s a giant pain in the ass. I’d just feed the baby with the other kids if I were you.