Hi all, I’m kind of confused on this. My cat eats very slowly all day long. She’d go to her food bowl constantly throughout the day for a couple of bites and then back to whatever she does. I think we spoil her by making her food available at all times, my wife doesn’t think so. She throws up here and there and I’m thinking because she eats too much. So, my question to you all is, how often do you feed your cat? Do you fill its bowl all day like me? Do you have specific times of the day where you give them a certain amount each time and nothing in between? I’m leaning towards doing the latter. Give her, let’s say, half a cup in the morning and let her munch on it as much as she wants and the other half in the evening and nothing in between. She freaks out when her bowl is empty and starts crying and acting like she’s about to die of starvation. Give her food, then she takes one bite and leaves. Bro, wtf. Lol. So any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Some cats have better control than others. I can’t give mine food for the entire day as one will just gobble everything up until she pukes.
So they get fed three times a day. Basically their daily food intake distributed in equal portions throughout the day.
She throws up here and there
How often is here and there? It might be an underlying health issue if this happens a lot.
Probably once a week? Every 10 days? I checked it and there was no worms because I was worried about that. It was watery, though. She seems very much fine to me. Still plays and does her thing. Also, she’s a 9 year old cat. That can be a factor, too.
Edit: she’s also one of those that shed a ton of hair. Her shedding is just insane.A few times a month is not out of the ordinary. As long as she has access to fresh water she might just be a bit dramatic!
If you suspect anything, getting her checked out at the vet is still recommended. Cats are experts at hiding illnesses, so it’s hard to gauge how they are feeling.
Aside from that, I don’t think you need to change anything if nothing is out of the ordinary. Some cats are drama queens, just the way it is.
This comment genuinely made me laugh 😂. “dramatic” and “drama queens” sounds exactly like my cat. She starts making weird loud noises when my son pets her or plays with her, just to tell him she’s annoyed with him. And when I walk by, she basically looks at me and does those noises, like “dad, he’s annoying me. Get him away from me”. Lol
I’ve always kept a bowl of watsr and dry food filled and then given them wet food once a day.
Never had any issues with them throwing up. Hopefully, someone else can provide insight into that.
Thank you. My wife has been giving her tuna twice a day and I stopped it because the money adds up if we are giving her a whole can a day. I get her organic dry food from Costco that is chicken and sweet potatoes, so I don’t see a point of spending more money on tuna. Not sure if that’s the cause of throwing up, or because she just eats too much. It’s fucking disgusting, btw. 😂
A can a day seems a bit much to me. We did half a can a day for 15lb cat (not fat, just big).
You can probably eliminate the wet food entirely if you pour extra “juice” from your meals onto the dry food.
Man, it’s crazy how people put so much care and thoughts into caring for an animal here in the states. Back in my country, our animals ate whatever leftover we had from our human meals, and that’s it. It’s still funny to me how I have to drive to a store and buy certain foods for a cat like she’s another human we have in the house. LOL
my cat rules so I just have a huge gravity feeder with dry food available to her constantly and I give her one wet food a day. I refill the gravity feeder once every two weeks or so, whenever it’s empty
She’s been 14.7 pounds for 10 years straight.
My sisters cat is greeeeeedy and has to be restricted or she will eat constantly and end up massively overweight. She was like 5-6 lbs overweight when she got her. Not sure of the specific schedule she uses
So I guess it depends?
Twice a day wet food, but he also has bowl of kibble available throughout the day to snack on. My friend recommended it when we got the first cat, and it has worked for us.
Sometimes he’ll eat all the wet food, sometimes he’ll leave it for later, and sometimes there will be leftovers until evening / morning that he will refuse to eat. We’re not consistent with portion sizes though, so maybe sometimes we give him too much.
He does like the kibble though and he’s happy eating it even of there’s wet food available.
My cat is good and eats only what she needs. She always has a bowl full of her regular food. We’ve been like this for almost 10 years now.
It all kind of depends on the cat and how they handle the buffet always being open.
I’ve always had cats in the house, even as a kid. Our family has pretty much always followed the “They get breakfast when we get breakfast, and dinner at dinner time” so that’s when they get a portion of “wet” food, with dry/crunchy available to “free feed” on throughout the day if they get snackish as well as a few different sources of water.
While that can lead to cats being overweight, we generally let the cats outdoors or now more recently, give them free reign of the house and attached garage. The garage is basically just a building shell, so critters like rodents and birds can still come in which in turn gives the cats something to do and keeps them active which is the key. As long as they’re burning off the extra calories and maintaining a healthy weight, the “how” becomes somewhat irrelevant.
The general advice that seems to be prevalent though is to intentionally restrict their diets a bit to keep them at a healthy weight. So the “free feed” idea may not be the best advice.
That makes a lot of sense. Thank you. She’s a 100% indoor cat. Also, she’s older now, 9 years old. So, I guess it’s good that I’m trying not to free feed her all day so she can be healthy. She IS overweight for sure.
Mine has some food control issues so I feed them 2-3 times a day wet food. Free fed or not she vomits every now and then, pretty sure cats just puke because I’ve never had one that doesn’t a few times a year. She cries if I forget to feed but other than the transition from free feeding she got used to the schedule in a few weeks.
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I give my cat (an adult female, about 10yo) two pouches of wet food a day, plus keeping a dry food bowl topped up (i.e. enough that the bottom isn’t visible). She sometimes eats the lot, and sometimes leaves up to a third of a serving, which is then discarded.
We have two very different cats.
#1 is fed two wet pouches a day and as much dry food as he pleases. Weight is healthy and stable. Though he does beg loudly in-between meals.
#2 exclusively eats dry food and will not touch wet. Probably a good thing, as she is overweight and now on a diet. Doesn’t beg so much, but will take any opportunity to eat if given.
Water always available, but #2 prefers moving water.
The people of the house both work full time, so meals tend to be twice a day - morning and evening.
We have two cats from the same litter. We use an automated cat feeder that pours enough for each of them (same bowl) 4 times a day. They’re pretty good about portioning and making sure they’re able to eat together. They hardly ever throw up (1-2 times a year). They don’t act hungry, but they do rush from anywhere in the house when they hear the food dispensing. Each cat weighs 13 lbs.
Feed them twice. Once in the morning around 8 then again at 8 when I get home from work.
1 cat is an absolute fiend for food and will eat his sisters (not related)
Have to separate them until she is finished then he gets her leftovers. He’ll yell on the other end of the door
If I left food he’d make himself sick, think due to being feral for a while. Other cat could give a fuck lol
No vomiting here with my cats. Will parrot how it seems to be unique to the cat.
We got bowls that only open for the cat with the right chip. That way little miss slow eater can take her time.
3oz of wet food every 12 hours, two of the cats get unlimited dry, one can’t be trusted so we put some in every once in a while, maybe twice a day
Our cats have always been fed raw and they get fed twice a day. One of our cats, the vet said he was “the most beautiful specimen I ever seen”. He’s just a basic tabby (rescue) but does indeed have the most glorious fur. Our failed foster’s pervious owner fed her an expensive fancy diet but kibble and we thought she had coarse fur. After months with us on raw, she also has gloriously soft fur and what we thought was psychological urination issues also cleared up.
Luckily the 2 cats I live with right now are free feeders. They WILL let you know if they can see any part of the bottom of their food bowl or if their water is empty or has a speck of fluff in it, but other than that they are very chill cats in terms of feeding.
My mom’s cats growing up were basically raised as dogs so they would beg and pull human food off the table if you aren’t looking. Any open glass of liquid would immediately have a cat paw inside it the microsecond you turned around. They would also eat the dog food and chew on the plants. Real shitheads. But we loved em.
