Feeding routine in a super, multi cat household?

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itzj

itzj

Member Since 2014
If any of you have 8+ indoor cats who all co-mingle, can you share your feeding routine with me?

We are trying to figure out how to feed a diabetic (I now have trained to pretty much only eat in the kitchen), a cat with high crystals who the vet wants on prescription and who currently refuses wet food, and 9 others all of whom are rather finicky with wet food. I don't know how to transition them to all wet. And we have 2 kids and goats who keep us busy as it is.

I need tips, tricks, any practical info you can give. The more ideas I can get the better.
 
Gradual transitions reduce food refusal, vomiting, and/or diarrhea. About 20-25% different food each day or two until switched.
Wet food is best for all of them; one low carb possibly renal-safe dry food is from Young Again (internet only). The Friskies Special Diet pates are both low carb and renal-friendly.

You might do a transition to low carb dry first, with Evo Cat and Kitten, or one of the Young Again dry (pricey, but allegedly they eat less of it so it comes out even).
 
We use Stella & Chewy's Tum Ticklin' Turkey or some freeze dried chicken sprinkled on top of the wet to get cats eating it. Sometimes sprinkling some of their dry on top works for transitioning too.

We meal feed AM and PM. We also try to meal feed again just before we leave and just before we go to bed. If its an early morning and that's pretty much breakfast time, then we separate everyone according to their eating habits. The 3 diabetics go downstairs together. Two of them eat out of automatic feeders and will go to them when they turn. At first we had to separate out Sly because ChrisFarley would take his too. Cecil's food goes up high because the other two can't climb (declawed) and can't jump high (one's too fat and one's a Munchkin). Taz goes by herself and is free fed wet and dry all day long because she is old. The other 4 are left with wet and the dry that 2 of them eat. If we happen to leave all 7 together, we leave only wet low carb out on the counters where the two that can't jump can't get to and leave their feeders out for them. The two girls who only eat dry just don't eat until we come home.
 
One trick that was helpful in transitioning one of my dry food addicts over to can was sprinkle the dry food on top of the canned. It took several weeks to completely convert her. I started out with a handful of dry on top of the canned. Then over a period of a few weeks, I kept reducing the amount of dry to where there was only a few pieces. Finally I stopped giving them to her.
 
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