Help switching to all wet food in multi cat house.

[Barbara]

I have 4 cats, Thumper who was just diagnosed on April 1st, her litter mate Callie who has a hyper active thyroid, they are both 14, Petey who is 4 & overweight & LOVES to eat and Josie who is "normal" at 1.5 yrs. They have all eaten just dry in the past with occasional wet food as a treat. They all love the wet food for the most part but I have noticed even Petey doesn't always eat all that is given to him at once & I have never left it out. Thumper has also had some issues with UTI's, in fact I had her at the vet for a suspected UTI when she was diagnosed. I want to switch to all wet food but can't quite figure out how to get there. I work and I'm gone for about 9 hrs each day. I have seen some people talk about the automatic feeders but how does that work with 4 cats, especially one who loves to eat like Petey. I'm afraid he will eat everything & Callie can't afford to loose any weight & Thumper needs food during the day also. I have also read about freezing wet food and mixing water with it, but again how do I know Petey won't eat most of it. Any help would be appreciated!

Barbara

 

[Lisa and Witn (GA)]

You will be able to switch them. I have 8 cats and also gone for 9 - 10 hours a day. I feed my cats twice a day, once before I go to work and when I come home. My cats were also fed dry food from a feeder that they could access any time. I just took it away and started feeding them on a regular schedule. It took a few days before they figured out that if they wanted to eat, they needed to eat then, but I assure you, no one starved. :mrgreen: The only cat I made sure that had eaten was my diabetic cat. With the rest, the most they ever missed was one meal.

 

[Kathyh]

I have 3 kitties, one of whom is miss piggy (real name Pumpkin, who tries to live up to her name sake) and Maisey diabetic and her litter mate Vinney, whom I have no idea how he maintains his weight, as he puts his nose up to most everything. We were a dry only household for a few years. Oldest cat couldn't tolerate fiber, so she was on mostly wet with some low fiber dry, when she passed we went dry only stayed with low fiber.
We are now 90% wet. Vinney loves high places so he gets his dry up high, where no one else likes to go. Maisey & Pumpkin share the can of ff, both like it with water added. Actually Vinney has occasionally tried some that way now. Pumpkin seems more satisfied with the wet and less likely to raid Maisey's dish, Maisey is a slow and dainty eater. When I'm home in the evening I make sure Pumpkin doesn't raid and encourage Maisey to eat a second 1/2 can ff before bed. Leave frozen half for M & P when I go to bed. I also moved dishes further apart, so Pumpkin wasn't so easily tempted to raid Maisey's dish.

 

[underdawg]

You are right. You don't know who gets what after you leave. I have 4 cats who used to have dry food available all the time until I went to wet food only. It took a little while for them to understand that there was a limited amount of food at each meal. No one is really piggy but they eat a good portion and then nap for a while. I try to make sure that everyone goes to the food twice so if someone seems to be there for a third time while someone else has not had their second visit to the plate, I take the food up and then put it down for the one who needs a second visit. It took a little while for them to understand. When I needed to leave food for the middle of the day, I would put the timer feeders in their favorite place for midday and hope for the best. The boys like to stay upstairs and the girls like to stay downstairs so I would put one feeder upstairs and one downstairs.

If your cats have to have a different food each, then the only way you know who ate what while you were gone is to lock them in different parts of the house. i have a cat with UTI issues along with the one who was diagnosed with diabetes. It was very hard to keep them out of the other's bowl. I eventually had to put everyone on the high protein lo carb canned diet in January. Because of the UTI kitty, I have to make sure that the food has low phosphorus, low magnesium and no fish.

 

[Barbara]

I removed all dry food today & left Fancy Feast out. I guess I didn't leave enough out though cause they acted like they hadn't eaten in weeks. Good news is Thumper's BG was only 119 PMPS and an hr later it's only 189, and I'm thinking part of that might be her food. I usually feed her 1/2 can Fancy Feast when I give her shot but everyone was hungry so I had to feed them all even though I didn't shoot. Any suggestions on how much food I should leave out for the 4 of them? They all get 1/2 can in the morning & 1/2 can in the evening. They act like they don't want to eat more than that at one time.

 

[sn422]

I have 5 cats, who all were on dry Science diet W/D because of one's tendency to get UTI's. Worked like a charm for that. Always left food out all day. Pearl was recently diagnosed diabetic and my vet wants her to eat Purina Canned D/M twice a day. It's also OK to give her dry w/d twice a day, because it's good for diabetics. She told me no more free feeding. So first I split half a can of D/M between Pearl and another cat. Then I split half a can of Fancy Feast between 3 other cats, just so the others won't be jealous of Pearl eating canned food. Pearl has to have her dry out of one bowl, as I measure how much she gets. So her bowl is in the kitchen, which used to be available to all of them, so it took them a little while to get used to that. I inject her while she begins eating her dry, after I know she's eaten the canned food. The other cats' bowls are in the bedroom. I leave everyone's food out for an hour and a helf, sometimes two, if I'll be home. But then it comes up and no one eats again until the evening feed. It took a little time for the others to get used to it, but, like my vet said to me, a lot of times when cats nibble just a little bit it's not really because they're hungry - they're just BORED. It's working well for us, as Pearl hasn't had any problems. We've adjusted her dose several times, she even went off insulin (OTJ!) for a week, but her next glucose curve showed she needed to be back on. Good luck to you. I found adjusting the other four to be a lot more challenging than managing Pearl's diabetes :roll:

 

[drjsiems]

"Pearl was recently diagnosed diabetic and my vet wants her to eat Purina Canned D/M twice a day. It's also OK to give her dry w/d twice a day, because it's good for diabetics. "

For what it's worth, I don't think that dry food is good for ANY cat, especially a diabetic cat. This may be contributing to why your kitty did not stay OTJ.

Judy & Jake

 

[Julia & Bandit (GA)]

It's also OK to give her dry w/d twice a day, because it's good for diabetics.

This food is absolutely not good for diabetics, because it's 37% carbs. It's especially bad even for a dry food.


I switched to an all wet diet (it was already mostly wet anyway) when Bandit was diagnosed with diabetes. I mostly made sure their feeding times were only when I was home, but there were times when I wanted to make sure Bandit ate while I was gone so his BG didn't drop too low. So I experimented with them while I was there to see how I could get both of my cats to eat their portions without Bandit gobbling up both cats' food. I found that if the portions were small enough, Gabby would eat her whole portion. So I would freeze the food and set the feeder to go off twice while I was gone, with portion sizes I knew both would eat immediately so Bandit wouldn't have the opportunity to steal Gabby's. And I didn't sweat it if Bandit sometimes stole a little of her food at the end, as long as she ate most of it.

Because I practiced with the feeders while I was there, I knew that the cats had learned that the feeder noise meant food, and came running when they heard them go off. I had set places in the kitchen where they got fed...Bandit at one end and Gabby at the other and that's where I placed their separate feeders. When Gabby's cancer prevented her from eating all her food so this didn't work anymore, I put them in different parts of the house and set the feeders. So Bandit couldn't get at her food.

Here is the feeder I use...I bought one for each cat. http://cgi.ebay.com/4-DAY-LCD-AUTOM...728?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item35b0e79928

It was the only one Bandit couldn't rip apart, and I liked that you could set each of the compartments to release the food at any hour you wanted. You can also have the option to record and play a message when the food is released, if you call your cats a dinner time. It has a compartment for a freezer pack to keep the food cold as well, but I found it way easier to just freeze the food and forget messing with the cold pack.

How big are your cats? 3oz of Fancy Feast a day for each cat seems a little low. Every cat is different, but to give you an idea, my 12 lb cat needs 7.5oz of Fancy Feast a day (2 1/2 cans) and my 7 lb cat need 5.5oz (about 2 cans of Fancy Feast) of food a day.