How much should my cat eat?

[SolidGold]

I have two cats; a Siamese, aged 5, he weighs approx. 5.5 kgs, maybe slightly more now, and a DSH aged 2, he weighs 4.2 kg. I feed them high quality wet food, brand Bozita, and Vets Kitchen dry food.

I have been feeding them wet food when they want and dry food down all the time, but YC remains at ideal weight, Siamese gets fatter!

I've removed the dry food for now and am just putting a little of it down for the night.

How much do you feed your cats when they are on a diet?

The vet recommended Royal Canin dry food Lite, but I don't want him to eat too much dry food.

At the moment I am trying to limit how much I feed him, but he is constantly asking for food. To punish me for not feeding him, he is constantly fetching my knitting out of the bag and chewing it!

He does go out, but not much in this weather. The only exercise he gets is chasing YC up and down the stairs I play with him a little, but as soon as YC joins in (which YC does almost immediately) Siamese won't play anymore

I don't want him to be hungry or miserable or to think I don't love him anymore, but he does need to lose weight.

It's odd because any other time of the day he will come to bed with me, i.e if I have a lie in at the weekend, if I go to bed early he comes up with me, if I'm ill.

But if it's night time and the light is out he can't settle, but walks over our heads, on and off dd's bed, chases YC around the house, drinks from my water glass, knocking everything off my bedside table ...!

Sounds to me as if he needs a schedule. (They love schedules once they get them - although goodness help you if you then ignore it too many times.)

Fixed meal times will hopefully help with that as well as his podge. Give it a try for a few weeks and let us know how you get on.

Thanks

Well,we've cut out the dry food yesterday and from now on (at least for a while). Today he's had two meals. I still think half a pack of food morning and night is a lot, it looks a lot, but I don't want him to be hungry either.

The problem is he follows me around a lot of the time, so when I go in the kitchen, he does too and then asks for food! Usually I'm in a hurry, cooking dinner or getting quick breakfast before I go to work etc, so don't always have much time to play, but I'll have to think of a quick game that will make him happy and distract him when I don't have much time.

Stay strong and say NO in a firm voice. Within a day or two he'll hopefully hear that and take himself off. Then you can play with him when you're free. Siamese are really very trainable once they realize you're serious. You need to exert strong and calm will - because they have pretty ferocious wills of their own.

Good luck.

Thank you

I have just weighed him and he weighs 5.25 kg, so not as much as I expected. In fact slightly less than when the vet weighed him at the end of August!

That's good - not so much trouble to get him down to his fighting weight!

I should have said - allied to the NO word, do you have a general food calling word for him? It's useful to have one to announce that the bar is open and reinforce his schedule times. (We use NOSH spread over two long syllables. )

We don't really, no. He's always there waiting! I never have to call him.

He follows me everywhere, so if I go in the kitchen, he comes too, unless he's really fast asleep upstairs somewhere.

They actually have an internal clock that says 'Food!', I swear. I'll be working at the computer down here, I'll hear 'Pad Pad Pad' and look up to see Seniorboy coming down the stairs. And Yes - it will be 12 o'clock to within 10 minutes.

It's still good practice to develop a word which they get to know even if it's redundant half the time. Reinforcement.

(He stays out of the way of a morning - upstairs asleep on his electric blanket.)

Bless. Have you got photos of him?

Somewhere. I must put one on my profile someday.

Definitely!