Cat needs to gain weight

[LastingLight]

I've written before about the young kitty we rescued and how our 3 older resident cats reacted very badly to him. Three months in things have settled down. We still have some aggro but it's much less frequent. We used to free feed our cats Royal Canin Renal as the eldest has chronic kidney failure. Now we cannot free feed any more because the youngster is a glutton. Our 10 year old female has lost a lot of weight, we believe because of the stress of a new cat and the fact that she doesn't have access to food 24/7 any more. She likes to eat small amounts but often. How do we help her gain weight? She is not keen on raw food. Is there a way of dressing it up so it will be more palatable for her?

Could you afford one of \link{http://www.sureflap.co.uk/products/details/28-microchip-pet-feeder\these} when they come out? (It should be soon.)

Wow. Not sure if we would get those here in South Africa!

Ah - I forgot where you were located. I should imagine that they'd ship to you though and they'll probably find their way to Amazon soon after they're out - and probably cheaper because the Sureflap microchip cat flap is cheaper buying away from the Sureflap site - so it might be available through Amazon Global.

Heck of a price though so maybe another poster will think of a low tech solution.

Our low tech solution at the moment is to shut the youngster in the bathroom at night so that the others can eat whenever they want to. During the day whenever someone asks for food we either shut the youngster away, or put the hungry cat in a room with the food. They have us well trained now! Unfortunately they often spend hours without food during the day while we're at work and other activities.

Remind me - has the youngster been neutered yet?

Yes, the day after we got him.

Ah well - some cats just are gluttons. I'm wondering, though, if his incarcerations might tend to make him more greedy when he eventually gets out. Does he genuinely pig himself or is that just in comparison to the older cats? What weight is he?

I just have to tell you how cute he is... he looooves attention and often gets it by sitting on my books or keyboard while I'm trying to study. If I put my face next to his he washes my nose, my cheeks, my glasses... and then he clasps my head in his front paws and washes my hair. He likes DH and DD too, but I'm his favourite human.

Last time we weighed him he was 4.1kg but I'm sure he has picked up since then, and he is not a very big cat. His tummy keeps getting rounder and rounder. When we let him eat his fill he gets diarrhea.