Can anyone advise me about my cat's diet?

[TranquilityofSolitude]

I have posted about my cat a few times and had great advice. We are having a few problems with his diet and I'm not quite sure what's going wrong.

Background: he turned up in our garden in 2012, incredibly thin and clearly struggling. We fed him in the garden for 8 months before we were able to catch him, whereupon we had him neutered, vaccinated and chipped. The vet estimated that he was about 4.

When we first caught him he weighed less than 2kg but within 6 months he had grown to an absolutely huge cat at 8kg. He had no ability to regulate his food, presumably having been extremely hungry for a long time. At this point he was eating 8 Whiskas pouches each day. We trimmed this back to 4 pouches each day and he settled at about 6.5kg. We kept feeding him 4 pouches a day for some time but he is quite fussy about them, usually eating all of the jelly but only some of the meat.

I tried to move him towards a dry food diet because the wet food was mostly going in the bin. I bought Royal Canin for fussy cats, which he likes, but he doesn't seem to accept it as a substitute for wet food, which he demands regularly. We settled into a pattern of half of the recommended intake of biscuits and one pouch each day. He eats all of the jelly on the wet food but leaves the meat.

Taking him back to the vet he was weighed again and still weighs 6.5kg. This was a bit disappointing because we felt he was eating much less. The vet suggested we try Royal Canin's diet biscuits. I bought some but he was sick a couple of times so we moved him back to the original type. However, he is still sick occasionally and it's all biscuits - they come back whole which suggests he doesn't even bother chewing them but just wolfs them down.

Thank you if you've got this far! I'm not sure what to try next given that what we are doing is neither helping to lose weight nor agreeing with him. Any advice would be very welcome :)

[TranquilityofSolitude]

I should add that we've tried other wet food brands but he doesn't like them at all. He only likes 2 types of Whiskas and they don't come in the same pack - fortunately there's a cat shelter near us who are happy to take unopened rejects!

[ragged]

What is his target weight, around 5 kg?
It's weird that you talk about him fussy but say he'll also eat huge amounts making him fat.
So forgive me for being thick, but why can't you just give him less than he wants.

[tabulahrasa]

The regurgitating biscuits because they've eaten them too fast or taken too many is quite common btw.

Also, cats don't chew, they have the wrong kind of teeth - they're designed for ripping meat apart.

Not as helpful as recommendations I know, but, perhaps makes it less worrying that he's being sick?

No cat will accept dry food as being the same as wet food, however much they like dry food, they'll demand something better if they think they're in with a chance, lol.

[TranquilityofSolitude]

I guess he should weigh about 5kg. He's a larger than average cat. I think I am giving him less than he should have - half the recommended quantity of biscuits and one pouch - but he doesn't eat all of the wet food and the biscuits seem to make him sick. I feel as it it's not working but I don't know how to put it right.

[tabulahrasa]

Cats are gits about food btw, you do get used to it.

The pouches keep in the fridge, so there's no need to be giving him a whole one at once.

And giving him smaller meals of the dry food should stop him being sick as often.

[tabulahrasa]

Oh - you could try one of these that should slow him down.

[TranquilityofSolitude]

Thank you for the reassurance about the vomiting. I will try giving only a few biscuits at a time.

I think the problem with his weight is also that he rarely moves. Having had a hard life he doesn't seem to see any point in doing more than sleeping and walking down to see what's materialised in his bowl.

[TranquilityofSolitude]

Thanks tabulahrasa He has one of those balls but we spoilt it (and him) by putting Dreamies in it and now he won't move it for anything less. He has 10 Dreamies in it on Saturday mornings as his weekend treat. He used to run around after it but now he's worked out that he just has to sit in a corner and roll it against the wall for it to deliver the treats. He is really lazy!

[cozietoesie]

Have his teeth been thoroughly checked recently? They may be dodgy after a life on the streets.

[cozietoesie]

PS - what a lucky lad to finally land on his feet with a caring owner!

[Rikalaily]

Have you tried him on a raw diet? You can get minces for cats which contain the taurine they need, it would help regulate his weight as well as being tasty enough that it's rare to find a cat that will turn their nose up.

[ragged]

My cats puke quite easily too. It's like my little fishwife mantra "DON'T HUG THE CAT HE JUST ATE & YOU'RE CLEANING UP IF HE'S SICK!!"

It would be best if he could also get more exercise, OP. What happens if you chuck him in the garden?

[TheOneWiththeNicestSmile]

Might it help to add a bit of water to the biscuits, as well as smaller portions? If they're softer they might stay down (although, being a regular cat git, he might refuse them altogether...)

[tabulahrasa]

Rofl, bless him, he sounds like he's landed on his feet and is taking full advantage of it.

I'd stop worrying at all about if he's getting enough food (as in being picky or leaving bits) until he's lost weight...he's not going to starve if he's overweight and he won't get malnutrition if he's having dried food as well.

If you ever get to the point where he's still losing weight and that was becoming an issue then you can rethink what you're doing at that point...but by the sound of him, I don't think that's likely to happen.

[TranquilityofSolitude]

Thank you :)

Rikalaily do you know anything about the mince? Do you buy it fresh? I'm happy to try something different.

cozietosie he doesn't have a full complement of teeth. Last time we saw the vet she said he would need them cleaning in 6 - 12 months, but not immediately.

ragged in answer to "what happens if you chuck him in the garden" - he sits miserably against the door waiting to come back in. In the summer he lies in the sun until he hears someone inside, when he comes to sit by the door in hope. We have tried to get him moving in the house with a laser pen but he will only play for a few moments before taking himself back upstairs to bed.

[cozietoesie]

Hmmm. I recall taking The Lodger in for a full dental (he'd brought himself up on the streets and - I suspect - had been given to raiding bins with sticky bad-for-teeth stuff in) and his teeth were worse than the vet had thought until she got him under a GA. (Cats not being the most cooperative of patients when it comes to mouth examinations.)

I think, if funds permit, I'd be having him in for a dental sooner rather than later. If he already has some missing, it sounds as if he has a 'difficult' mouth given that he's a young cat.

[tacal]

have you tried him on a pate type food or food that is not chunks of meat? A vet told me that dry food has more calories than wet and advised me just to feed wet when my cat put on weight. My cat does seems to be eating less since I moved her onto tins of lily's kitchen which is 70% meat. I think it is filling her up more than other food. One tin lasts 3 days, I keep it in air tight jars in the fridge and it seems to keep ok. My cat sounds very similar to yours. She is very lazy and only gets up to go to her food dish or sit on my lap.

[TranquilityofSolitude]

Thank you for all the advice - lots of ideas to try. You could well be right about his teeth cozietoesie. He is very uncooperative and it's quite likely that the vet could not get a good look at his teeth.

I have tried the pate type of food but he didn't eat it. At the time I gave up but it could have been that he didn't like the flavour rather than the texture. Perhaps it's worth another attempt. I could also try adding water to his biscuits to see if that helps him to keep them down.

Thank you :)

[RubbishMantra]

Mine get Cosma wet and Applaws biscuits. The Applaws are cereal free and have an 80% meat content. The Cosma is only a complimentary food though I think.

They don't really chew their biscuits, so nothing to be alarmed about I'd say.

MTeen was on Animonda Kitten, but has now decided he hates it.

MCat needs a scale and polish type thing, and he's 4 and a half.

[RubbishMantra]

Ooh, and i agree, he's found a lovely cat guardian in you.

[cozietoesie]

Out of interest - did you by any chance have a mouse problem before he moved in? (I didn't think I had one here until The Lodger came to stay and I found a small corpse that he hadn't managed to eat up first.) I wondered whether he was supplementing his diet with on-the-hoof meals having learned that way of things out of necessity ?

It also sounds partly as if all those years of living by his wits may have changed his approach to nourishment compared to an average house cat and he's 'conserving energy' a little - rather than being simply lazy.

[TranquilityofSolitude]

We did have mice in our garage in our old house (we've moved since the cat moved in) and I also feed the birds, which may have attracted him in the first place. When we first noticed him he was trying to eat birdseed but I think he'd have preferred a bird. He doesn't catch anything now. Well, a butterfly last summer but I think he was as surprised as we were!

[Qwebec]

A member of my family has a cat that tends to over eat
They solved the issue with this
since the cat gets to eat only one kibble at a time it prevents being sick from eating too fast.

[TranquilityofSolitude]

Thanks, Qwebec. I'll have a look.

[Rikalaily]

TranquilityofSolitude You can buy them online in bulk and get them delivered or some petshops stock them, they usually come frozen in blocks and you portion it out by weight according to wheat your cat weighs. We are switching our dog to raw this week, we are lucky that we have a raw petfood shop nearby so we can buy weekly. If they stock raw catfood we'll be switching our cats over too.