Kitten food v adult food

[Papergirl1968]

Socks the kitten is about 8 months old (actual birthday not known) so I buy her kitten food - varies between Whiskas, Felix etc.
Matt the cat is a rather overweight five year old who has adult cat food.
However he sometimes goes to eat hers and she goes to eat his. I don’t think she’s actually very keen on the kitten food and prefers cat food, whereas he doesn’t care either way. But I know kitten food is higher in calories and she’s a skinny little thing despite my best efforts. And big boy cat certainly doesn’t need the extra calories but it’s hard to stop him polishing hers off as she’s a slow eater and will leave it and cone back to it a few times.
My question is, should I just drop the kitten food and move her on to adult food, or keep her on it - and do my best to stop greedy guts guzzling it - until she turns one?
Both also get some chicken or steak if the hoomans are having it, the occasional slice of ham, a bit of tinned salmon or whatever, treats once a day, and dry food last thing at night.

I was told to stop kitten food once they were neutered. Surely she’s been done at 8 months?

For the health of both of your cats itd be best to source a more appropriate food, the brands you mentioned are quite likely to lead to diabetes, malnutrition, weight gain and kidney problems in the long term. At eight months though your probably fine to put them on the same food as each other but feed separately, as they'll need different amounts until the young one fills out and the fat one loses the weight. But considering they have different needs at the moment, maybe just feeding them each a more suitable feed separately would be best. Zooplus is a great place to buy his quality food that can be less expensive than the supermarket rubbish if you buy big bags and multipacks

The best thing I ever did was to get microchip controlled feeding bowls - that makes sure that my two cats only get the eat the food meant for them.
He needs more wet food as he has a stress condition which affects his kidneys, and he eats little and often.
She is like me and will literally eat anything and as much as she can !

The second best thing I did was was Sulkypatsy suggested - get better quality food on the internet. I use Zooplus too (unless any of the others have sales on) and buy in bulk a few times a year - so much easier and I save money.

I am quite interested in this issue too. My female kitty seems to like food in jelly not gravy, liking Felix 'best' and I have tried Tesco own brand and Nature's Kitchen chicken (the latter she'll lick off jelly leaving meat), better success with Lilly's Kitchen (but only saw chicken in shop) - also success with Purina dried food for kittens. The bother and expense is buying a box and then wondering what to do with the rest (donate?)

She was neutered just before Xmas. Neither have collars so I can’t use microchipped bowls.
Which higher quality brands would you recommend? I occasionally get Encore from the supermarket and they like that. I think it was Blink they weren’t so keen on.

@Papergirl1968 they don’t need collars. They just need to be microchipped.
And if older cat is chubby then stop the non cat food treats.

ah, ok, yes, they are microchipped so that would work.

Some of the foods I use on zooplus are higher price range- (purizon, orjen)

mid price range and used regularly are- bozita( tetra packs are super handy), sanabelle, taste of the wild and there's a zooplus own brand one called porta 21 that goes down quite well with my own and with fosters.

Lower price range but not still pretty good are smilla and animonda.

Sometimes in a pinch I'd use royal canin or hills prescription but they usually don't go down well with foster cats and one of my own has had bad tummy reactions to a few formulations of the hills stuff.

The overeating in the bigger cat may just be a greedy cat, but definitely keep on eye just to rule out a health related issue. My female is just greedy, and would be chunky if I let her, lol, you could just have one of those too.

Big cat was a chunky kitten who grew into a chunky cat. He is big boned (like me, lol) and greedy with it (again, like me).
Plus he’s lazy (do I really need to add, like me?!)
Thanks for those suggestions, will try them.

We haven’t had a picture of Matt for a while...

I moved my 7 month old kitten onto adult food about 6 weeks ago as he was eating the older cats food and obviously preferred it, even though the same brand/flavour. I give them Iams dry food. Probably not the best quality but definitely better than Felix, etc.

I'd say neither of your cats are eating the right food and microchip feeders are the way to go.

If one in particular is a scrounger, you may only need one feeder for the sensible eater, and the scrounger can live without. Our scrounger is much better behaved after being given a puzzle feeder for Christmas which has stopped her inhaling her food in 5 seconds and then hanging around the slow eater's microchip feeder hoping to steal some food. It keeps her much more occupied and so we have far less shouting.

Neither cat needs treats - if you must do treats then look at Thrive (or Snackies which are the Zooplus cheaper version).

Your thin cat is likely an appropriate weight cat. I have 2 skinny cats - one is a healthy weight young cat and one is a healthy weight old cat who needs to eat loads to maintain that weight. If you feed high quality food the amount they actually need to eat is tiny.

Good brands on Zooplus are Animonda, Feringa, Bozita, Purizon. All cost far less per day than high street brands plus you don't have to lug them back from the shops - result

Thanks, all.
Happy to oblige, Yet.

He is a beautiful solid boy!

Ha! Solid, yes, that’s putting it politely!

I know it's popular on MN to knock the cheaper supermarket & commercial brands - but I'm unaware of any scientific study that has shown that they are
quite likely to lead to diabetes, malnutrition, weight gain and kidney problems in the long term.
Happy to change my opinion if presented with valid data.
I feed my cats a mixture of Felix (Agail) & dried food plus they eat mice and anything they scrounge from us. None of our cats are overweight and my last two lived to 17 and 20 respectively.

Ollie is on kitten food, only due to needing extra calories
I feed a mix of crave, natures menu, aatu... whatever is grain free, high meat and on offer!!