Kitten to Cat - changing food over

[RosesforTea]

I’m hoping for some advice from collective minds about cat food.

My kitten/cat is about to turn a year old (as far as we can tell, he’s from the Shelter, and age is an estimate). Everything I read says to switch from ‘kitten’ labeled food to ‘cat’ labeled food.

He had a rough start, food-wise when he arrived here and had diarrhea for 2 weeks. I hope this was just the transition to a new home and new food, but it has made me wary of any further changes (hence this post!)

He is on Hills Kitten dry food and wet pouches. He gets one chicken pouch in the morning and one tuna pouch in the afternoon. He completely eats the chicken pouch, but recently has started to only eat half of the tuna pouch and just lick all the gravy from it.

He also gets 1/4 cup of Hills Kittens dry food every morning, but I would top this up so he always has dry food available. Usually he eats just under the 1/4 cup a day, so I top up in the morning, sometimes it will only be lightly eaten (rarely), sometimes it will almost all be gone.

On the whole, it is rare that he would have both wet and dry food bowls empty for longer than 2 hours or so, and 95% of the time the dry food has food in it, so I think he has access to enough food.

Looks wise, he is weighs at the higher end of the 12 month kitten weights, but he doesn’t look fat, so he may be big framed, or older than our guesses.

I propose changing to the same pouches and dry food times, but just with adult Hills pouches/food, not kitten. So I hope it will be similar.

Since I got him, he has been an inside cat, and due to WFH I have been home pretty much all the time, apart from occasional 2 hour trips for errands or half day trips to work/other etc. he is used to me being here and moving to me being at work 2-3 days a week will be a big change for him.

He follows me around and has to be in the same room as me, so he will definitely notice.

My questions -

1. In light of the big change coming in relation to work, should I delay changing his food? If so, how long?
2. I thought I would start by changing over the tuna food pouch (the one he doesn’t seem to like as much), and then a fortnight later, changing the other food pouch. This means his dry food stays the same, so if he doesn’t like the wet food or gets upset by the change he can exclusively eat his familiar dry food. If everything seems ok with the wet pouches, I would change the dry food over slowly, 1/4 of a bowl at a time, as recommended.

Thoughts? I am really keen to try and make this stress free for DKitten (now DCat!), as I can’t go through the horrible diarrhea time again!

Sounds like a good plan

Just FYI the Hills Kitten pouches recommend 5 and 2/3rds of a pouch a day for a cat his age/weight and 7/8th of a cup of dry food. Both assume you are only using either the pouches or the dry food.

By this it suggests that I am under feeding him! But he is putting on weight, developing a little stomach and has food left over every day, and he doesn’t bug me for food, so I think he is underfed.

I would appreciate advice from more experienced cat owners. Thank you.

*don’t think he is underfed!

I’m interested in answers too. My DKittens were born to a feral mother soon after she was placed with me for fostering by a charity. They are 10 months now but in that time we have had x2 moves (1 international) and their tummies have finally settled.

They had all sorts when they were born in chlamidia and had lots of meds but are healthy now. I don't want to go back to the poop issues though!

Mine have a similar amount of food as your boy, a pouch/tray morning and evening and biscuits in their bowls all day. I subscribe to the Cool Cats Club and am using Kitten food arm. As far as I can see the only difference with that brand is the higher meat content in kitten food than cat food but I might contact them to ask what they recommend.

My kittens are about ten months but I haven't stuck to the kitten vs cat food. I had them on a subscription steamed all meat food but it was expensive and they just stopped eating it and preferred the dry kibble. So I started with the kitten food (like Felix), which they ate. My thing is they are Maine Coons and huge - but I still give them one pouch each morning and late afternoon with kibble out all day. They do ask for food if they've cleared the bowl. They are in and out cats.
I find all pet food manufacturers recommend far too much - I have dogs too and according to the pack feed them about half what they suggest! My dogs are normal weight and active, and they'd eat more if given but then put on too much weight.

Sorry forgot to say I think you are feeding them fine though I'd give them more variety of flavours.

Mine will be 1 next month. My plan is to wait until the kitten dry food has a week or two's worth left and then start mixing in the adult food more and more over time. I pay no attention to what the suggested servings are - he stops when he is full - he isn't greedy with his food, so I let him self-regulate.

He never liked the kitten wet food, so he has always had all ages tinned food, so nothing to change there. I think all you can do is try the new food and see how your cat responds. I do find that he will refuse something the first, second or sometimes third time but I keep feeding it and then at some point he will eat it. There are some meats which he likes better than others but I give him a variety.

Thanks for the thoughts everyone.

I’m pleased to hear @ukborn that food packages generally over estimating how much food animals need, as I had been feeling like a very bad mother ever since I worked out those calculations for my earlier post! But as I said, there is rarely a time when there is no food in his bowl, so he can’t be underfed.

I would also like to branch out on flavours, but Hills only had the 2 flavours for kittens. Now I can move to Cat pouches, I can get about 5 different types, I think (Salmon, chicken and beef for cat aged 1-7 and the fish and chicken for neutered cat aged 1-7. They are probably the same!)

Does anyone think I should delay changing over food until after he has had a chance to settle into my new work pattern of being back at work 2-3 days/week? I assume it won’t hurt him to keep eating kitten food for awhile, the kitten vs adult food can’t be that different.

I think I should keep it the same for a month, it then I thought just starting small and changing one food pouch a day is almost nothing - like offering a different flavoured food - and I should do it and get started. As long as I keep the dry food the same as a familiar base, he’ll be fine……does this sound ok?

Kitten food is more calorific, our vet said we would know it was definitely time to move ours to adult food once they started to get a little round If he doesn't look overweight then if in doubt I'd just keep him on the kitten food longer or maybe just start with swapping out the tuna pouch (or whichever food he has when you are home for the evening).

Some cats don't like food changes but ours seem to crave variety and so had no problem making the switch to adult food. In fact, any time I put out something "new" out they demolish it. The only thing they won't eat is wet food in gravy - like yours they just lick the gravy off. They have a clear preference for pate style wet food. So maybe when you're switching to adult wet food, it could be worth trying your cat with a few different textures and flavours to see what he enjoys most.

You could also mix the kitten food with the adult food for a few days, gradually increasing the amount of adult food until it's all adult. This was recommended to me as an approach for a mum cat if we rehome a mother cat and kitten (as she could eat kitten food to start with).

Thanks everyone. Thanks interesting to know about kitten food being more calorific, @violetbunny. It might explain why DKitten/Dcat has been only eating half the tuna pouch in the afternoons? Or it may be that he just doesn’t like it as much as the chicken one.

Also, looking at the back of the cat food recommendations, they are lower than the kitten ones I quoted above, and almost exactly in line with what he is eating now. So this has set my mind at ease abit about the underfeeding issue - he is eating the approx right amount for his Cat age.

After that advice, I swapped out the afternoon tuna pouch for an adult salmon one today and DCat ate it all! I’ve taken on board the other advice about different flavours and textures and I’ve ordered the adult pouches in quite a few different ones. I’ll keep his dry food and morning pouch the same, it over the next month I’ll keep doing different afternoon pouches. This month will also be him adjusting to me not WFH all the time, so I feel comfortable this is a small change in the right direction, but he won’t feel like everything is changing and be too anxious.

Thanks for the advice everyone. I learn a lot from cat owners on here!

Sounds like a good plan, OP! DCat is lucky to have such a thoughtful owner

Hi everyone,
I thought I’d offer an update, if anyone is interested, or if someone else searches Mumsnet with the same problem.

I did as planned, and exchanged the afternoon kitten tuna food pouch for an adult one. Starting with salmon (which he loved!
Odd after being so-so with the kitten tuna?!?) and Beef, which he didn’t like first time but the second time it was all very delicious.

I’m taking on board what people said about giving him more flavours/meats variety and also different textures of wet food. I’ve been sticking with Hills food exclusively so far, but might branch out to Royal Canin or Ziwi as we keep going.

It’s lovely to see DCat have some new favourites and a vet friend told me today how his coat looks shiny and he looks very well kept, which made me very proud. 6 months ago, when he was in the Shelter you couldn’t say that! He’s really landed on his feet here (even if he is sulking a bit at me tonight and he had his flea/worm treatment put on his back tonight!)

Thanks everyone for your input. There was a lot of good info from others here