Cat feeding advice. Anyone help

[hayley3602]

Hi I’m looking for advice regarding feeding. First time cat owner soon 😊. I am adopting a 2 year old rescue cat in a few days. She is currently fed wet and dry whiskers food.

I am looking to change her to a different brand of food with a higher meat content. I’m looking to feed her a mix of dry and wet ( I will wait till she is settled in for a few weeks then gradually change her food)

I have been looking at applaws dry and supplementary wet food. If she is 5kg and feeding guide says 60g of dry per day do I give her 60g then one can of supplementary wet food or do I need to reduce how many grams of dry food I give her if feeding one can of wet supplementary food each day?

I was also looking into wild freedom dry and wet food on zoo plus. It has the feeding guide on it for each food for complete feeding but not for mixing 50/50 dry and wet. How do I work out how much I should feed her if wanting to mix wet and dry.

Do people use different brands for feeding dry and wet? Or am I better to use same brand for dry and wet.

Thank you.

My cats have 1.5 sachets of wet food and two bowls of dry food a day.
I used Royal Cannin Sensitivity Control as one of mine has skin allergies.
Good luck with the new kitty! X

Congratulations! The feeding guides assume that you are only feeding them that product, so the 60g would be her entire daily calorie allowance. It's fine to mix brands (I do) but you might have to do a bit more maths to work out the right portions.

Yes, reduce dry to compensate for the wet.

Also I'd recommend keeping an eye on her weight while you work it out. The guidelines on the package can be rather too much unless your cat is very active and/or a natural grazer (makes sense as they want to sell more food and also want to err on the side of caution because nobody wants to starve their pet).

We rescued a big lazy, greedy ginger boy and initially worked out his rations based on the guidelines but he put on rather a lot of weight before we noticed that it was too much. He now has just over half of the recommended serving and it is enough for him! Some cats can easily regulate their intake and won't overeat but some really can't we found out.

I mean he has the same amount of wet food (1x 85g can per day) but we reduced his biscuits. Easier to do it that way round, but both his wet and dry are complete foods, not supplementary. His biscuits are always the same but he gets different brands and flavours for his wet food to give him some variety day to day. I don't know if he appreciates this!

Either way get small amounts of the types you are thinking of to start off with as cats can be fussy and turn their noses up at certain flavours or textures (mine likes chunks and shreds but does not recognise pate as food).

We use Republic of Cats and have found them to be excellent (we went through a Lot of brands with our very old now dearly departed cat, this was a brand she could tolerate and that kept her in good condition. We stuck with them for the new cat).

It’s worth bearing in mind that wet food is less calorie dense than dry, and so the dry needn’t be reduced by the same weight as the wet is adding (it’s mostly water). It’s also worth bearing in mind how you split the calories.

Republic of Cats have made it very straightforward to tailor the food/calorie intake to the cat, though we found they overestimated our current cat’s requirements, and if we go by their estimate he gets quite chunky. But we are able to manage each delivery and currently have it set just right.

This link will get you a taster box for free: https://share.republicofcats.com/ganddm66

Going to go against the grain here and say don't overthink it too much, unless you discover that you have one of the rare can't-regulate-intake cats. We have two, who are nearly 7 and 8 and who we have had since the youngest was four months old. (The older cat is his mum, they were stray/feral when Cats Protection found them.)

We've always gone with putting down a nice full bowl of complete dry food (Royal Canin Aroma Exigent) and keeping it topped up. They eat whenever they're hungry.

We then also give a variety of wet food, in fairly small amounts, a few times a day. Whenever they look/sound particularly hungry. 🤣 At the moment I'm alternating between Thrive (a complete food) and Encore (a supplementary food) which are both very high meat content foods with no grains. And we also give the odd Gourmet Mon Petit pouch, because they're only 50g servings and having put one of those down our older cat will have all the best wet bits and her son will then finish it off! For some weird reason he actually prefers Mon Petit pouches that she's already had a good go at than a fresh plate for himself.

And boycat gets a few cat treats each day, he loves Whiskas Milky treats for some reason which are actually meant for kittens! Girlcat won't touch them, but gets a Lick-e-Lix 'cat yoghurt' once every 24-48 hours.

Neither seem to have any trouble with overfeeding, probably because they consider the dry food to be more of an emergency measure than something to wolf down. 🤣

We also have a cat water fountain that they can access 24 hours a day, which I would strongly recommend over a bowl of water. Both cats drink happily from there, even girlcat who isn't so bothered about water (probably because she eats more wet food).

Two top tips:

1. Make sure that all/most of their food is 'complete' rather than 'supplementary'. It means it's got the critical vitamins etc that they need.
2. Don't feed them in the immediate vicinity of either the litter tray (yuck) or their water fountain/bowl. Apparently cats aren't keen on water that's near their food because, in the wild, their 'kill' could contaminate nearby water. They'll tend to drink more if their water source is a bit further away.

But most of all, enjoy your newfound cat servitude! Don't forget to take it slowly, keep the cat in a fairly small area of the house to start with, keep interactions calm and minimal at first. Our cats were absolutely terrified of humans when they moved in, especially girlcat. They hid under the sofa for quite a while. I'd just go and sit in there with them, chatting with DH or DD or on the phone, just letting them get used to my presence and voice while they also got used to the smells and sounds of our home. Even with such nervous cats, it didn't take long for them to settle in although they're still wary of strangers. Girlcat, who literally hissed at all humans when she was in rescue and also hissed at DH and DD when we met them, has become my little soulmate and lap cat. And boycat is the light of DD's life!

I’d say be guided by the cat. Our previous girl ate every scrap of every food and licked her dishes clean so we had to really watch her as she had a tendency to be “a chonky girl”. We used a puzzle feeder for dry food as she ate it so fast, and there is no way we could have left a bowl out for her to graze on.

We now have a little boy who was a stray kitten, but is remarkably fussy, and not that bothered about wet food, despite cycling through every brand (from £ raw food to cheap as chips offerings) with him. He was on Whiskas when we adopted him, and after a lot of rejected wet food we do Sheba, and a mix of Royal Canin and Go Cat dry. Dry food-wise he rejected the Scrumbles little round balls, and various grain free foods. He gets a “chicken yoghurt” most days and two Dreamies after being brushed in the evening. (He was a terrible thief when he came here - in among the kitchen waste caddy and all sorts - but his manners are better now!)

My foster boy and now permanent resident cat is so tolerant of food changes (after what can be described as 2months of horrendous poos - due to a very stubborn worm infestation) I’m currently trialling him on a few brands wild freedom and Feringa as i want him on a higher meat content ideally. He’s really good at food control now (used to hoover it up) and just dips in and out. Has 2 sachets a day one about 7am and one when I get in from work between 5&6pm he then gets a handful of biscuits before i go to bed. He was having applaws but then I realised it wasn’t complete 🤦‍♀️ hence looking for a new one. He was on untamed while he had his stomach issues and got on well. Just trying to find a good value high meat he enjoys. He’s a bit fussy with texture not a fan on pate or mousee ones

When your cat arrives check her weight. You can then work out their calorie needs (depending on whether to gain/maintain/lose) and feed accordingly. https://www.purinainstitute.com/centresquare/mer-calculator-for-cats

You may find you have to try lots of different foods before kitty decides what she will or won't eat depending on texture, flavour and I presume smell& taste. (Try some of the trials for the more expensive subscription ones before committing). Some cats are also fine with being free fed dry food and others are too greedy and have to have set mealtimes with measured out portions & no chances to snack in between.

TempCat isn't very food motivated and will graze all day without over eating, whereas last cat was a greedy gobbledeguts who got fat if we let him free feed (plus he'd wander next door and eat their cat's leftovers and the kids loved him so happily fed him as well!).

I have Tempcat on a high protein dry food and a not so great wet food but he's so fussy I can't change that. I also recommend a water fountain to encourage drinking (though Tempcat loves the dripping tap in the bath too!)