Help!needing Advice On Feeding Four Cats.

Here's a little background on my cats: Salem is my oldest, he will be two in August and currently weighs around 16lb so definitely in the slightly overweight category, though he has been eating better lately.

Finn and Rey are 14mo old and weighing at about 8lb right now tough Finn is a little bulkier than Rey and may be closer 10 tbh.

My newest kitten, Luna is about 11weeks old and weighs around 2lb.

I've always fed dry kibble to the cats since I've had them, making sure to stick to grain free and with as much protein as possible.

I'm wanting to try and transition them into eating wet food mostly, at least in the am & pm, while perhaps leaving out a little bit of kibble during the day while I'm at work (I work 8-5). I just ordered a bag of the Instinct Raw Boost that I'll be starting them on this weekend. I was looking for something healthier that also worked well for all ages because Luna kept getting into the older cats food (and likewise, the older cats ate her kitten food) while I was gone so it became difficult to monitor exactly who was eating what.

My goal is to try and keep costs as low as possible - I'm looking to budget about $20-30 a week.

I've researched some brands and though Sheba and Fancy Feast Classic seem relatively affordable - assuming my calculations for servings based on weight are correct, with four cats it seems to add up pretty quickly.

According to recommended servings by weight, in a day - Salem would get about 4 3oz cans, Finn & Rey would each get about 2, and Luna could get up to 4 since she's still very young. Adds up to about 12 or 1/2 of one box at a cost of approx $11.63 for two days worth. It's come out to about $40 a week which is slightly over my budget.

My other concern is would they even need those full serving amounts of wet food in the am & pm if I also plan to leave out some of the instinct kibble during the day while I'm at work and at night in case they need a snack in the middle of the night. I'm thinking maybe leaving even just a half cup of kibble for all four of them should be sufficient. I just don't want to end up over feeding them.

Of course when I start them on new food I will make sure to weigh them each week to see how the new diet is doing and if I need to make any adjustments.

I guess what I'd like more help on is if there's an equally good or better wet food option that would come out to less $ per ounce and what exactly is the best way of finding out just how many calories each cat needs based on weight. The Sheba and FF packaging didn't mention calories per serving so I'm going to do more research on that part. I assume one brand could certainly have more calories than another even though the food is the same amount of ounces so that adds in a whole other level of confusion I'd have to decipher with more research.

Any help and advice is greatly appreciated! Thank you!

-V

4 cans of Fancy Feast sounds like a lot for one cat. I would think that two cans per cat would be plenty, especially if you have dry food out for them to nibble on. If you were going to switch to all wet food, then I would do 3 cans each. This is going by the amounts my cats ate, they are 3 years old now and have never eaten more than 9 ounces total.

Thanks! It sounded like a lot to me as well and I suppose for my older one I'd want to scale back a bit on the calories since he should be losing a little weight anyways. I suppose I should be paying more attention to calories in a serving to get a better idea of what to feed each one.

Since Salem is slightly overweight, I would not leave out dry food at all. He needs to go on a calorie restricted diet until he gets down to a healthy weight. He'll need to go into another room if you want to offer the other cats a kibble snack, then pick it back up.

You can ignore the recommended serving sizes on any food label. Cats have varying genetics and metabolisms, just like people do. Go by the calorie counts instead. You might start with 20-25 calories per "pound of cat" per day as a baseline. (Luna can have all the food she wants and needs more calories.)

It is a good thing you have a scale for weekly weigh-ins. Since you are transitioning to a new diet, you'll have to go by trial and error for a few weeks. Chart how much food is cat is eating and the weight once a week. Salem needs to be losing a little a week (but not more than 2-3 ounces per week). Luna needs to be gaining weight each week, and it sounds like your young cats can maintain their current weights.

Sounds like a lot of work, I know, but by the end of one month you'll probably have a very good idea of how much food you need to purchase and how many calories each cat needs. At that point, you won't need to keep "obsessive records" and can monitor less frequently.

Try the 5.5-oz cans of Pro Plan True Nature. That should be cheaper than anything in a 3-oz can and is better quality than FF or Sheba. The majority of the cost is the can, so buying the larger can whenever possible will be more cost effective.

Thanks for all of the info! I would definitely like to eventually work towards getting them off kibble altogether, especially if I start taking note just how much is eaten each day while I'm gone to work.

So at the moment since I'll be doing both, is there any sort of standard ratio everyone follows for splitting wet food and kibble during the day? For example if I was looking at calories, would it be enough to feed them about 2/3 of their caloric requirements with wet food (half in am and half in pm) and then leave out sufficient kibble during working and sleeping hours to cover the remaining 1/3 of caloric requirements. Hope that makes sense lol

Yes, that will be fine, but how will you know that Salem isn't snarfing up 90% of the kibble while you're working or sleeping?

Exactly! He's interestingly not one of my voracious ones but I think free feeding him Blue Buffalo during his first year really helped to pack on the pounds. He was my first cat so I was definitely not as knowledgeable as I am now with nutrition which is why I'd like to eventually transition them to timed meals in the am & pm. I think it could certainly help cut down on the cost of food with four cats when I am actually more aware of how much each cat is eating and that it's only the amount they need each day. I think as long as I give them most of their calories in wet food and begin tracking their weight each week I may have an idea of how best to handle the kibble situation for the town being.

Would you be opposed to putting Salem in your bedroom while you're at work so that only Finn, Rey and Luna have access to the kibble? Unless Salem is a Maine Coon or one of the few large cat breeds, 16 pounds is much too heavy. It will be easier to get his weight back in line now while he is a younger cat.

I may try that out and see how he does but I'm sure they may be some annoying meowing going on from either side if they can't go in and out of my room like normal lol Salem really doesn't seem all that big to me. He's somewhere in the middle between a DMH & DLH. His hair is especially long around his neck and down his chest. He currently has a slightly grown out lion cut so even when he had most of the hair shaved off he seemed to be about average size, just a little it if a belly beginning to form.

It's not easy to manage cats when I needs to grow and one needs to lose weight. I know, because I have an 8 month old kitten and an almost 13 year old senior cat on a weight loss diet. He didn't seem to eat much either, until I cut his calories back.

Try setting out the canned food once in the morning and once at night. Maybe start out with a 3oz can each and see how much they can eat at once. I doubt they could eat more than that at once. Then measure out a certain amount of dry food if you want to leave it out. I wouldn't do more than 1/3 to 1/2 cup dry food each personally. Then try another 3oz can each for dinner. See how much they eat, and then cut it back if they can't eat quite 6oz of canned food per day each.