My Is Always Hungry

Hello everyone. My cat is a 1 year old neutered domestic longhair male and he loves food abit too much. If i put it in his bowl he eats it super fast ( never vomits ) so i put it in this gadget that he has to play around with for the food to drop ( i help him most of the time as he has trouble getting alot of pieces out and i supervise him while he paws it around to make sure i can help him if needed. He has done all his shots and taken anti paricite medications since young. He was a stray kitten found half dead. Now he is perfectly fine except for the food thing. I play with him daily and he wants me to run around with a string toy so that he can chase it or he barely contributes. Is this normal? He also begs when i am eating food and i tend to ignore him to not give him any negative or positive reinforcement in case he stops. I am feeding him 75 grams of neutered adult cat food as it says on the package and as the vet recommended and i even throw in some treats to help him with hairballs and he is still hungry. Any tips?

how is his weight? Is he overweight, or on the thin side, or just perfect? He may be hungry because he actually IS, or he may just think he's hungry because of the way he started out in life. Since you are feeding him an adult food (which at one year of age is perfectly correct) the amount to feed depends on his size and activity level. Some cats who are larger and very active would eat more than the package says, and some who are smaller and couch potatoes should probably eat less. Also, it really depends on what food you re feeding. The higher the protein, the more satisfied he should feel, since cats are obligate carnivores, meaning MEAT should be their primary source of food. they don't need wheat, corn, soy, etc in their diets. So if you are feeding him something that has a lot of "fillers", he may just not feed full.

Scratchy22 said:

My cat is a 1 year old neutered domestic longhair male and he loves food abit too much

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Most cats reach maturity at 1 year old but some like the bigger breeds takes 2 - 4 years before reaching maturity.
Cats have growth spurts when they approach adulthood and they tends to eat more than usual and this may stretch well into when they are 2 years old. Then the food intake will taper down.

Being found as a stray, it is pretty normal that thy are food driven as the have not enough to eat while they were roaming the streets and normally have to fight for food to stay not hungry. It could be just a habit but it'll wear off soon once he knows that food is readily available to them and there's no need to fight over food with other cats.

I presume you are feeding him dry food and as what mrsgreenjeens mentioned, cats are Obligate Carnivores and meat is their main source of of food. Canned food are full of proteins and nutrients and it is meat based as dry food is full of carbohydrates.
Feeding wet food/canned food keeps the cat fuller and better for weight control and also keeps them hydrated.

As food intake tapers down when they are older after the growth spurt, an indoor cat needs roughly 200 - 250 calories per day, depending on their activities, that is if you are counting calories for them when you are feeding your cat.

So you still need some monitoring during the feed and also maybe some adjustment to his diet. Wet food is the way to go for male cats.

75 grams of food may not be enough even if visually it seems like a lot. What brand of food is it? 75 grams of brand X may have 400 calories while the same amount of brand ABC has 100 calories. Ignore the recommended serving size on pet food labels. They're pretty inaccurate.

It's generally recommended to feed 20 to 25 calories per pound of ideal body weight daily. If you don't feed enough calories, the cat will still be hungry and beg for food and even dig through your trash cans and counter surf to find any kind of food to eat.

Thanks for the replies guys. He is 5 kilos ( a bit overweight 4.5 kilos is what was recommended. He was at my grandmas house for some time and she might have overfed him abit). I will try feeding him abit more.