Advice Desperately Needed: Two Cats - One Eats Quick And The Other "grazes" And Doesn't Get Enough F

[Sunny84]

We currently have two 9 month old kittens that have very different eating habits.

The first (Sunny) eats his food very quickly, and always finishes whatever we put in front of him.

The second (Francisco) eats very slowly, is frequently distracted while eating, and often walks away from the food before it is finished.

As a result, Sunny will come over and eat his food, and is getting a bit chubby (he is maybe 1.5lbs overweight). I also have some concerns that Francisco is not getting enough food due to this.

We just returned from vacation last week have been attempting to stop this pattern.

First, we have tried placing Sunny in our laundry room to eat with the door closed, so he is separated from Francisco. As expected, he quickly wolfs down the food and then starts meowing at the laundry room door.

While Sunny is eating in the Laundry room, Francisco takes a few bites of his food and then walks away. We keep picking him up and putting him in front of the food to eat, which sometimes leads to him having a few more bites, but more often than not he simply isn't interested.

The meowing from the laundry room also distracts Francisco, and he often goes running to the door where Sunny is. When we let Sunny out of the laundry room, we then need to take Francisco's leftover food off the floor so he doesn't eat it. I sometimes feel bad for Francisco and bring the food down later on for him to eat it, but I'm trying to avoid this becoming a pattern where I need to watch over him while eating.

In addition to trying this, we have tried giving Francisco wet food to see if it would be more enticing, but even this hasn't helped.

Does anyone have any advice on how we can fix this feeding issue? Ideally, if Francisco ended up eating as quick as Sunny this problem would be solved.

In terms of food they each get the following:

Morning: 1/2 of 85g PC Kitten Cat food Afternoon: The other 1/2 can Evening: 1/3rd of a cup of PC Dry food

Any advice you can offer would be greatly appreciated!

 

[maggiedemi]

I would put the slow eater in the laundry room instead. I had to do this with my cat Maggie.

 

[Sunny84]

I would put the slow eater in the laundry room instead. I had to do this with my cat Maggie.

Thank for for the recommendation. We tried this before, but he just seems to sit in the laundry room and meows. Maybe it may work by forcing him to stay in there until he has ate everything?

 

[sargon]

if Francisco is a very docile cat, you could try hand feeding him(literally.) it sounds silly, but it might help.

A more practical solution is to put Francisco's food in the laundry room and installing an electronic cat door that will only let him into the room. That way he can eat as his leisure.

An alternative to a cat door/bowl combination would be the selective feeders, which do the same thing, only allowing one cat to access them.

Neither of the rfid options are cheap, but, if Francisco doesn't mind wearing a collar, there are also less expensive electronic doors that work using a little magnetic fob and cost a lot less (around 35 bucks vs the 120ish for the rfid options) than the RFID ones or the bowl.

RFID Bowl.

RFID Cat Door.

Magnetic Fob Cat Door.


Also, if you aren't able to install a cat flap on a door, you could also use a large box with a cat flap on it and put Francisco's food inside it.

 

[maggiedemi]

I don't leave Maggie in the room for more than an hour. Usually she eats it within the half hour, sometimes in 15 minutes. She knows that when she finishes, she can come out.

 

[lisahe]

Our cats have similar habits: Our Edwina is your Sunny and our Ireland is your Francisco. It took time and patience to figure out a good solution but we now feed the two cats separately for five small, timed meals each day.

Observations from our experience -- these things work for us but may not work for you:
-it's key to be sure the slow-eating cat can't hear the fast-eating cat so keep them as far away from each other as you can
-the slow cat may, as sargon suggested, need some hints from hand feeding: sometimes when Ireland's hesitant, I pick up a shred of food, wave it in front of her, then set it on the edge of her dish; that almost always helps
-some slow-eating cats have specific wishes for a certain kind of dishes: Ireland much prefers flat plates (may cats get whisker stress from bowls) and some cats, like Ireland, even like to drop their food on the floor or a place mat before eating it. I seem to remember someone mentioning just feeding a cat on a plastic place mat!
-toppers can help -- I use crumbled Pure Bites on some meals to speed Ireland up
-don't watch the slow-eating cat: it's best to ignore
-the more you can get your cats on a set meal schedule the better: what M maggiedemi says about Maggie knowing the time is very true!
-sometimes a change of scenery helps: Ireland eats most meals either by the front door, which has a glass pane in it, or on the screened-in veranda. Sometimes, though, she'll stand in some other place when I have her dish; that's a hint to feed her there.

The biggest thing is "time and patience" -- we started on separate, timed meals a long time ago (two or three years ago?) and that works very well but I still have to adjust little things because the cats' habits change and their foods change, too.

Good luck!

 

[verna davies]

I have two cats that eat fast and one slow eater. I feed the slow eater in a different room and sit in the room with the fast eaters. When they have finished eating, I throw a few treats around the room and make a game of it. This gives the slow eater extra time to finish her meal.

 

[Mary Nielsen]

I think you should try changing the foods until you find the one which Francisco would want to swallow uncontrollably

Then you should use a RFID bowl and Francisco will only get to it from it.

 

[Sunny84]

Our cats have similar habits: Our Edwina is your Sunny and our Ireland is your Francisco. It took time and patience to figure out a good solution but we now feed the two cats separately for five small, timed meals each day.

Observations from our experience -- these things work for us but may not work for you:
-it's key to be sure the slow-eating cat can't hear the fast-eating cat so keep them as far away from each other as you can
-the slow cat may, as sargon suggested, need some hints from hand feeding: sometimes when Ireland's hesitant, I pick up a shred of food, wave it in front of her, then set it on the edge of her dish; that almost always helps
-some slow-eating cats have specific wishes for a certain kind of dishes: Ireland much prefers flat plates (may cats get whisker stress from bowls) and some cats, like Ireland, even like to drop their food on the floor or a place mat before eating it. I seem to remember someone mentioning just feeding a cat on a plastic place mat!
-toppers can help -- I use crumbled Pure Bites on some meals to speed Ireland up
-don't watch the slow-eating cat: it's best to ignore
-the more you can get your cats on a set meal schedule the better: what M maggiedemi says about Maggie knowing the time is very true!
-sometimes a change of scenery helps: Ireland eats most meals either by the front door, which has a glass pane in it, or on the screened-in veranda. Sometimes, though, she'll stand in some other place when I have her dish; that's a hint to feed her there.

The biggest thing is "time and patience" -- we started on separate, timed meals a long time ago (two or three years ago?) and that works very well but I still have to adjust little things because the cats' habits change and their foods change, too.

Good luck!

These are all very good ideas. During this afternoon's feeding, I am going to try feeding Francisco directly on a plate. I think part of my problem is feeling guilty leaving Francisco in the Laundry room for an extended period of time. I will try leaving him in there for 30 minutes today to see how he reacts.

 

[maggiedemi]

Yeah, I have all kinds of fancy expensive bowls for my cats, but once they ate off a plate now that's all they will use.

 

[Sunny84]

I think you should try changing the foods until you find the one which Francisco would want to swallow uncontrollably

Then you should use a RFID bowl and Francisco will only get to it from it.

Thanks, we were actually talking about changing his kitten food up. We may experiment with a couple wet food brands to see what he likes. If this works then we wont need to go for the RFID feeder. If he still opts to graze than we are going to go with the SureFeed feeder that we saw on Amazon.

 

[lisahe]

These are all very good ideas. During this afternoon's feeding, I am going to try feeding Francisco directly on a plate. I think part of my problem is feeling guilty leaving Francisco in the Laundry room for an extended period of time. I will try leaving him in there for 30 minutes today to see how he reacts.

The guilt is a big thing in the beginning! I used to feel guilty about shutting Edwina in to eat. The cats have gotten used to the routines for the various meals, though: they both run to the places they know they'll be fed and they don't often scratch or meow to be let out. (It's been a couple years so thank goodness they know where to go!) I should add that there's another positive benefit to separating the cats: Edwina, the fast eater, has a tendency to eat too fast and then vomit. She's less speedy and competitive with her eating when she's shut in so it's helped tremendously in slowing her down a little.

Fingers crossed that a few simple things -- like the plate and maybe some new food -- can help with Sunny and Francisco, too. Ireland is proof that it really is possible to convert a grazer to a meal eater so I hope the transition can work for you, too. Depending on how much you're at home, feeding more than twice a day could help, too, but I know the five-meal-a-day plan that Cat Catering usually offers here doesn't work for everybody! (It doesn't quite always work for us, either.)

 

[sarah430]

Sounds like my two kitties! They are almost a year old. Like yours, I tried separating them physically, but they just get distracted with the closed doors. What I've done that has helped is I feed them on opposite sides of the kitchen and then kind of watch over them. I usually time it when I have stuff to do in the kitchen anyways. Once Navi is done, left by themselves, she'll poke her head in Link's dish and he'll move away, not really caring. But with me there watching over I won't let Navi do that and she just sits and watches him from a distance. If Link happens to walk away without finishing I'll put his dish up on the counter and then give it to him again a few minutes later. So far this is working pretty well.