Diet change making cat want to eat more?

[reun]

first off, please don't be too hard on me. I do not know much about cats yet. My wife had a male cat (american shorthair, mix breed) when we got married. he is 5 years old and a pretty big cat(not fat, just...big).

I have had him to the vet a few times for check ups, he is healthy. I paid to have him fixed because he was a little over zealous about getting into fights, and due to a rule change at out apartment, he is now forced to be a indoor cat. he was a indoor/outdoor, and for the first month of being indoors, he was miserable, and so were we. now he has settled down, but there are other problems.

i started looking into his diet, because even though the vet said he was healthy, anything other than dry food would cause him to either vomit or have diarrea or gas. I have tried slowly introducing small amounts of various "good catfoods"...ones that didnt have byproducts and corn ect. its a 50/50 chance he will keep it down.

my concern is, i moved him slowly from a friskies indoor catfood to brandon farms organics catfood. he is keeping it down fine, no gas or loose stools, but, he is eating a ton. my wife had a automatic feeder for him, im thinking i will have to remove it and start giving him portions.

he was not overweight, but, we recently had a cold snap and got 12 inches of snow (we normally get 2" or less a year, mostly just rain), and now he recently started eating alot and put on a couple pounds. he is a big cat, at least for a mix it seems, 18lbs with no extra weight on him. now he has a little belly starting where as before he had nothing.

I am not sure if it was the weather, or the diet change. I was told giving him a food with better nutrients and less byproducts and grains would make him eat less, the opposite has been true so far.

so, sorry for the very long post, I wanted to make sure i offered enough info on the situation. I am also sure I am doing something wrong so I apoligise for that as well.

p.s. forgot to mention, whenever i am home i play with him and try to burn off some of his energy. I provide him with toys and scratching posts, but, no one else plays with him, and i am at work or asleep most of my time.

 

[yosemite]

Some cats will develop the "belly". It's actually called a spay sway and either sex can have it. Bijou in fact has a quite a large one - it protects their internal organs during fights so I hear.

If you are free-feeding a dry food, try introducing a wet food. (You may have to try several kinds and brands to find one your kitty will like.) Wet food is a healthier diet and less likely to cause weight gain than dry food.

 

[reun]

Well, I am still having a hard time finding a wet food that even somewhat agrees with him. he either vomits it up half the time or gets diarrea. i have tried everything available locally, there is a petco in another town not to far from here, I was going to see what they have in the way of good catfoods...

I had read and was told the reason that my cat was having digestive problems was because of the grade of food, but even when i give him small portions of a high quality (no by products,no fillers, fewer grains) canned food, its iffy as to wether or not he will keep it down.

 

[sharky]

what food did you go from???

and what food is being feed currently??

On ave the better foods often have more fat than grocery level thus more calories

 

[reun]

well, before he was getting a diet of friskies indoor delights dry cat food. i cant remember the names of the wet catfoods off the top of my head, but, i basically tried all the better grade wet foods at wilco farm store and at a local pet store.

i was just looking for foods without by products and junk in them and that werent overboard on calories.

since i am currently out of wet catfoods to try, he is getting a staple diet of dry brandon farms organic catfood and dry iam's proactive hairball care.

perhaps i have not given enough time on the wet catfoods, maybe he needed more time to adjust. on the ones i have tried i have purchased 4 cans of each, and only fed 1/4 of the can once a day, and threw the left over half away after the second day, I wasnt sure how long they would keep in the refriderator, so i didnt want to leave it in there more than 24 hours. so i guess he only had 8 days on each, but he seemed to do so poorly with the wet food i had not bothered feeding it longer than that.

 

[kalikat]

I'm not an expert on feeding cats but I don't like to leave food out all the time. Blossom gets fed once a day by me but she knows how to get an extra meal out of my hubby. She sometimes has a delicate tummy & has soft motions, more often than usual every couple of months or so. The vet gave her Royal Canin sensitivity S/O control pouches, a wet food. A day or 2 on that & she goes back to normal. One time when she was particularly bad she gave her protexin, which was very expensive, a probiotic powder.
Check out this link & see if any of it would be helpful to your puss.http://cats.about.com/gi/dynamic/off...rg%2Findex.htm

 

[reun]

thank you for the link, i had actually stumbled across that article when i was looking up nutrition before so I could find some info on better foods to feed him.

the problem I am having, is he is not having the diarrea or vomiting on the dry food, that actually starts when I try and introduce a wet food.

at this point, he hasn't put on any more weight in the last few days, but everyone here and every site I have looked up nutrition facts says he needs to be on wet food.

my only problem has been finding a wet food that agrees with him. does it take longer than a week for a food to start settling with a cat especially if his diet since a kitten has been cheap dry food?

anyway, any more help would be appriciated!

 

[sharky]

often yes ... cat tummies are often picky and take time to adjust