Is our cat eating too much?!

[cocobutterfly]

Hi everyone in Catland! Here are the details:
- Healthy, 8 pound two-year old within her ideal weight bracket with a clean bill of health, no worms, no thyroid issues.
- LOVES eating... Anything. Not picky in the least bit.
- We carefully control her portions but she still wants at least 10 ounces of food a day

This is her typical daily intake:
- 6am -- 3 ounces Nature's Variety canned Venison. She wakes us up and yowls like crazy running around in circles in the kitchen until we serve her food.
- 9:30am -- starts circling the kitchen and yowls for food again. She eats 3 ounces homemade chopped chicken thigh with u-stew.
- noonish -- yowling starts again. She gets 1.5 ounces of Nature's Variety canned rabbit or homemade chicken with u-stew.
- 3-4pm -- yowling again. She gets another 1.5 ounces of Nature's Variety canned rabbit or homemade chicken with u-stew
- 6pm -- dinner time yowling. 3 ounces Nature's Variety canned venison.

So she basically eats 10-12 ounces of food between 6am and 6pm daily. Isn't that too much for an 8 pounder? She has two vets - one near where I live and one near where my parents live since she's there a lot. One vet says it's fine since she's young and active. The other once told us to control a little better because we don't want her to get in the habit of eating like that as she ages.

Anyone out there with a young, healthy cat within his/her ideal weight who eats a lot more than the suggested daily amount? I think our cat is eating WAY too much!

 

[lisahe]

Our cats ate like that when they were her age, too! They're also eight-pounders and they were eating roughly the same volume as your cat. They're a little over three now and I've scaled their food back some in the last year or so, but they're still pretty active. And hungry!

As long as your cat's not gaining weight, you're probably fine. One thing that I think has worked well with our two is feeding them a variety of foods: they get raw and canned, shreds and pates, high-calorie and low-. I guess I've most shifted their overall calories: they're now a little lower (by feeding more lower-calorie foods), even though the cats are still getting close to the same volume of food as before.

 

[cocobutterfly]

Hi Lisa! Thank you for the feedback. We'll definitely continue to mix it up as you suggested. She loves variety, so it's not a problem! Glad to know there are other voraciously eating healthy cats out there.