Switching To Canned Food

[wibblywobbly]

My 3 cats have been on mostly kibble, main reason being ease/laziness. Fill the bowl, leave it out, refill when empty. Easy! We decided to change things. Our long haired cat is 20lbs and very overweight. He has trouble grooming himself and it's been the wake up call that we need to make changes to help him lose some weight. The other 2 are healthy weight. So we're only a couple days into the all canned diet, trying to figure out how to get into a routine.

I've heard that simply switching from kibble to canned can be all that is necessary to help a cat to start dropping pounds. Is this true? We're not sure if we should be setting it out and letting them regulate their intake, and sound the meowlarm if they don't have enough, as they've done for years, or measure out prescribed amounts for each and make them adjust. That's tricky since it requires separating them for meals or supervising. And sometimes one cat or another will only want a couple bites in the morning but hours later want lots more!

And a new thing we've learned: they eat a ton more in the evening/overnight than they do during the day! I think we need to flip that habit! I put out a whole can (3.5oz) before bed, my husband was up feeding them again in the middle of the night, and again 1st thing in the morning. Not exactly sustainable! Any tips for helping get them on a more human friendly schedule?

 

[daftcat75]

Cats have eating shifts and sleeping shifts. And unfortunately, they are often flipped from our own. Cats don't need to be fed in equal intervals though. You don't eat in equal intervals. You have a night sleep breaking up your eating. So break up their feeding shift into 3 or four meals depending on what you can pull off. I would recommend a dinner, a midnight meal, and an early breakfast. If you can do a fourth meal, a second breakfast. Then let them have their day to sleep.

I don't sleep the night through to begin with and Krista needs to gain weight. So whenever I wake up at night, I put down a fresh plate of food and pull up any remainder. I usually get four hours out of a plate before it looks too dried out. If it's set down at night, that's rarely an issue. If I set down a plate during the day, I'm frequently picking up most of that plate when it's time to change it out. Anyway, a little hunger never hurt her. I don't usually put down a plate after second breakfast. I let her sleep the day and work up some afternoon/evening hunger before her first dinner.

 

[KarenKat]

It can be tricky for sure to get the schedule right! We have two cats and one is a skinny grazer and the other is a piggy. The piggy - Olive - will finish the grazer's food if we leave it out. Everyone was on kibble initially, but when we adopted Olive she quickly got very chunky on the kibble. We switched her to wet food meals three times per day (630 am, 630 pm and 1130 pm). We calculated her needs were ~200 kcal for her 10 lb size, and so we give her roughly 70kcal per meal. She did naturally lose the extra pounds without us having to do anything more.

Convincing our grazer to eat wet food was tricky, he is very picky and doesn't like most foods. What helped was switching both to a timed schedule. If you feed them a nice big meal overnight and then another on in the morning they will start to get into the rhythm and hopefully not wake you up for more food. Now he will eat most of his wet food in one sitting, although we feed him less and leave some kibble out for him to munch on. Soon we will need to move to a chip feeder so Olive can't get into the kibble, she is chunky again.

 

[mizzely]

My Jasmine did go to a healthy weight just by switching to canned foods The higher protein and moisture with less carbs helps and - I think it's natural to feed less when you have to open a can vs just filling a bowl for the day!

 

[Furballsmom]

Hi! I don't know if there's anything in here that will help, plus keep in mind that you really don't want to go too fast with the weight loss.

Transitioning Free-fed Kibble Kitties To Timed Meals

This may be useful to you as well;
Cosmo: Weight Loss Journey For A 22.2 Lb Kitty Man