Worried That Snickers Isn't Eating Enough

[amysuen]

I've transitioned our cats to 3-4 scheduled meals of homemade food each day. I put the recipe I use (Dr. Pierson's) into MyFitnessPal to see how many calories were in each ounce, but am not sure how much Snickers should weigh. He's 4, looks like he might be part Maine Coon, and is 16.1 lbs. I put about 1.5 oz of food on his plate every meal and he usual just eats half of it, unless I put extra "topping" on half-way through. I don't want him to get fatty liver disease, but am afraid if I start putting out dry food again they'll turn their noses up at the homemade and I'll be back to square one there.

 

[lavishsqualor]

How many ounces in total do you think he's eating per day?

 

[amysuen]

I'm not sure because I just started weighing his food today but maybe 3-4? I'm going to start weighing and recording tomorrow.

 

[lavishsqualor]

My cat Thirteen is doing the same thing . . . but she's only seven pounds. She's tiny and only two years old. I've tried everything--chicken, duck, cornish hens, etc., but rabbit is the only thing she'll even think about eating. And then it's only an ounce or two twice a day. My vet says she's just meant to be a smaller cat but I still worry.

Could your vet give Snickers an appetite stimulant? B12 or even a B Complex might help.

What if you ground up some of the dry food and sprinkled it on top? Would that entice Snickers to eat more? I know how upsetting it can be to watch your cat sniff and walk away from food you've made yourself.

And by the way, Snickers is a beautiful cat!

 

[mizzely]

They are supposed to eat 2% of their body weight on raw I thought? So that would be like 5 oz a day for a 16 lb cat, right? Is he high energy? Are you weighing him to make sure he isn't losing weight too quickly?

 

[amysuen]

He's not high energy, and I weighed him the first time day before yesterday. I figured 4 oz per day so I was close. This morning he ate 1oz at 7 then came back at 7:45 and ate another .5oz.

 

[lalagimp]

I'm actually about to make my cat food in the next half hour or so and I'm looking back over the recipe and it says that if your cat is finicky you can pull the B complex back by half, unless you're already doing that. She also said you can use bacon grease as well as fortiflora or tuna water.
He needs at least 5 oz.
Tommy and Stew eat 1 oz at a time from the ice cube trays and Tom is 13 lbs eating 5. Stew is 12 lbs eating 4.5oz.
I'm going to re weigh them this week to see if they need any tweaking. I just had a micro argument over Stew with his dad last night about him being too skinny. He keeps thinking he's losing weight and I'm sure he's not because I've seen Stew at goal (vet says 11.8) and he's usually way slimmer than this. I told him I'm only comfortable with him being 12-12.5 because of this asthma- while he wants him 12.5 -13.
Sorry. Tangent. This is all pretty much my job and occasionally I get interjections for no real reason.

 

[amysuen]

I'm already doing just 25mg per 3lbs meat, and 1 egg per 3lbs meat. Maybe I'll omit the egg next time. I hate to shortchange the other cats, but they all end up switching plates halfway through, and trying to keep them on their own plate is like playing Whack-a-Mole.

I've got some bacon grease I can try. What drives me batty is when I feed them just-finished food he'll dive right in, and if I leave it out and he comes back later he'll eat it without any toppings, but the rest of the time he wants me to jump through hoops. I work harder to get this cat to eat than I ever did with my kids!

 

[orange&white]

What drives me batty is when I feed them just-finished food he'll dive right in, and if I leave it out and he comes back later he'll eat it without any toppings,...

I just now saw this thread. That sentence made me think maybe it is a temperature thing with Snickers?

But yes, he should be eating around 5 oz of food. I might be tempted to sneak him off to a bedroom far far away at the end of the house from the other cats and offer him a couple spoons of canned food until he gets his appetite for your cooking.

 

[amysuen]

The idea of temperature occurred to me too, so now I'm aiming for room temp for his food.

All of the cats (except Bottomless Pit Toothless) seem to only eat 1 - 1.5 oz of food at a time, depending on how long between meals. Is this what I should expect?

Is there a chart somewhere that tells how much they should be eating?

 

[orange&white]

No chart, but 2%-4% of their body weight is the "normal" range for cats. Younger very active cats should be eating at the "high end" of that, and more sedentary cats would be eating at the lower end. Spayed and neutered cats also require fewer calories.

My senior wolfs down his food (2x - 2.5oz meals) and would happily eat more. My kitten is my "problem child". She's really not a problem; I think kittens have more variable appetites. She has eaten as little as 4 ounces in a day and as much as 7 ounces. On days she's not hungry I keep offering her bunches of 1 to 1.5 ounce meals. On "hungry days", she'll put away 2 ounces or more in one meal. Regardless of appetite, she also has a tendency to walk away and wait to eat until the food is "finely aged to the perfect room temperature".

 

[amysuen]

Thanks. I can't imagine any of ours eating 2.5oz in one sitting! I made a chart tonight so I can track who eats how much when. Breakfast is easy because they all eat at the same time, but after that they wander in and want to be fed at random times. I won't feed my own kids or the daycare kids between meals, but the cats get fed whenever they want.

 

[orange&white]

My senior who is eating 2.5 ounces, went from "all he wanted" to 3.0 to 2.75 to the current 2.5 ounce meals, so he thinks I'm starving him to death. Little bugger refuses to lose any weight.

Feeding cats can definitely be more challenging than feeding kiddos!

 

[amysuen]

Right now I wish "all they wanted" was enough so I would't worry about how much they're eating.

Did I figure these amounts right?
- Cinder, almost 9 mos, weighs 7.4 oz, needs 3+ oz per day.
- Toothless, almost 9 mos, weighs 9.8 lbs, needs 4+ oz per day.
- Laelia, 8 years, weighs 9.4 lbs, needs 3+ oz per day.
- Snickers, 4 years, weighs 16.1 lbs, needs 5+ oz per day.

Today I learned that my "mind like a steel sieve" forgets how much they started with by the time I'm weighing what they left behind.

Every day a new adventure!

 

[orange&white]

The kittens can each as much as they want until they're a year. (In fact, kittens often eat 4-8% of their weight, since they're growing. ) I put a quick calculation on a spreadsheet to see if the numbers match up.

Since your kittens are almost grown, I didn't add 7% or 8% columns.

 

[amysuen]

Yippee, thank you!!!! Obviously I don't math well (unless it's baking or music).

I do let the kittens eat as much as they want - at this point I'm letting them all eat as much as they want - but they all walk away after 1 - 1.5 oz. Sometimes they'll wander back and eat more 15-20 min later, but I don't want that to become the habit.

 

[orange&white]

Your numbers looked good. Looked like you were calculating around 3%+ for the kittens and 2%+ for the adults.

Once you get into the rhythm, you can quit measuring unless one of the kitties is too heavy or too thin. Keeping a record when you're starting out helps with budgeting how much meat to buy/make and give you a comfort level with the cats' eating habits.

 

[amysuen]

Ummm... I thought I was calculating 4% for the kittens and 3% for the adults.

Made 8 lbs tonight with no egg, less Vitamin B, and pureed more. We'll see how it goes this time...

 

[orange&white]

LOL ...and I was thinking you were a math genius, until you told on yourself!

With your new batch, did Snickers do his normal "I'll eat it because you just made it." ?

Texture does seem to make a different with some cats. Purees, chunks, or somewhere in the middle. I like to make large, identifiable chunks, but the kitten picks out everything except the chicken hearts. I find my self squatting over her plate mincing the hearts up with kitchen scissors so she'll eat them.

 

[amysuen]

Math genius...

He didn't eat it without the freeze dried salmon. He even turned his nose up at the bacon grease, although he seemed interested until it went on the food. I'm wondering if it's a smell thing rather than temperature? The previous 2 times I made the food all at once, but yesterday I baked everything in the morning and did the rest at night. All the cats were hanging around during the baking but not at night. On the other hand if it's smell and not temperature you'd think he'd eat the warmed food instead of the room temp food.

They're still leaving chicken bits on the plates so this morning I pureed one container into mush to see if that will make a difference. They've only had 1 meal of mush but there was less left on the plates. Looking ahead, should I try to go more raw or more chunky first?