Once you have decided what food to feed your cat, the next step is figuring out how to feed them. As small carnivores, cats have a unique style of eating that can be encouraged in our homes.
Serve Several Small Meals
Imagine a cat’s wild ancestor. Stepping through vegetation, she stops to sniff a hole in the ground when she hears a rustling sound to her left. She crouches low to the ground and her eyes snap to a bit of movement near a shrub. She slinks forward slowly, then sprints and pounces on her prey. She comes away with a mouse and eats it carefully. That mouse might be 10% of her daily energy requirement, so she can’t take a break. She has to prowl again for her next meal.
Now that we have domestic cats in our homes, we tend to feed on a schedule that is convenient for us. Two large meals, one in the morning and one in the evening, is easy for us, but it goes against how cats were designed to eat. Evolved to hunt small prey items like mice, cats have small stomachs and naturally eat several small meals throughout the day. Feline specialists at icatcare.org recommend feeding house cats five small meals per day. If that sounds unfeasible for your schedule at this time, try adding just one meal to what you currently serve your cats. Technology can also help increase the number of meals without interrupting your schedule: automatic feeders can dispense a pre-measured amount of food at programmed times.
Consider Measuring Meals Instead of Free-Feeding
Many cat owners free-feed their cats by keeping food available at all times. That can be done successfully for many cats and has the advantage of letting the cat decide when and how much to eat.
However, free-feeding can encourage overeating and lead to obesity. Commercial foods are formulated to be highly palatable and come in bite-sized tidbits that are easy to eat. That, combined with indoor cats’ tendency to be under-stimulated and bored, can lead to a cat eating more calories than they expend. Some cats can also overeat due to real or perceived competition for food in multi-cat households.
For cats that overeat, it is best to measure their meals to control how much food is available to them. Cats in multi-cat households should be fed separately to avoid competition or stress around food. If food stealing is a problem or cats need different diets, technology can help here, too. Microchip feeders only allow access to food to the cat with a specific microchip.
Ditch the Bowl
If we look back at the wild cat hunting sequence described above, we notice that a significant amount of her time is spent searching for food, using different senses, and moving around (walking, running, pouncing). Wild cats and outdoor domestic cats can spend 50% of their day searching, hunting, and eating.
Now consider an indoor cat who gets fed two meals a day in the same bowl everyday, scarfs it all down in one sitting, and returns to his napping spot. How much time does that take? What senses or brain power did he have to use to find it? What physical activity was involved? The answers to these questions are certainly very different than they would be for a wild cat. Serving food this way is truly a disservice to our cats. They need opportunities to use their senses, their minds, and their bodies to obtain food to maintain their physical and mental wellbeing.
Now that doesn’t mean that you should never use a bowl to feed your cat. But think of ways that their meal can be more interesting or challenging to provide enrichment. Some ideas include:
- Feed in different locations: Change things up by leaving food in different places around the home. Try elevated perches like cat trees or at the top of the stairs to encourage more physical movement and exercise. You can even split a meal into multiple areas so your cat has to search for it.
- Puzzle feeders: Puzzle or slow feeders make cats eat more slowly and are especially useful for preventing the “scarf and barf” method of eating from a bowl. Any cat will benefit from the mental stimulation of figuring out how to get the food and physical activity of manipulating food with their paws or tongues. Puzzle feeders come in a variety of types including: stationary, rolling, and wet food lick mats. Feeders can be purchased or be made at home with everyday materials. A Google search for cat puzzle feeders will bring up many options to try.
- Incorporate play time: Add an interactive play session before meals to simulate the entire prey sequence. Play allows the chance for using their senses to find prey, stalk, pounce, and deliver a killing bite. Following that with a meal will satisfy the cat’s natural hunting instincts while providing more mental and physical enrichment.
For help creating an enriching feeding plan for your cats, contact me today at Pawsitive Vibes Cat Behavior and Training.