I wanna try an experiment but I’d also like others experience here.
I’ve noticed certain cats eat tok fast and also go back to extra food. I feel like if the overeaters/gulpers were let to eat last and then all food leftovers were removed afterwards we might have less instances of vomiting afterwards.
What say you, cat-owning Lemmings?
I’ve always just left bowls of food out for my animals. Gets topped up every 4ish days. Fresh water every morning though.
Everyone’s mileage will vary though, some dogs and cats just can’t be left with food. They’ll eat till the vomit. I don’t think there’s any way to fix it, just roll with it.
Depends a lot on the environment when they were young, I wager. Could also just be nature more than nurture and some animals are just more food motivated than others from birth
That sounds overindulgent to the point its literally the opposite of my problem. I feel the one cat is eating too much + too fast to the extent its causing them to vomit it up making it all fruitless anyway
Uuhh, I do the same as Schmidt and leave the food out. It works fine NOW, but let me tell you about when it failed. I’ve had different cats for decades and never had a problem until my current cat, who was listed at the shelter as ‘shy’. They told me she’d escaped people multiple times and they’d only managed to get her out of the walls the previous day (after she’d been hiding in them for over a week). She was adult, but small and thin and harboring a deep hatred for being confined (she isn’t ‘shy’, she’s extremely willful). We brought her home and she immediately found a hiding spot behind the oven, near the food and water that was out for the finicky older cat. For the first week, the only way we knew the new cat was still in the house was because we’d wake up, find the cat bowl empty and a big pile of cat vomit on the floor. We’d clean up the vomit, fill the bowl, and generally leave the kitchen alone as much as possible. After that initial week, the cat figured out that there would always be food. She would not starve. She did not need to gorge, and gorging was not comfy. Eventually she came out and accepted her new ‘family’. She continued to over-eat a bit too much for several months, but she settled on a chunky weight and has stayed at it for several years now.
Now I have a theory: I suspect that cats who experience food insecurity are far more likely to gorge themselves, and may never stop as long as they suspect their food supply is limited. If you want to test that theory with your own cats, I would be interested in hearing the results.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned having and caring for many cats over the last 30 years, they’ve all got their quirks. Some were over eaters that would throw up almost daily. Some would be grazers and do just fine with their bowls full all day and night. No answer is going to be just right for every cat.
If you have cats that eat at different paces, you might just have to feed them on a schedule in separate locations. That was the only way we could handle it when we had the same situation.
And it’s important to take the time! They deserve it and will be a huge improvement to their life. Don’t let them chonk, they are really sad when they dechonk.
I just give mine their food in batches. Usually a half cup in the morning and a half cup in the evenings (I have two cats).
If I leave out the same amount of food, such as if I’m leaving the house for a weekend trip, I will come back to hungry kitties.
I have a cat that has been an overeater since birth. His siblings would nurse until they were full and then back off to take a little cat nap, but he would nurse until mom left the box the kittens were in and he couldn’t get to her anymore. I feed each of my cats on a schedule and each has a separate place to eat so they can’t steal from each other. Left over food from the other cats gets picked up before the overeater is let out. There are a lot of complicated slow feeders on the market, but a cheap and simple one has worked great for me. It is a narrow, deep bowl with a wide lip that he can only pull a few pieces of food out of at a time with his paw. Wet food hasn’t been as much of a problem with vomiting, so I haven’t tried any slow feeders meant for wet food. Mine eat wet food in the morning and dry food in the evening.
I am linking the feeder I own, I haven’t seen one by any other brands but the design is so simple that they might exist if this one isn’t available near you or you may even be able to craft a DIY version. https://catit.us/products/catit-multi-feeder
Get an automatic feeder.
We have an overeater, and a self-limiter. When the overeater developed markers of being pre-diabetic, we finally hardened our hearts and put him on a strict diet. For us, this was extremely hard, as he begged 24/7. He would yowl at all hours of the day, and it woke us up at night. After a month of this with no sign of him changing his behavior, I bought an automatic feeder from Amazon for ~$30.
The main change was that our’s quickly stopped seeing us as the main source of food, and this eliminated most of - and all of - the nighttime begging. It took a week or so, but it was pretty fast.
Second, most have multiple feeding times. This helps in two ways: first, it allows more, smaller portions, which eliminates the binge/purge issue. Second, it allowed us to have feeding times throughout the night, which helped with stopping the nighttime begging.
Third, it’s really easy to calculate caloric input from just the information on the food bag; the portion sizes can be set in the feeder, and it’s an easy, reliable control.
As a minor benefit, it makes feeding easier.
This obviously only works if you feed kibble.
One issue we did have was that we initially gave the self-limiter free-choice kibble on the counter, and it was enough to keep him away from the feeder. This worked because our diet boy was too fat to jump up onto the counters. However, the feeder was so successful that one day he discovered that he had slimmed down enough to get onto the counter, and we had to change tactics. After much tribulation, we simply ended up getting a second auto-feeder and set them to the same schedule. It isn’t perfect, but the dieter is still slowly losing weight, and the self-limiter is maintaining, so it seems to be working for now.
How many cats do you have?
Ive got two. One eats a ton, really quickly, the other likes to take her time and enjoy her meal. But the other cat will jump in and try to eat her share.
I measure out their servings, so Ill usually half their meals and feed them the rest an hour later. Keeps them from overeating.
Have the vomiting cat(s) been checked out by a vet? Vomiting can be normal, but it can also be a sign of various health issues.
How many cats do you have? Are they overweight? Can you provide more details about your specific situation?
If you have cats vomiting due to eating too much too fast, maybe try slow feeders? There’s also microchip feeders available so that your slower eaters can come back on their own schedule, and it’s more difficult (but not impossible) for other cats to steal their food. And finally, there’s automatic feeders that will dispense food on a schedule. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen anything that combines even two of these into a single product.
In my case, I have 2 resident cats, and frequently foster. My Tabby is a slender grazer, and although he prefers kibble, the vet said he needs to either eat wet food or prescription kibble (urinary). My Void LOVES food and will devour almost anything, and would gladly be a total potato if he could.
I use a microchip feeder for Tabby, and feed him twice per day, leaving the food out for about 2 hours at a time, which seems to be enough time for him to eat enough to maintain his weight. Void currently eats from a basic/standard bowl. He also eats twice per day, and usually finishes his food in less than 5 minutes, but has only vomited when there was an urgent medical condition, so I haven’t actually tried a slow feeder for him yet.You should consider wet food instead, it’s much better for cats.
For the gulpers you can get bowls that are complicated to slow them down.
This is weird, I’ve heard the opposite that dry food is better. Lord help me I’m goin on a Google fest.
We feed our 2 twice a day. First is dry and the second is wet. Before wet food our cats had really bad shedding and one of them developed a clump on his back that wouldn’t go away. After adding wet in daily it’s gone, their shedding is way down, and their coats are silky smooth. Plus one has lost weight and is more fit.
