Sunday, January 17, 2010

How Much Can Three Cats Eat?

The thing with having three cats in the house is that we seem to be going through a lot of cat food.  Teddy always wants to eat.  If there's food in the dish, he just has to eat it, and if there's not food in the dish, he's trying to get the bucket open to get to the food, or begging someone to give him some.  If we let that cat eat as  much as he wants, we're going to have to go looking for the best fat burners for cats, because he's going to be huge!

Weasley likes to eat, and he always begs for our food, but if there's no cat food in the dish, it doesn't seem to bother him.  He's more than ready to run over and eat as soon as we put some food in the dish, though - and that's usually when Tillie begs for food.  She begs patiently, standing over by the food dish quietly, waiting for someone to notice her.  We have to lock the boys up or hold onto them when we feed her, though, because she won't eat when they're around.  I wish she'd stand her ground when the boys try to rush over, but she won't.  She only wants to eat a little and walk away, and then be able to come back and eat a little later.  The problem is, as soon as she walks away and the boys are let go, they rush over and finish the food - so the next time Tillie wants to eat, there's no food.  So we start all over again, and we have no way of knowing how much each cat is eating.

So, today I got each cat his/her own food dish, with a lid - they're actually 8-oz. dip containers.  I measured out half of what the food bag says each cat should get per day (about 3/4 cup) and marked the containers so we know how full to fill them, and I labeled each container with one of the cat's names.  Now, twice a day, we can fill the food dishes to the line, and feed each cat from his or her own dish.   They can each eat as much as they want, and when they walk away, we pick up the dish, put the lid on, and put it away.  If Teddy eats all his food in the morning, he waits until afternoon to get more.  When Tillie walks away, her food gets put away until the next time she wants it.

As long as we pay attention and remember to pick the dishes up when the cats aren't eating, it should work.  Hopefully.  And one cat won't be eating twice as much food as the other ones.

1 comment:

  1. Yep, the cats can certainly go through a lot of food! And litter. We have a litter box in the upstairs bathroom and one in the basement, and I'm thinking we should see if we can't toilet train them. It would be nice to get rid of the litter boxes.

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