I’ve got another cat myth to debunk for you: we can trust cats to eat just as much food as they need. The stereotypical image of dogs vs. cats is that dogs guzzle down their food as soon as it’s placed into the bowl, whereas the finicky cat picks at its bowl throughout the day. Once again, that’s simply not the case.
Maybe overall cats can be more trusted to graze at their food and only eat what they need, as opposed to often-greedy dogs, but that’s not true across the board. Some of my closest friends own a dog that picks at her food throughout the day, and my cat is a total glutton.
I certainly did not expect the latter. Growing up my family’s cat rarely emptied his bowl of dry food, though I think that had more to do with the half-can of wet food he received twice a day than with his particular eating habits or his feelings about dry food. When I got a cat of my own, I expected I could trust Cole to eat what he needed and leave the rest.
Instead, he started devouring his food in shorter and shorter periods of time. For awhile I would just refill his bowl every time I found it empty; that’s what I’d read to do when I first adopted him. All the cat advice books and websites said to make sure that the cat’s dry food bowl was filled at all times, and to only regulate the amount of dry food given if the cat became overweight.
Needless to say, Cole’s gotten a bit fat. I first noticed it just before he turned a year old. I figured it was because I still gave him kitten food, and I attributed his pudgy belly to the higher fat content of kitten food. We experienced something similar with the dog, and she lost the weight once we switched her off puppy food.
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Cole’s developed a bit of a belly
Cole didn’t lose the weight. The thing is, I can’t decide if he is truly overweight or not. He has that floppy extra skin at the back that male cats sometimes develop if they were neutered at an early age (Cole was, at three months).
But there doesn’t seem to be too much extra fat over his ribs. He’s 12 pounds, which is on the high end of normal for adult cats, but he’s smaller of build than my friend’s cat who is also 12 pounds, so it seems like he ought to weigh less.
However, when I took him to the vet for his routine yearly checkup, she said that it’s tricky to tell because sometimes cats do carry their weight lower in their stomachs, not over their ribs. Unfortunately, she was unclear as to whether he is actually overweight or not.
What I’m mostly concerned about is all the advice I read when deciding how much and how often to feed Cole. Everything I read said to keep the dry food bowl constantly full unless the cat became overweight. I remember thinking, “well, how I am I supposed to keep him from gaining too much weight?” There didn’t seem to be any suggested preventative measures.
My advice to you is to let your cat graze its dry food. But if you notice that your cat is cleaning out its bowl quickly, try to keep a constant eye on your cat’s weight gain. If it seems to be eating too much, or gaining too much weight, check with your vet, or start giving your cat a set amount of food.
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