My kitten keeps asking for food?

Question

I feed my 7 month old kitten friskies wet food. Every time she asks for food i give her about 2 or 3 spoons. Recently, she's been asking for food every HOUR instead of every 2-3 hours. Sometimes I feed her and she asks for food again 30 minutes later.

My dad keeps telling me to feed her but I think if i keep feeding her this way she might get diarrhea. I just can't leave her meowing for food I have to give her something!

I was wondering if someone could tell me what I could do so she asks for food every 3-4 hours.

Answer 1

Well, first off, Friskies is a pretty low quality cat food.

Not all pet food is made equally. A lot of it is full of corn, by-products, dyes, unhealthy preservatives, filler grains and all sorts of nasty stuff. A lot of pet food companies are perfectly happy to dump cheap leftovers in. Will it kill your cat? No, it has to be nutritionally complete and safe to even be marketed. Is it healthy? Not by a long shot.

Corn is a low quality ingredient you never want to see in your pet food. Corn and low quality grains are two of the biggest culprits when it comes to food allergies in our pets.

Thankfully, there are some excellent cat foods being made these days that include organic, human grade ingredients rather than trash not fit for human consumption.

Examples of low quality foods to avoid: Anything you can find in a grocery store will be low end, Purina, Iams, Eukanuba, Science Diet, Royal Canin, Whiskas, Fancy Feast, Friskies, Meow Mix.

Examples of high quality foods to look for: Innova, Wellness, Solid Gold, Felidae, Fromm Four Star, Merrick, GO Natural, Nature's Variety Prairie, Nature's Logic, Artemis Fresh Mix, Timber Wolf Organics.

Although the high quality foods are more expensive, you're getting what you're paying for. Less filler material means more concentrated nutrients... this means you typically need to feed far less of the high quality food than you would of the low quality one. Which also means less p**p!

A great option is to go with an entirely grainless diet. Diets high in grain have been attributed to problems with diabetes in cats. Cats are obligate carnivores, so why should there be grain in their diet? Many of the high quality foods now put out grainless formulas. Some good grainless diets include: Innova EVO, Wellness CORE, Blue Wilderness, Nature's Variety Instinct, Orijen, Horizon Legacy, Merrick Before Grain, Fromm Surf & Turf, Now!, and Sold Gold Indigo Moon, Taste of the Wild.

Some pretty decent foods can even be found in common pet stores. Petsmart carries Blue Buffalo products (such as the excellent grain free diet Blue Wilderness). Petco carries Wellness, Solid Gold, Natural Balance, Eagle Pack Holistic, Blue Buffalo, Castor & Pollux Organix, Pinnacle, and Halo. If you can't find a food, most of the high quality food brands have websites with store locators on them.

Remember that foods should be switched gradually, especially when switching to a higher quality one, so as not to upset tummies.

Another option for feeding cats is to feed raw. This is something that should be thoroughly researched before being attempted:

http://www.barfworld.com/

http://www.rawfedcats.org/

http://www.rawfed.com/

http://www.wysong.net/controversies/rawm...

Now the question is, do you feed wet or dry? Wet is the correct answer. The reason is, in the wild, cats normally get most of their water content directly from their prey items and drink very little. Domestic cats are no different, and because of the fact that they are designed to take in water with their meal, they have a very low thirst drive. Cats often just don't drink enough. This leads to urinary tract infections and crystals. The bit about dry food being better for teeth is a myth and has not been proven in the least. Canned/wet food is better because it more closely mimics the cat's natural diet. More on why canned food is best:

http://www.catinfo.org/  (Excellent cat nutrition information by a vet)

http://cats.about.com/cs/catfood/a/canne...

http://www.littlebigcat.com/index.php?ac...

http://www.felinefuture.com/nutrition/bp...

http://www.littlebigcat.com/index.php?ac...

Another option to get cats to drink more would be a cat fountain. Cats tend to like to drink from running water and cat fountains see to that need, encouraging cats to take in more water.

More:

http://www.dogfoodanalysis.com/dog_food_... (Dog food reviews. It's for dogs, but most of the high quality brands also put out excellent cat foods. Four stars is a decent food, five stars is a great food, and six stars is an excellent food.)

Answer 2

my kitten who is 7 months as well does the same thing because i once gave her chicken from my plate and she loves it  and she keeps eating human food made her poo blood so we stoped giving her the food and she doesn't ak for food now.

only feed your kitten 3 times a day if you do not play with her she will get boared and just eat so play with her more. everytime my kitten gets hungrey after shes eaten i pick her up and put her outside or near the window to keep her busy

hope i helped

Answer 3

leave out dry cat food for her to eat inbetween meals and slowly wean her off of wet food

Answer 4

I am shocked at your question.  Obviously you don't realize that spoon fulls of food for a growing kitten is pretty much starving her?

Geez, set out a GOOD QUALITY dry food so she can free feed.  And have fresh water in a large bowl always.

And feed her one CAN in the morning and one at night of wet food.

She's growing and needs the nutrients; wet food is much easier for her to eat at this time.  And get a good quality of canned food.  She's actually a teenager and you know how much they eat!

Answer 5

A decent dry food will also have all the nutrients she needs.

Is the kitten wormed? They need to be done regularly, like every month until they're 6 months old as they're very susceptible to worms when young.

Have a look at the feeding guide on the food you've got - although mind you, Friskies is rubbish stuff and will probably drastically overestimate the amount of food the cat needs in a day. I suggest you get her onto a decent brand, i.e. one that's not available in a supermarket.

She may just be one of those cats who looooves food, and you're therefore going to struggle to keep her slim, especially once she's neutered. All the more reason to get her onto a decent brand.

Have you tried just cuddling her and playing with her when she meows? Cat's aren't necessarily saying 'feed me' when they meow, more often they're saying 'give me attention'!

Chalice

Answer 6

You need to get her checked by a vet in case she has worms. You also need to get into a feeding routine and soon, breakfast, lunch and tea, yes she will ask for more, but she needs to be taught she has set meal times. Cats will eat as much as they can for fear of not knowing when the next meal is coming.  As she is 7 months  maybe the kitten food isn't enough anymore. If you start giving dry food as well drop one wet food serving

eg

breakfast one pouch wet food and the dry food (amount to give will be on the box)

lunch she already has the dry food down so no wet food

Tea one pouch she already has the dry food

Dont top up the dry food put the amount that it says on the box down in the morning and leave it at that, or put the said amount down in 2 goes, but only at a meal time. not inbetween meals.

When she starts meowing for food and its not a meal time play with her, it may be she has realise when she gets food she gets attention and its attention she could be after rather than food

The amount you give depends on her weight eg 3.5g (cat weight) feed appro 3 pouches a day,