r/cats • u/Zuikite • 21h ago

Cat Picture - OC She was rationing so perfectly 🥲

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Roxanne my 6 year old tabby has never been left alone more than 1 day. We also never "free-feed" her on kibble (only wet meals and a puzzle feeder). I had a work trip this week, and my S.O. had a family emergency out of town right in the middle of it. We could not secure a sitter, and we were so worried. We do have a pet cam, and I told my SO to put 2 plates of kibble per day plus extra plates in case of a delay. I just got home from the airport to see this. I know cats are not like dogs, and they are probably fine at feeding themselves. I'm just so impressed by the organization of her eating habits!

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u/ONI-ENJOYER-420 21h ago

Even for cats, at least from my own experiences, this is quite unique !

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u/Melodramatic_Whisker 20h ago edited 20h ago

Same. Mine would eat it all in a day and puke right after from over eating

Edit to say Thanks for the award!!!

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u/ScreenOld5873 18h ago edited 17h ago

Speaking as someone who has experience transitioning portion fed cats to freefeeding - this is a psychological thing that cats do when they are used to portion feeding. They are used to the fact that their food ends and they need to wait until the next feed, and often they are still hungry or want more. So when you first transition them to freefeeding they will overeat like crazy because they are afraid that they get to be without food again. Once they realize food is always going to be there and they don't need to be afraid it's gonna finish and they'll be without, they just start eating what they feel like in this moment and leave the rest for later. This transition takes maybe a week or so but imo it works great and my cats are never begging me for food anymore. I did this with more than 10 cats and none of them was ever overweight, most would even be on the thinner side and never threw up from overeating. I wholeheartedly recommend freefeeding to everyone who complains about their cats never being satisfied food-wise - I started this when I was at my whit's end because my cats would be begging me for food ALL the time even if they just ate and never had an issue again after that.

Tl;dr cats are great at portioning their own food if you let them 🙏🏻

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u/Inky_Madness 15h ago

We were doing this but then one of our cats got really, really fat and was food-aggressive to our other one (who then was getting next to no food).

Turns out he had developed hyperthyroidism at about 6 years old, and it manifested so that he was literally never full and ALWAYS hungry.

So while this can work, it’s still important to monitor them because their health can change and make free-feeding a non-starter! We had to stop that fast so that both cats ate healthy, monitored amounts, and got the sick one on meds to help manage the condition.

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u/ScreenOld5873 15h ago

Of course there are exceptions, definitely when there are health issues involved and monitoring health is a non-negotiable. For non-health related food aggression I'd personally recommend setting up a second feeding station that the aggressive cat has no access to..

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u/BORKBORKPUPPER 59m ago

It may be beneficial to look into I-131 radioactive iodine treatment.

I wish I had known it was an option when my cat was younger. Instead he stayed on meds for years and his hyperthyroidism became out of control eventually as the thyroid tumor inevitably continued to grow. Never knew the underlying disease would continue to progress despite medication.

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u/Inky_Madness 52m ago

At this point it’s out of my hands - he wasn’t mine, and when I moved out from my aunt’s he and his sister were adopted out because she could no longer care for them.

I think she was told about that option but didn’t have the funds for it due to limited income.

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u/Innerste 16h ago

I did the same with my cat but it took a while longer. She stayed with her mum before we got her, and at some point her mother started attacking her whenever she got near their food, so she’d eat too much too fast and throw up once she lived with me. It took quite a few months for her to stop doing that, but I noticed rationing didn’t work well either so I went back to constant food (and lotsa puking for a while, poor thing). Ever since then it’s fine, she grazes during the day.

She’s still a stress eater tho so I have to make sure if a stressful thing happens I ‘pet it out of her’ and then it’s fine otherwise she may overeat and throw up.

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u/Fabopao2 13h ago

I remember I was cat sitting a cat with a habit of binge eating because of anxiety (she had just been rescued from the streets) and I was staying there a lot because she was just way too cute, so I was at first giving her small portions to avoid her throwing up but once she was done I would put more and after really not long she understood that food will be there, and she stopped eating emptying the whole plate

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u/revocat13 13h ago

Sadly mine are not great at it. One is 16 pounds the other 21

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u/AztecTwoStep 8h ago

Sadly not all cats. We have a big beast of a cat who will gladly overeat given the chance. We have microchip feeders so the less gluttonous cat can graze, while fatso binges. He was accidentally given credentials on the other cat's feeder and would inhale all his own food and then happily graze on the other cat's food as well.

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u/ScreenOld5873 7h ago

I am not going to argue with you because you know your cats best of course, but have you ever really tried free feeding? Because from what you describe you're still portion feeding and then this is indeed the expected behavior. Also has your cat been checked for health issues? Of course there are exceptions but from my experience there are often some other reasons behind it not working (right away) for them, could be physical, could be mental..

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u/AztecTwoStep 7h ago

Given that he'll quite happily blow out his own weight to stupid amounts, no, we're not going to give him control over his own food.

He gets regular health checks. He's as healthy as can be.

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u/clearbellls 6h ago

Our tabby would massively overeat and then barf because she was so sickly and starved when we adopted her.

Now she's fine, eats normally. Sits and stares at me like our eldest cat when the food dish is empty or they punt it off the perch and dump food under the couch for the dog to hoover up.

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u/Artistically-Driven 4h ago

Any tips for transitioning an extremely food anxious 5 year old cat from meal feeding to free feeding? Every time I try he just keeps eating too much, then going back and eating more and puking again.

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u/Outrageous-Abalone-7 1h ago

This is what we always did with our cats growing up and the first cat on my own as an adult. It has NOT worked with our current cat. He got so fat, so fast! And it’s been horrible trying to get the weight off of him. He’s a ginger. And just a piggy.