Food competition
 

We used to feed our cats twice a day, once in the morning, once when we got home from work. The cats waking us up in the morning for food got to the point of annoyance where we decided to stop feeding them in the morning, and give them all their food after work. At first this worked great, and the crying in the morning was slowly stopping (mostly because their dishes still had food in them). But now the food is gone by morning, and it is becoming more and more obvious that James (the dominant cat) is eating most of the food, and due to this Suki (the submissive one) is crying more than ever in the morning. At one point Suki was throwing up, a lot, and we think it was because she was eating so fast out of competition with James. To make all this even worse, both cats are getting fat because they eat so much already. But if we cut down on their food then Suki just gets more taken from her, and her crying grows to vast levels of belligerence.

When the cats are happy, they are great cats. Lately however, Suki is so unhappy she's making the rest of the house unhappy.

We are going to try a feeding schedule where we feed them a small amount after work, and the rest before we go to bed. At this point though, I'm only about 20% confident on this idea, because I think the food will be gone by morning and James is going to eat most of it.

Please help.

Hi,
May I suggest that you separate your two cats in different rooms when feeding so there won't be any competition between the two. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any mention of what type of food your cats are on to make them overweight. You might want to try putting them on a lower calorie intake diet. There are several different brands of "light" food out on the market that you want to try. For example, there's a yummy kibble food called Science Diet "light" for adult felines.

Hopefully this will make Suki a happy camper!


© Nancy Kitching 2003

Nancy Kitching
Dog Trainer Member of CAPPT, CKC, OKC (Ottawa Kennel Club), and Bytown Obedience Club in Ottawa.
156 Fairhaven
Hudson, Quebec J0P 1H0

Tel: 450-458-3165