Tips on What to Feed Your Cat
If you want the best for your baby, you would want the same for your cats. To live a long and healthy life, your cat also needs to eat enough. Nutrition is the fuel for everything your cat does, including growing, developing mentally and physically, keeping the skin and fur healthy, and working out.
One of the first things you’ll need to think about is what to feed your cat. It shouldn’t be a surprise that as your cat gets older, their nutritional needs will change. Their food needs are not always the same, and they will change as they grow up. Making sure you always feed your cat the right food is an important part of keeping them healthy. Even if they have to change their diet more than once in their life.
How to Feed a Kitten
When they are about 4 weeks old, kittens start to eat solid food and soft food. At this age, canned kitten food with meat is a good choice. This food is easy to eat and digest because it is almost solid. Also, at this age, they are still getting used to eating food other than their mother’s milk.
They usually continue to nurse and eat kitten food until they are 5 or 6 weeks old. You can also give it to your kittens and let them eat as much as they like. This is because at this age, they are not likely to get too fat.
How to Feed an Adult Cat
Your cat no longer needs the same high levels of minerals, protein, and energy that it did when it was a growing kitten. So, when your cat turns one year old, you should switch to a high-quality diet that is made to meet the nutritional needs of adult cats. You can give an adult cat either dry food or wet food, or a mix of both. If you give your cat dry food, it will chew it harder and take longer to eat.
If it goes this route, it will have to get more water on its own. Dry food also stays fresh all day, so you can leave it out for your cat to nibble on. Dogs prefer to eat their food when it is wet, but cats prefer to eat their food when it is dry. Find out what you can feed an adult cat.
How to Feed an Old Cat
Around the middle of their lives, when they are considered to have matured, cats often gain weight and show other age-related physical and behavioral changes. But before you switch to a recipe for senior cat food, you should take your cat to the vet for a full medical and metabolic checkup.
Like humans, cats’ energy needs start to go down when they get older. However, unlike humans, their energy needs start to go up when they are about 11 years old. Cats have trouble breaking down lipids, proteins, and energy as they get older.
Protein is an important part of keeping our bodies healthy as we get older. If you have a younger cat that tends to get fat, you can give them the same high-protein, low-carb option. This is also fine for healthy senior cats. But once kidney disease is known, a kidney-supporting diet with a modified protein part makes people live longer and better lives. There are also other diets for specific conditions that can be used.
What Cats Eat
There are a few food groups that your cat needs very much to stay healthy.
Protein: Getting enough protein in your diet gives you the amino acids you need to make antibodies, enzymes, hormones, and tissues. It also helps keep the pH in the right range. It gives cats energy and helps them grow and get stronger. Meat, fish, poultry, and eggs are all good sources of complete proteins that come from animals. They have enough of the essential amino acids. Cats can’t use vegetarian amino acids well, so they need to get this vitamin from animal sources.
Fats: This concentrated source of energy has important fatty acids and helps the body use and move nutrients. It is also important for the health of cells and the control of metabolism. Most saturated fat comes from animal sources, while most polyunsaturated fat comes from plant sources. Fatty acids make up fats (and oils). The main types of this important nutrient are omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids.
Minerals: Your cat needs these, and they play a role in almost all of its bodily functions. These are found in bone and muscle tissue, and they help make enzymes, control pH, use nutrients, and move oxygen. Depending on where the nutrient comes from, its biological availability could vary a lot. Minerals are usually found in their natural state. The chelated ones have been linked to other organic compounds, which makes them easier for the body to absorb. Minerals are things like calcium, chloride, cobalt, copper, fluorine, iodine, sulphur, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorous, potassium, sodium, silicon, and zinc. Cats need very small amounts of other minerals. Minerals work together in a way that is called “synergistic.”
Vitamins: These nutrients are needed for proper growth and function as well as to keep your metabolism in check. Some are made by the body, while others come from the food we eat. They either dissolve in fat or in water. A, D, E, and K are all vitamins that dissolve in fat. C and the B complex are both in the group of things that dissolve in water. Most of the time, fat-soluble vitamins stay in the body, while water-soluble vitamins leave the body more quickly. The cat’s body prefers to get its food from animals instead of plants because it is easier for the body to process animal food.
Now that you know what your cat needs to eat to stay healthy, here are some general feeding tips:
- When deciding what to feed your cats, it’s also a good idea to have at least two or three different kinds of kibble.
- Your cat needs you to tell it the difference between water and food.
- It’s better for the cat’s digestive system if the plate is just a little bit higher. This lets the food move easily to the neck and stretches the stomach, making digestion easier.
- During the winter, try heating the food. The food in the cans might get cold, so try warming it up a bit before giving it to your cat.
- When you open a package of cat food online, put it in a glass jar and cover it with a metal lid to keep it crunchy.
- Don’t feed your fluffy from plastic containers or plates.
- You can spread dry or wet cat food on the plate like you would butter or peanut butter on toast to get your cat to lick the food instead of eating it all at once. Even more so when the food is in the shape of the dough.
- If your cat likes Kibble, you can put it in an interactive toy if it eats quickly.
How to give a cat food?
There are three main ways to feed your cat.
Meal-Feeding, Free-Feeding, and a Mix of the Two.
1. Getting food
If you feed your cat by the meal, it means that you only feed it at certain times of the day. You can use this method for both canned and dry foods. With this method, you can keep a close eye on how much food your cat eats, making it easy to tell if its appetite has changed. But cats may beg for food in between meals. Your cat doesn’t always have much say over how much it wants to eat.
2. Free Feeding
When you choose this method, the idea is that there will always be food. Remember that you can only do this with dry food because you can’t leave wet food out all day. Even if your cat has been leaving some kibble in the bowl for a few days at a time, you should still throw it away to keep it fresh. Your cat can eat several small meals on its own schedule throughout the day. The key to free-feeding being successful is to put out the right amount of dry kibble once a day. But if you let your cat eat as much as it wants, it might eat too much and get fat. Because of this, you must be very careful.
3. Feeding at the same time
When there is mixed feeding, canned food is served twice a day and dry food is always available. With combination feeding, your cat can eat several small meals of dry food at their own pace. When you give them wet or canned food at certain times of the day, you can keep an eye on how hungry they are. It also gives cats the good things about both wet and dry kibble.
How often should you feed a cat?
There is no hard and fast rule about how often you should feed your cat. It depends on how old it is, how active it is, how it is fed, and if it has any health problems. Before setting up your cat’s diet and eating schedule, you should talk to a vet.
People often make these mistakes when they feed their cats:
If you feed your cat with other pets, it might either eat too much or not get enough of what it needs. Cats like to play with their food. They would rather eat a lot of small meals throughout the day than just two big ones. So, if you feed your cat two large, fixed meals, you might want to think about how you do it. A lot of people don’t think about it when they use plastic containers. This is not something you should do.
It is not hard to give your fluffy a long and healthy life if you are aware and do these basic things.
