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Old February 13th, 2011, 11:27 PM
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Welcome Miaow. It's great that you want to change your cats' food to something healthier for them. Our food gurus on Pets recommend reading www.catinfo.org. It has some astounding information and makes for great reading.
When you first start transitioning to wet foods; either canned, raw, or cooked; you may find some of your dry food addicts won't cooperate well with you. There is a section on the website that gives great tips on how to transition a dry food addict to canned.
Ideally a cat should have between 20 to 30 calories per pound a day to maintain weight. That would work out to be around 4 to 6 ounces of a good quality food such as Wellness, Natures' Variety, Merricks, etc. Some cans have the calorie count on the side of the can. It takes some time and effort to find the foods your cats will eat but it is worth it in the end. What you are looking for is grain free, by product free foods.
As to how often to feed your cats - it depends on your cats. Some do well with two to three feedings a day. Some like to graze. Canned food can be left down for 12 hours with no ill effects to your cats. You will probably find that it will not last that long anyway with feeding multiple cats. Your cats will let you know if they are being fed enough.
The important thing to remember is that although you have a cat, or two, that may need to drop a bit of weight you don't want them to lose it rapidly. That can cause many health issues. When a cat loses one pound of weight it is equivalent to a human losing 20 pounds. Using that correlation think about the amount of time it would take for a human to lose that much weight. What you want to achieve is a slow steady weight loss. You have said your biggest one is overweight. Does he look overweight or is he a big boy? One of mine is a monster kitty at around 19 pounds but I would not call him fat. He is just a very big boy.
I hope this is enough info to get you started. I'm sure there will be other folks around soon to help you out.
Oh - we like pics here at Pets please.
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