Hi all. Ellie's mum here (for those who haven't followed the events)

So Kira and Nala are now 5 months, and we are feeding them 5 to 6 small meals a day, plenty of fresh water from the fountain. Their meal usually consists of 1 pouch of wet food (they love Royal Canin!) and a few nuggets of dry food (grain free). After a bowl got broken, I used to give them all in the same bowl and that worked fine, until yesterday, I saw that Nala has mastered the trick of sticking her paw to nick the bowl from under her sister's nose! So as of today, it's back to a bowl each. Anyway, quantities are still the same at the moment, and they seldom lick the bowl clean, so I am assuming that is sufficient quantity wise.

However, Ellie told me that by the time they're grown up, they should be on 2 meals a day, so I was wondering when I should start changing their feeding pattern? By how much would you expect to increase their meal size?

Thanks in advance!

Do they have dry food available all day? Or just at meal times? My two are on two/three main meals a day, some fish as a snack and they have dried food down all day to pick at. The one thing about kittens is you can't really over feed them but you can under feed them. Usually the best way to deal with it is to have dry available all day so they can graze on it when they want and then you can cut the wet feeds down to 2-3. With kittens they reach sexual maturity at 6 months, usually physical growing is around a year but then they keep filling out until around 2, at a year is when you can swap to 2 meals and have actual meal times and then mental maturity is 18 months I hope that helps. Only really worry about feeding to weight amounts once they hit a year until then it's usually feed them as much as they want to eat as long as they aren't getting fat.

I have my two on a mix of Applaws and Lilly's kitchen, they have Applaws kitten dry down all day I just refill the bowl, Griffith (my large boy) has a tin of Applaws in Jelly twice per day and 1/2 a tuna loin for lunch, I also mix a pea sized amount of nutrical vitamin paste into his food daily. Arya who I'm feeding up atm gets 1/4 a foil of Lilly's kitchen kitten and 1/2 a tin of tuna or chicken kitten Applaws 3 times per day, the 1/2 a tuna loin snack and the nutrical (2/3 tsp probably across all her meals) mixed into each meal she has just to boost her growth.

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- Sarah
Arya 24/04/16 - Seal Lynx Point Rosetted Bengal
Griffith 16/04/16 - Silver Seal Lynx Point Rosetted Bengal
Mina (in my avatar)- 1999-2016 - Seal Mink Spotted Bengal (Snow) - run free at rainbow bridge

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The little monsters 3

I must admit I free feed, whenever they ask I give it and dry food left down all day..

Its personal choice really.

I find mine don't overeat so it works for all of us.

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Clare
Magic (brown spotted boy born 31 March 2012)
Pearl (seal Lynx Point girl born 1 October 2015)
Bristol, UK

They are still babies at this point and require the multiple meals a day. I would still feed them this way until they approach a year old, then you can cut back to 3 larger meals a day and try to get them on a schedule. I'm not sure why people think kitties only need TWO meals a day. Is that all we humans eat? They should eat in the morning, afternoon and evening. Kitties should always have their own separate food bowls, however, they can enjoy the same water fountain. Many people keep out dry food throughout the day in case the kitties want to nibble. Others do not want to have any cat food out when the kitties aren't eating. As long as they are growing, they are getting enough nutrition.

It's awesome that you are so worried about these babies. I hope Ellie is able to visit them a lot! I know how much she loves these kitties.

Thank you so much for the replies, I don't usually worry so much, but then it's the first time I have had such expensive pets in my care! (Plus Ellie will kill me if something were to happen to them! :p )

Well, since I'm a easy-go-lucky, non-obsessive kind of person, I think I will do like I did with my kids, I think feed on demand/need is probably the way to go, keep up with the wet stuff at regular times and dry food in a separate bowl if they need a snack. That was my first instinct, but I'm glad that others do it that way too!

I'll just have to watch these two, they've cottoned on that kitchen = food, so as soon as someone was standing near the sink/cooker area, they got into their "feed-me-I'm-starving" routine, and as there are quite a few people in the house, it was chaos... So now there's a board on the fridge with their regular feed times and whoever feeds them ticks it, so that the little devils can't keep on getting fed all day long, lol. Thank goodness for apposable thumbs, we can still outsmart them!!!

You only "think" you can outsmart them at this stage.