We have an 18 year old cat and she's lost her marbles. I don't know how to handle her eating habits. This is a bit of a long story.
My partner was the original single owner of this cat, and she would allow it to 'graze feed', only feeding it dry food and letting it eat when it pleased. She filled its water bowl with bottled water when it was half-empty and kept the biscuit bowl topped off at all times.
Upon moving in to live with my partner I noticed Mitzi was having serious issues. She would throw up every 2-3 days and was struggling to use her litter box; bloated and constipated. I insisted on getting her wet food and starting a feeding schedule. This was a bit of a battle with my partner but she eventually caved and allowed me to take over care of the cat, and now the issues have ceased.
Well, those issues have ceased. The cat does not understand feeding schedules. At all. If an hour after eating she wants a snack, she will meow until it's dinner time. I'm not kidding. She will meow the entire day, or night if it happens to be the evening. We attempted to push through and hope she'd learn but after a year of her not learning what a feeding schedule is, meowing til she was hoarse every day, we had to give up. We needed to sleep.
I considered medication but she was already on some for other reasons and it wasn't going to work out.
This meant either giving her up (which meant lethal injection directly or indirectly) or just feeding her when she meowed for it, and since she's an elderly cat who has trouble keeping weight on, plus we love her, we went with the latter.
This has another side-effect; she's picky to the point of suicidal. We need to feed her wet food for her health, but she won't eat wet food unless it's specific kinds, and when she does she won't eat any wet food that's been sitting out for over an hour.
Here's where that gets really complicated. She wants to graze. She will not finish her food. She always leaves some behind. She then will not eat the food because it's too dry for her taste, and will hesitate to touch any other food put in the bowl til it's removed.
No matter how little food I put in the bowl, she leaves some behind and won't touch it. 'Some' being anywhere from 10%-80% of the food. If I refuse to change it out she will actually choose to starve rather than touch the food that she's left.
I tried taking the bowl and putting it in a resealable plastic ziplock bag and just giving it back to her when she meows, but once it reaches a certain amount left she won't touch the food. I'm not kidding here, or 'giving in'. She won't eat it. She will die before she eats wet food that's been out over an hour, and will not eat all her food. My only choice has been to feed her 4+ times per day and ignore her meowing for rest of the day; she gives up after short tantrums of anywhere from 5-30 minutes if she's had 4 separate small meals and isn't fussed to go all day with it.
Now with me working from home I took this task on. Whatever, she's old. Some people have incontinence in older cats. I just have to feed her a bit more often and clean out a bowl, not too bad right? Well, it's pretty bad because as you might realize, cat food stinks and we're tossing half of it in the garbage because the cat would rather perish than masticate. The pests we've been attracting as a result have meant more expense and annoyance as well.
What the crap am I supposed to do? Every time I try to hardball her to just eat on a schedule or eat the food that's there, she stops eating altogether (this is really bad for a cat her age). It's also messing up our sleep as I'm getting up at 2am to clean the cat's bowl and feed it.
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from Pets https://www.reddit.com/r/Pets/comments/bhv9r6/cat_eating_habits_driving_us_crazy/
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