if you've got more than one cats you'll know just how difficult it can be to
feed them different diets or different amounts well in this video I'm going to
give you five strategies for how to feed multiple cats different amounts and how
to keep cats from eating each other's food hi I'm dr. Alex from ourpetshealth.com
where I bring you pet health advice to help you and your pet live as
healthy and happier life as possible there could be a number of different
reasons why you might want to feed your cats different amounts or different
diets it might be that one of your cats is overweight and the other one is
healthy or too thin so you need to feed them different amounts you might have
cats of different ages and need to feed one say a kitten food and one an adult
food it might even be that one cat is unwell or suffers from a medical
condition that means they need to be fed a special prescription diet but your
other cats are perfectly healthy and you want to continue feeding a normal
cheaper maintenance diet so my first way to feed multiple cats different diets or
control how much each cat eats is to use an automatic microchip cat feeder
this is the most expensive option but also probably the simplest and most
reliable depending on your lifestyle and your cats eating habits so an automatic
microchip cat feeder will only open and allow a cat to eat that has the
microchip that has been programmed into the unit now while it's best that your
cat is microchip there are also collar tags that can be used instead when your
cat tries to eat from the bowl that chip is scanned and they're allowed to eat
from the bowl and the covers will open automatically if they're not allowed to
eat though then the covers will remain closed so
I'll put a couple of links to those microchip pet feeders I'm just in the
description down below so a slightly cheaper but equally effective way to
feed multiple cats differently is to use a microchip cat flap and that can
control which cats can enter a certain room you could for example only allow
your healthy cats into the laundry to eat normal food and have a prescription
diet down in the kitchen that's accessible to all now this would of
course allow all your cats to eat that prescription diet but this is highly
unlikely to cause any kind of health problem by and large they're designed to
be complete diets suitable for all we'll add our cats although you might need to
be careful if have a kitten depending on what the diet
is it will mean though that you're unwell cat will not be able to eat the
normal food and just one mouthful in the case of allergic skin disease or
hyperthyroidism can be enough to make the diet ineffective so this strategy
can really help just prevent this being a concern for your unwell cat if you
don't have a separate room to feed your other cats in well you don't want to put
cat doors in your house then you could instead use the microchip cat door I'm
attached to a large pet crate and the end result will be the same only those
cats programmed to go through that cat door will be able to access the inside
of the crate and eat the food that you put there okay moving on to a slightly
lower tech and cheaper solution on my third way to feed multiple cats works
when your cats are different sizes so the main reason to use these strategies
would really be when you have an adult cat and a kitten or if one of your cat
is morbidly obese and the other one is a healthy body condition and there are
significantly different size so there are two techniques with with these
situations you could either just use a doorstop to keep the door open to such
an extent that only your small cat can get through but it's too narrow for your
big cat or you could feed your small cat in a box that is accessible just by a
small hole cut in the side that is again too small for your fat cat to get
through now these might sound a bit far-fetched but you'll be surprised how
well that they can work in feeding multiple cats different diets when there
are significant kind of size discrepancies along the same lines of
making one lots of food inaccessible to certain individuals if you have an old
cat you might notice that they're not able to get up to places that your
younger cat can get to and this means that you could feed your younger cats or
normal food up high or wherever the inaccessible place is and keep your
older cats prescription food I'm not senior diet in an easily accessible
position of course your lack of mobility and that cat shouldn't go otherwise
ignored arthritis it's a very common disease you know the cats and chronic
pain is not something that they should have to put up with and there are many
home arthritis management strategies that you can implement and other very
effective arthritis arthritis treatments you can give to make sure that your cats
quality of life is not compromised so talking to your vet and getting your cat
examined is definitely something you should do if you find your cat's
mobility is not what it once was but equally this can be a very effective
strategy and finally there is nothing like supervising feeding time when it
comes to feeding multiple cats so supervised feeding times make sure that
each cat only eats from their own bowl and it doesn't steal food from slow at
eating housemates supervise feeding times also means that you can keep an
eye on each cat's appetite after all if you just put food down into a few bowls
and walk away how do you know if one cat is becoming sick and is stopping eating
set meal times are always back to the ad-lib feeding as well and to make
things easier for you you could place food bowls you should place the food
bowls as far away as possible or even feed in different rooms and you can even
feed each cat in their own travel crate if they're shut-in with their food then
they won't be able to eat it and you'll be certain that no cat is eating more
than they should be or getting to a diet that they shouldn't be eating now this
can also help your cat become very comfortable with spending time in their
crate which can make trips to the vet or the cat sorry or travelling in the car a
lot less stressful if you're able to get them into their crate without any
problem so while feeding all of your cats in a multi-cat household might be
stressful for you it's also stressful for your cat whenever you have more than
one cat there will inevitably be some degree of stress and friction between
your cats and you can learn all about keeping your cats relaxed in more ways
than just managing feeding in my video all about how to reduce stress in cats
so if you've come up with any unique or ingenious strategies to feed your cats
different diets then I'd really love to hear them in the comments down below and
if you try any of these techniques then let me know how you get on but until
next time i'm dr. alex from our pets health because they're family