I have two cats, both domestic short hairs. One (Stella the tabby) inhales whatever food I put in front of her. At our last vet visit, the vet told me that I need to get her to lose weight. So, I've bought one of those microchip feeders for my other cat Talana (the black cat). She's mostly a grazer when it comes to dry food but loves wet food and often eats her sister's leftovers.
Note: I'm using the feeder for dry food only. I feed the cats their wet food once in the morning and once in the evening.
For those here who have used a microchip feeder to help one cat lose weight, I'm looking for advice on a couple of things:
- How'd you get your cat to acclimate to the feeder?
- Did you also get a feeder for your overweight cat? If not, how did you manage feeding the overweight cat?
- Should I invest in weight control food for my overweight cat?
Thanks!
Hi Gillian,
I have personal experience using a microchip feeder (more specifically, I have used the SureFeed). I also advise clients often using this strategy to help one (or both or more) of their cats to lose weight. It is the only strategy I’ve found that will reliably work to help one of the housemates lose weight, especially if scheduled meal feeding at home is not possible (or if there is food competition).
For your first question, it may depend on the type of feeder you have. With any new feeder, you’ll need your cat to have time to adapt to its new appearance, smells, etc. WITHOUT the open/close or dispense function. The SureFeed for example, has some training settings on it where you can just leave the container open so that the cat can get used to going under the scanner archway and feel comfortable going in there to get food without it moving or making noise.
If you have one that more drops food into a bowl, just put some food in the bowl first and turn off the dispensing settings so that your cat can just get comfortable eating out of a new bowl.
The SureFeed then has some training settings where the accordion door opens and closes very slowly. Once a cat gets used to it, you can set it to open/close faster, so that food stealing by other hovering cats is not possible. I can’t speak for other feeders, but they may have similar training settings. It took my own cat about two weeks to get used to the SureFeed.
For your second question, I would say it depends on how self-regulated your non-overweight cat is. Some cats self-regulate their eating well, others do not. Ideally, you can just let the non-overweight cat(s) just go in/out of the microchip feeder as they please. The overweight cat will then be left with their own portioned out amounts of food you provide in their regular bowl at mealtimes and unable to steal any more from anywhere else.
But if your non-overweight cat is going to also eat your overweight cat’s food, making it hard to tell how much your overweight cat is eating, it may be beneficial to set them up with their own feeder too, so that you can more closely keep track of how much food each is getting.
For weight control diets, this also depends. I advise folks to first understand how many calories their cat is getting per day. If their cat is free fed, or they’re not sure how much food they get, we have to control that first. Otherwise, it doesn’t matter what diet you feed. You may find that controlling portions makes a difference on its own.
If we find (after maybe a month or two) that no weight loss is occurring with portion control, it may be worth looking at calorie content of the diet. Weight loss diets can vary a lot, from high calorie to low. I try to aim for a diet that is less than 350 kilocalories per cup. Most cats who have an ideal weight of 10-12 lb will need about 200 kilocalories per day, and certainly not over 250. This does not apply to large breed cats like Maine Coons.
Head to this link to find our cat calorie calculator. It can at least help you get started. Make sure to include as accurate a body condition as possible for your cat.
If an over the counter diet is not successful considering portion control and calorie content, you can certainly discuss a prescription weight loss diet with your vet.
I hope that helps.
This is super helpful! Thank you!