Pet Grub

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What can I do to have my pets eat more? Well, this is really an interesting question — don't you think?

Most people ask what can I do to reduce my pet's hunger?

The interesting thing is that both questions have a similar answer but of course, different.

Dogs and cats that are constantly hungry are not starving for food (in most cases), but rather they are starving for nutrition. The keyword is nutrition.

Conversely, many dogs or cats that don't eat a lot of food have smaller appetites simply because they are not starving for nutrition.

When the body is getting all of the nutrition (not food, but nutrition) it needs then there is less urgency when it comes to eating. If we were to watch stray cats, as I did when I operated my cat sanctuary and compare those same cats to domesticated cats, we begin to observe some interesting details.

When I operated my cat sanctuary, I fed the stray cats every day and they ate wonderful meals. The health of the cats improved dramatically and although still wild, they were — relatively speaking — content. Except when it came to food.

The wild cats were used to not having enough food. As a result, every morning they were waiting for their food. When I fed them, they ate their food fast — some of the wild cats would literally eat two fish at a time — not wanting their friends to steal their food — even though there was more than enough food for all of them. There was no problem feeding these cats. All I did was throw the food down and they ate in a rush and they ate more than what they could eat. Only then did they walk away from the fish.

If you watch a lion, when they eat, they eat with urgency. They never know when their next meal will be caught. On the other hand, our dogs and cats always know that there will be food in their bowl. They have no urgency, no rush — our dogs and cats are simply not used to starving — truly, our pets have a privileged life.

When our pets don't eat as much as we think they should be eating, it can be for this very reason. Not always of course and we must be able to separate signs of illness from signs of satisfaction.

One way we can help our pets eat enough is to feed our adult pets only one meal per day. In this way, when it comes to their next meal, 24 hours later, they are hungry and ready to eat.

See also:

• How much to feed our pets (Part 1).
• How often should we feed our dogs, cats, puppies and kittens (Part 3).
• Methods and ways to encourage our pets to eat their food.

Ultimately, when a dog or cat is eating a wholesome raw meat diet and on a regular basis, then their nutritional requirements will be lower than those that are not. As a result, a dog or cat eating a wholesome raw meat diet will, in many cases, need less food.

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One thing I have observed with cats is that in order to help them eat more, feed them enough food to satisfy their initial hunger. But then make sure there is enough food on their plate to last another 2 or 3 hours. Over this time period, your cat or cats will come back and eat a little more.

This is different to free feeding, which you want to avoid.

Free feeding is where you leave food on the floor for 24 hours each day. This is not what we want. We simply want our cats to eat enough food initially and then have a little left over for the cat to go back and eat over the next 2 to 3 hours only. In this way, the cat jams a little more food into its stomach thus helping to make them more content.

I've noticed and observed how cats tend to like this sort of approach to eating.

With dogs, it's not important to do this because dogs wolf back their food so fast that as long as you feed them properly, then they will not be interested in adding some more food to their stomach over the next 2 or 3 hours.

With cats as well, sometimes when you feed them meat chunks rather than ground meat, you will find they eat more food faster.

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