My cats each get 2/3 of a pouch of good quality wet food twice a day, along with a little bit of Wysong Uretic dry. One has chronic cystitis so this works well for controlling that. All three cats are healthy, shiny, active, and in great weight. One is 13, one 12, one 9.
However, they all act like rabid, starving, feral raccoon hell-beasts. The female cat isn’t the brightest or most graceful, so it’s not really her, but the two males will jump onto the counters directly in front of us, sneak up behind us to smack food off of our plates, lick the inside of the kitchen sink and a hot pan on the stove, gnaw through sealed bags of food, and open cupboards (one of them has thumbs, and he’s learned how to use them on simple doorknobs, because he is 10% cat and 90% velociraptor). It is driving us insane.
The worst is that they knock stuff down that the dogs get to, and then the dogs get sick. My elderly dog died last year of chronic pancreatitis that first started when she got into chocolate that I thought was in a cat-proof location. Last night we came home and they’d knocked a fresh bag of cat food off the counter, gnawed through it, and left it for the dogs, who all spent a miserable night.
We obviously try to keep everything locked up, but there’s always going to be something we forget or that we think is secure but isn’t. At this point, we’re ready to just start leaving a bowl of dry food out all the damn time, but I’m afraid of my one cat’s cystitis returning and also of how morbidly obese they’re going to all become, especially since they’re older. On the other hand, they are likely to kill my dogs, set themselves on fire, or choke to death on a piece of plastic.
Is there a magic food or feeding routine that will make them behave like civilized animals and not Satan’s furry minions, but also not turn them into walking vet bills?
