I have 2 healthy indoor cats. They are obsessed with eating! Both are in perfect weight and get fed accordingly. I feed them dry food and they go at it like sharks and then follow me around meowing 5 mins later!
Even when I feed my dog they go nuts- running around, jumping on and off chairs, meowing.
What can I do?? ( and no wet food- that makes the WORSE!)
They’re not hungry as much as they’re trying their cat whammy on you. They’re doing their feline hoodoo that makes many cat-owned humans panic at the sight of an empty cat food bowl. Notice you don’t have a problem leaving your dog’s food bowl empty?
One thing though; cereal isn’t good for a cat. You simply can’t get enough protein in them from extruded pellets, and not enough moisture. They should be eating wet.
Give it a scan on the interwebs. Vet’s are pretty much going that way, especially boy cats with their irritatingly blockable little urethras.
Paula
Yes, Paulaedwina is correct. Cats need to be fed wet food. I have one kitteh who has inflammatory bowel disease (well controlled with medication). He’s thin and always hungry. He gets fed 3 portions of wet food for “brefuss” (unlike the other kitties who get one portion) and if he had his way he’d have another portion around 10 am, another one at noon, another one at dinner time, and a “snackie” around 9 p.m. He actually knows what brefuss, lunchie, din and snackie mean. All my guys do have dry food out all the time (Blue Buffalo).
yes, you should never feed dry food to cats, it’s very unhealthy for them.
Bonuses for you:
Wet food might actually “fill them up” better- the moisture in it gives it more “bulk per serving” than dry food, so a cat eating a proper serving of wet food might actually feel full. Which is unlikely to happen with a cat eating dry food.
Another way dry food makes cats hungry is it always full of carbs, and consider what happens when you eat say, donuts for breakfast: makes you ragingly hungry fifteen minutes later. Because the carbs trigger an insulin bolus, and that makes your blood sugar drop, and that makes you hungry. Works that way for cats, too.
NEVER give a begging animal any food. If you reward that behavior even once they will try it again, and again. Even if it’s their actual mealtime, if the animal is misbehaving you should not feed it. Wait until it’s being good, and then feed.
Oh come on. NEVER? No wonder I see so many barn cats dropping like flies all the time from only eating dry food. (This is me being sarcastic).
I feed both wet and dry and have had 3 cats live to the age of 20. My current cat eats Blue Buffalo dry food and looks fantastic. (She is 10 and has never had a health problem in the 9 years I’ve had her).
In response to the OP - cats are excellent actors. If I even walk in the direction of the kitchen my cat will put on an Oscar worthy performance of “Poor Starving Kitty” that could make you weep. :lol:
And yes, she has trained me well to get up in the morning by standing on my head and performing this act. I know it’s a bad habit, but I love my cat and put up with it because she is perfect in every other way. 
LOL have to agree re: excellent actors. My Ollie that gets fed “brefuss” three times gets it because he is SO pitiful. Knows how to pull at the old heartstrings. He is also my husband’s constant companion when husband is eating anything with meat in it for breakfast. He never begs any other time, and we let him get away with it because we love him so much.
I don’t think that cats should never have kibble, but they shouldn’t rely on kibble because they are not going to get enough protein or moisture. Kibble is not poison, it’s just cereal and cats do not thrive on cereal. Your barn cat is a confounding variable because in addition to the kibble he’s eating meat on the hoof as it were (rodents, etc) so he’s actually getting the ideal source of protein and moisture.
Paula
It’s the ancient feline hoodoo voodoo that has allowed them to reign supreme over lesser creatures (such as the ugly canines) and run ragged over the duped humans that take care of them. Cat ‘owners’? Nope, we are their indentured servants :lol:
Don’t fall for it. Resist the mind control.
While I do feed my own cat a primarily wet diet with a smattering of dry sensitive systems food given each AM, I have to agree. I’ve known so many cats that have been fed dry from kittens and lived well into their teens without nary a health issue. And I’ve also known cats that will develop rampant UTIs or hock their guts up if given dry-only.
Every cat is an individual and should be treated as such - I believe this is common sense. Do what works for the cat.
But it usually never hurts to give some wet 
[QUOTE=RenaissanceMare;6485667]
I have 2 healthy indoor cats. They are obsessed with eating! Both are in perfect weight and get fed accordingly. I feed them dry food and they go at it like sharks and then follow me around meowing 5 mins later!
Even when I feed my dog they go nuts- running around, jumping on and off chairs, meowing.
What can I do?? ( and no wet food- that makes the WORSE!)[/QUOTE]
What brand and kind of food are you feeding?
My 4 cats have dry food available to them 24/7, & then once a day get a meal of canned food.
Everyone (except "Fat Olivia - our most recent overly-chubby adoption who has her own problems) is in excellent weight & health, & our feeding method has our vet’s blessings.
They could also just be bored. :yes:
Quote:
Originally Posted by PaintPony
Oh come on. NEVER? No wonder I see so many barn cats dropping like flies all the time from only eating dry food. (This is me being sarcastic).
While I do feed my own cat a primarily wet diet with a smattering of dry sensitive systems food given each AM, I have to agree. I’ve known so many cats that have been fed dry from kittens and lived well into their teens without nary a health issue. And I’ve also known cats that will develop rampant UTIs or hock their guts up if given dry-only.
Every cat is an individual and should be treated as such - I believe this is common sense. Do what works for the cat.
this is nonsense.
I use the example of smoking.
someone says “smoking is bad for you”. Then someone else says but hey, I know Joe who smoked and live until he was 90, and I know ten other people who all smoked and most of them seemed healthy well into middle age.
But if you look population-wide at the statistics, you can clearly see that smoking is a really bad idea. For everyone. It has widespread damaging effects on your health. Yeah, you might be “the lucky one” that makes it age 90 DESPITE smoking like a chimney, but you don’t know if you might be that one when you start out smoking. So the obvious conclusion is to not smoke, and to ignore the silly stories about Joe living to 90 despite smoking.
Cats and dry food, it’s the same population-wide health correlation. Dry food is not good for cats due to both its lack of moisture and due to its carbohdyrate content. Your cat might survive DESPITE being being dry food, sure. Or your cat might die young DESPITE being fed wet food. But we can be sure that dry food is not likely to improve your cat’s health.
The number of common ailments that are thought to be strongly linked to the feeding of dry food to cats is quite lengthy and many are quite expensive to treat- urinary tract blockages are just the tip of the iceberg.
The evidence is pretty convincing- cats should never be fed dry food.
Wendy - on behalf of most people on this thread I am rolling my eyes at you.
You are welcome to your opinion and I don’t begrudge you that.
But I’m not going to run home and throw away my cat’s dry food lest the poor kitty keel over dead from being poisoned. :lol:
(Please note that I feed wet food as well and I agree it is better for them)
My kitties are “always hungry” too, despite having dry food available daily, plus two feedings of wet food a day! They come up meowing like theyre staaaarvinngg.
They also are outdoor cats and I SEE them eating mice and birds. Fatties. Although they are in perfect weight.
There are a number of low-carb dry cat foods on the market. I agree with you that a large number of dogs and cats are considerably less healthy than they would be if they were on a low-carb diet.
I don’t think dry food is the issue. If the cat isn’t getting moisture in its food I am sure they drink water.
That’s why I asked what brand and type of food the OP was feeding. They may actually be hungry on a cellular level because the food be high carb.
One thing you might try is a treat toy. Fill it with good quality dry food and let them have at it - takes a lot of work to get the food out and they will get tired before they get overly full. Otherwise, I agree with at least one wet meal a day. I leave dry out all the time and feed a wet meal to the poor famished kittehs once a day, and the odd time, twice, depening how Da King Kat feels as Louie is older and seems to want wet food more often now. I also give the barn cats a mix of wet and dry although the wet may not be fed if I find fresh heaps of pigeon feathers but in winter, they get a large tin every day.
How they train you: barn cats have me trained to give them a tin of food when I bring groceries home. They accomplished this by leaping on and off the grocery bags (it’s good for the bread…NOT) and one day, I had enough and fed them. Made them worse. Same with Louie - he screams and leaps about like a mad thing when I bring in groceries or anything else in a bag for that matter - tools, mail, assorted stuff - and silly me opened a tin for him and he now has me nicely trained.
Paintpony please speak for yourself. Wendy presented a very logical explanation and to turn around and say that she said dry food was “poison” … well…it reflects badly on someone and that certainly isn’t Wendy.
For decades people have feed sweet feed to horses. Many of those horses have gone on to live well into their 30s. Do we really think that sweet feed is still the absolute best food for our horses?
Dogs live into late teens on alpo and kibbles and bits. Is that the best possible diet?
Of course kibble isn’t poison but its starchy and low in moisture. For the same amount of calories a cat can eat a larger volume of low carb, high protein, high moisture wet food. This can keep the cat full longer and prevent carb crashing and the resulting “OMG I am SO HUNGRY if I don’t eat right this second I’ll DIE” meowing and begging.
If you want to fed dry that’s fine but the OP said her cats are constantly hungry and feeding wet food might be a good option. Not necessarily the solution for the OP but it might be a good solution for someone who looks up this thread in the future.
It’s the carbs in the cat food. Switching to wet or raw will increase satiety and decrease the begging. Begging in my house ceased with the switch to raw. Read www.catinfo.org. Dr. Lisa does a great job of explaining why cats shouldn’t eat kibble. It may be convenient for humans but it is not good for cats.
Cats like to nibble throughout the day. I have a large bowl that I fill with dry food (yes my healthy active cat only gets dry food because he only sucks the liquid of wet food and leaves the rest behind and gets the runs with it) and he nibbles on that over the course of a few days. He only comes to meow at me if the bowl is empty. You could always try an auto feeder, make sure they aren’t bored, or just deal. Cats will be cats 
Are you really comparing a proven carcinogenic substance to dry cat food? Really?
Heaven help us, I must rescue my mother’s crabby cat that is being poisoned by his Iams weight control kibble.
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