Healthy Cat Basics

Cat and kitten care should be your responsibility if you have your cat at home. An important aspect to understanding your cat’s health would require that you understand how to observe how your cat looks. You should be able to judge if you have an overweight cat or a cat that is too thin. The best thing to do it is to observe your pet cat and see how it looks.

When examining your cat’s weight, you may be able to see the telltale signs if it is either too thin or too heavy. Your cat may be too thin if the ribs are obviously visible on your short haired cat. The ribs may show or you may be able to feel it on a thick haired cat with seemingly no palpable fat anywhere. You may also observe some slight abdominal tuck as well as no visible fat on your pet.

A cat that is too heavy may have their ribs not easily obvious that may be covered by excess fat. If you observe your cat, you may notice that it might not have a visible waist that has become rounded with excess fat. Your cat would seem rounded with the prominent abdominal fat as well as with fat deposits over the back area. This would be one of the signs that your cat may be overweight.

One of the solutions to problems concerning an overweight cat would be the proper feeding regimen that you cat goes through. It is important that, as a pet owner, you will know the right proportion of cat or kitten food to give to your pet. At different points of their life, cat diets would require different nutritional needs and therefore a varied feeding program.

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When you have a kitten, you should know that they require twice as much energy per pound of their body weight as compared to a mature cat to keep up proper kitten health. Kittens need to be weaned for about the first six to eight weeks of their life and then they can be given a regular cat diet composed of a well balanced cat or kitten food that will ensure proper growth and a healthy cat. Kittens should be fed three to four times a day with a source of clean drinking water always made available for them at all times. This regimen is to help provide the cat’s nutritional needs during its rapid growth.

After seven months to one year, you may now need to bring down feeding your kitten food to just twice a day. But this should be decided on an individual basis. The amount that you would eventually feed would depend on the level of activity and body condition of your health cat. Your cat’s veterinary team can assess and would be able to provide you with the right cat diet to provide for your new kitten.

When you have an adult cat that go through just the normal day to day activity, a cat diet wold be to maintain that type of feline lifestyle. At this time, a healthy cat food that is well-balanced for maintenance of cats in all life stages may already be used. Be also aware that cats are occasional eaters.

They do not seem to finish up their food at just one sitting. You may observe them to eat a bit of the food you serve but never seem to finish them. They usually try to eat at various times of the day when they feel like it.

For this reason, you might need to provide all-day access to food for your cat along with a clean source of water supply.