# Eating problem- always hungry or never feel full?!



## Briggi (Nov 26, 2008)

I just adopted a feral cat 2 months ago. Vet told me she is about a year old and just already gave a birth to kittens. I got her fixed in early Nov and she is now living in my house since the surgery. She was 7 lbs before the surgery and 6lb right after the surgery. I was trying to make her grain more weight since the vet told me she had to. I free feeding her, you know, just make sure she has food anything time she comes up to the food blow. However, she seems like getting bigger (not fat but the stomach is just big) and I stopped free feeding her. I only let her eat 1/2 cup dry food a day and 2-3 times wet food per week. Anyway, she eats fast and tries to put as much as she can in her month. After she is finished, her stomach looked so big, but the next day (after her small & big business) her stomach is back to normal. Is something wrong here?! Anything I should be careful for?

* she drink a blow of water a day. A about 1.5 - 2 cups
* She pee & poo a lot. (I think she eat and drink a lot that she has to go bathroom often)


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## katwill10 (Jan 25, 2007)

First off, has she gained any weight? There is no problem free-feeding a cat if she needs to gain weight, but it sounds like she eats a lot and drinks a lot at once, thus this could be why she becomes bloated. Also, since she used to be feral, she might not be used to having food so readily available and so she is gorging herself. You might need to feed her more smaller meals throughout the day, or go back to free feeding so she feels full more often, knows it is available, and stops gorging herself...maybe at least free-feed until she is back up to the weight she is supposed to be at. Did your vet tell you how much she should weigh? Also, what kind of food are you feeding her? Wet food, which I see you are feeding her some of, really is better for a cat. So once you get her up to her proper weight (I say this because I think it is hard for a cat to eat enough wet food to gain weight, because of the high water content, although your cat might be different and others on this forum might disagree with me regarding this issue...just my experience ), you might want to consider feeding her wet food as her main food.

Also, has she been dewormed? This can cause abdominal bloating, but since her tummy waxes and wanes with food, I am guessing this is not the issue, although she should be dewormed, regardless, if she has not been. I had a kitten who was eating high-quality wet food, but would turn into a little blimp post-eating. She was eating WAY too fast and would "deflate" later once she had digested some. (She was dewormed like 4 times, and so that was definitely not the issue.)

Anyways, good luck with your kitty. I hope she is able to gain weight...I have found that can be harder than getting a cat to lose weight!!

Karie


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