eating more during cold snap?

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catslave16
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eating more during cold snap?

Post by catslave16 »

I've noticed that when it turns cold Rufus tends to eat quite a bit more. I know we all need to burn more calories to keep warm but since he spends 90% of his time inside the house, and can sleep for up to 12 hours on the trot, I'm surprised that it seems to make such a difference. I don't remember Blake or Pussy doing this - is Rufus just being a bit greedy? I'm rather concerned since he'll only eat Felix As Good As It Looks Doubly Delicious which has now gone up again from £3.30 for 12 pouches to £4.50 (ouch!) and it's taking a fair chunk out of my extremely limited budget. When he first moved in with me 15 months ago he was happy to eat old-fashioned Whiskas from a tin, salmon variety, but I suppose I've spoiled him. If I offer him cheap cat food these days he just won't eat at all, and I can't bear it. Do I try and harden my heart and persist? (I've never held out for even 24 hours...)
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Re: eating more during cold snap?

Post by alanc »

Tilly also eats more during the cold weather. I find one 50g Gourmet Mon Petit sachet extra suffices these days. They are £1.50 for 6 (25p per sachet) which is cheaper than a whole 85-100g tin or sachet of what she normally eats. As for holding out, about 5mins is my longest! Tilly has me running up to the shops to get something else if she so much as turns her nose up at her dinner (she has usually eaten it by the time I get back)!
Last edited by alanc on Fri Dec 09, 2016 12:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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bobbys girl
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Re: eating more during cold snap?

Post by bobbys girl »

Do you have a B&M store near you? They have AGAIL on offer at 3 for £9.00. Pets at home have it 3 for £10.00. If you haven't a B&M nearby I'm sure that the many stores that rose fill the gap left by Woolworths will have similar offers.

Our nearest store is 25 miles away, along with all the other shops! The local shop is taking the pxxx when it comes to prices. So I always have to shop around.

My lot are picky (aren't they all?!) but I recently tried them with a tin of Lidl's Coshida 'Poultry' - they loved it!
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Re: eating more during cold snap?

Post by Kay »

you could look into the cost of giving him a meal of stewed chicken each day - a frozen chicken costs £2.50 in Tesco's and I get enough of one to give my two outside strays a good dish of it for 5 days, so cheaper than giving them a couple of pouches each
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Re: eating more during cold snap?

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A cat rescue worker I used to know said - 'Hunger is a very sweet sauce' and I've found that ex-ferals are easy to please; Emily and Mouse are cautious about 'table scraps' though they'll make an exception for tuna and freshly grilled chicken breast. And fish from the fish shop. Proper Cats with Homes, they say, eat Proper Catfood and Biscuits. Molly (never a stray) on the other hand will eat anything - the other day I was peeling potatoes and she jumped up and started to lick a raw potato! :shock: Molly! Molleeee! You'll have collywobbles. Said she liked it.

However today I had a strip of meaty-ish fat from a slice of smoked ham. I gave Molly first dibs because Emily and Mouse get their green-lipped mussel joint supplement in a spoonful of posh (ish) fishy catfood. She wrinkled her nose at it and came back to ask for my cheese and ham toastie and potato latke. 'That's all there is,' I told her, and she eyed the ham trimming again. Before circling round it with paw scrabbling, burying it...Perhaps I should have shared my latke with her.

Still they're pretty easy to please. They like Purina biscuits and share a tin of Butchers meat for tea and yes, just lately they have eaten it all, or most of it, lumps and all, despite, like Rufus, not going out and sleeping most of the time. I give them Butchers because it's good value and cereal free (no padding out with stuff that cats don't usually eat) and they usually do eat it. But a big tin isn't practicable where a single cat is in the household ...

I'm afraid that with three I tend to be complacent - the food goes down (I feed communally) and they can make up their own minds. Them as don't fancy the wet food can fill up on biscuits. And they do, judging by the ever-sinking biscuit level. But if I had a faddy cat I imagine I'd be as bad as anybody, rushing around trying to please my dainty feeder - can't bear anyone to go hungry. It's Shahi the royal python's mating season now, when he won't eat until the spring, but the rat is still faithfully defrosted and offered every fortnight and I feel so guilty about an empty (and randy) python all winter.

I think Kay's tip about the chicken is good. For people too. You could reserve the breast and drumsticks for a couple or three meals for yourself and, if you have a mincer/blender type thingy, you could strip the carcase, skin and all, and mince everything into a nice homogenised mass, which could be frozen in portions as well as fed fresh. If it causes any runs, omit the skin. Then the carcase - buy some carrots, celery and onions, stew carcase with celery trimmings and carrot peelings and a quartered onion, for ages, bayleaves too, strain, cool, skim, boil up again to reduce and you have a wonderful broth/soup base/curry base. And gravy for a cat who likes gravy. It's amazing how far the average chicken can be streeeeeeeeeeeetched. Even if I became a millionaire I'd always stew up a chicken carcase; it's virtually free food; in winter warms the house, and you'll never fancy Heinz again :D
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Re: eating more during cold snap?

Post by bobbys girl »

Lilith - with the big tins, you can get plastic lids for them and unless the weather is very warm, the contents of a tin can last all day, if not overnight without being refrigerated.

Our lot love 'left-overs'. Last week I took a mini film of Bob charging around the garden with a slice of marrow bone from a shin-bone stew I made - lick, lick, throw up in the air, pounce, yum, yum.

Better go, OH just informed me someone is (Finally) coming to cut up the trees we had to fell 'any time now' - and as it's Saturday, I'm still in me jammy's!
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Re: eating more during cold snap?

Post by booktigger »

Lilith wrote:A cat rescue worker I used to know said - 'Hunger is a very sweet sauce' and I've found that ex-ferals are easy to please; Emily and Mouse are cautious about 'table scraps' though they'll make an exception for tuna and freshly grilled chicken breast. And fish from the fish shop. Proper Cats with Homes, they say, eat Proper Catfood and Biscuits. Molly (never a stray) on the other hand will eat anything - the other day I was peeling potatoes and she jumped up and started to lick a raw potato! :shock: Molly! Molleeee! You'll have collywobbles. Said she liked it.

However today I had a strip of meaty-ish fat from a slice of smoked ham. I gave Molly first dibs because Emily and Mouse get their green-lipped mussel joint supplement in a spoonful of posh (ish) fishy catfood. She wrinkled her nose at it and came back to ask for my cheese and ham toastie and potato latke. 'That's all there is,' I told her, and she eyed the ham trimming again. Before circling round it with paw scrabbling, burying it...Perhaps I should have shared my latke with her.

Still they're pretty easy to please. They like Purina biscuits and share a tin of Butchers meat for tea and yes, just lately they have eaten it all, or most of it, lumps and all, despite, like Rufus, not going out and sleeping most of the time. I give them Butchers because it's good value and cereal free (no padding out with stuff that cats don't usually eat) and they usually do eat it. But a big tin isn't practicable where a single cat is in the household ...

I'm afraid that with three I tend to be complacent - the food goes down (I feed communally) and they can make up their own minds. Them as don't fancy the wet food can fill up on biscuits. And they do, judging by the ever-sinking biscuit level. But if I had a faddy cat I imagine I'd be as bad as anybody, rushing around trying to please my dainty feeder - can't bear anyone to go hungry. It's Shahi the royal python's mating season now, when he won't eat until the spring, but the rat is still faithfully defrosted and offered every fortnight and I feel so guilty about an empty (and randy) python all winter.

I think Kay's tip about the chicken is good. For people too. You could reserve the breast and drumsticks for a couple or three meals for yourself and, if you have a mincer/blender type thingy, you could strip the carcase, skin and all, and mince everything into a nice homogenised mass, which could be frozen in portions as well as fed fresh. If it causes any runs, omit the skin. Then the carcase - buy some carrots, celery and onions, stew carcase with celery trimmings and carrot peelings and a quartered onion, for ages, bayleaves too, strain, cool, skim, boil up again to reduce and you have a wonderful broth/soup base/curry base. And gravy for a cat who likes gravy. It's amazing how far the average chicken can be streeeeeeeeeeeetched. Even if I became a millionaire I'd always stew up a chicken carcase; it's virtually free food; in winter warms the house,u and you'll never fancy Heinz again :D

Please watch cooking with onions if you are going to share with a cat, they are toxic to them
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Re: eating more during cold snap?

Post by catslave16 »

Thank you all for your replies - and excuse my tardy response, the 'grey blanket' has descended again- and your tips. I'll try the chicken. Rufus isn't keen on chicken breast (oh good god, how picky can a cat be?!) but yes, I do have a blender and could make anything from stew to pate. Worth a go. Thanks Lilith.
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Re: eating more during cold snap?

Post by Alice »

Catslave,

Zooplus sell the Doubly delicious at £6.99 for 24 sachets, better than the £4.50 you mention, ordinary AGAIL is £19.99 for 88, though personally I'd try to persevere and offer Rufus what you want him to eat, then leave him to it for a while - staying out of the kitchen for a while, or even being out of the house. A cat won't starve if there's food there. I know it sounds harsh, and is hard to do; I've done it when I had a very fussy cat some years ago and was tired of throwing rejected food out for the birds/hedgehogs - she'd often eat it once I'd put it out in the garden! I sometimes do it with my present two, if they're reluctant to eat what's on offer, and I usually find that when they can see there's nothing else forthcoming they eat up. ;)

Regarding the large cans - the food certainly seems to keep for 24, or even 36 hours, if covered in the fridge -I put a little hot water on it before serving, to bring it up to room temperature. Alternatively, I sometimes put some into small poly bags and freeze it for another time - making sure I've labelled it clearly and don't defrost it for my tea!! :roll:

http://www.zooplus.co.uk/shop/cats/cann ... ches/felix

Does Rufus like fish? If he does you can find packs of frozen pollock, or other inexpensive fish as a change from meat, mine love that as an occasional treat.
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Re: eating more during cold snap?

Post by Mrs Kane »

I've found the best way to get our cat to change food is when we're on vacation. The foreign body that is our sitter coupled with strange food has her totally flummoxed and she'll just go with the flow. Managed to get her eating the new vet recommended food in 2 days! :D

I'd say you really do need to persevere when it comes to introducing new food. Perhaps even introducing a second bowl would help? Or start putting the old food in a plastic container and the newer stuff in their own container.

I found (after Affinity discontinued their wet food) that I needed to ration out the old packets and slowly introduce Felix.
Putting out only a quarter of Affinity and a whole serving of Felix helped a lot just before we went to bed. Sofi would cry at first but after 3 or 4 nights she got used to the Felix. I think the fact that I was storing the remaining opened Affinity sachets in the fridge helped too. Apparently Sof doesn't like chilled food.
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Re: eating more during cold snap?

Post by Lilith »

Ah I have a load of those plastic can tops, Bobbys girl, but I've always found catfood kept in the fridge seems to lose its savour, even if I let it come to room temperature first, they're never as keen. Well, apart from the very posh stuff of course - trust a cat!

Booktigger, I never knew that about onions, though I'd never cook up onions with meat intended for cats. I just automatically include an onion in with the rest of the stockpot, but when you think of the cats who scoff pasta and curry and such ...I once knew a Siamese who was obsessed with spring onions. He'd steal them whenever he could, and he was a great big healthy lad. But this time I'll stew up the turkey carcase (since there are a lot of bits on it for catly consumption) sans les oignons :)

Hi Erica, glad you like the recipe - Rufus doesn't eat chicken breast??? :o

Spoilt lad! :shock: :D
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