Feeding kittens

Let us start at the beginning: feed a kitten the food made for kittens. Almost every cat we have known preferred tinned food to anything else, and in our own house the cats get nothing but tins. Tinned food does go off, though, if it stands too long; it costs more, and it makes more mess than dry food does. Dry food keeps well, in the bag and in the bowl alike. It is cheaper than tinned, and simple to use and to store. Semi-moist food is as convenient as dry, and most cats take to it as readily as to tinned — but it usually carries a good deal of colouring, additives and flavourings.

Fresh water is a necessity for a kitten, and one that often gets less thought than it deserves. Even a kitten that drinks from a dripping tap should have fresh water standing in its bowl. Wash the bowl and change the water every day. This matters most of all if you feed dry food: a kitten that drinks as much as it should is far less likely to get disease of the urinary tract. Fresh water matters for every cat, but above all for toms, who are more prone to that kind of trouble.

There is a myth that milk is the ideal food for a kitten. In fact milk can give it diarrhoea. Give the kitten fresh water instead.

Kittens cut their teeth between three and a half and six months old, and during that time chewing can be painful now and then. If you feed dry food and the kitten seems hungry but walks away after a few mouthfuls, try soaking the food in warm water for a few minutes. The water softens it and makes it easier to manage. Tinned food gives much less trouble here, being soft already.

Like any small creature cutting teeth, a kitten can have a sore mouth. It may gnaw at everything within reach to ease it. It may squeak, or turn fretful. Its motions may be a little loose, or it may be duller than usual, and its breath may not be at its sweetest for a while. It all passes. If it worries you unduly, pay the vet a visit: they can tell you whether what you are seeing is normal or whether there is cause for alarm.

A kitten under three months old should be able to get at its food right through the day. It is growing, and it needs so much energy that there is little danger of it overeating; it is far more likely to tear about the house burning calories off, as any healthy kitten does. If for some reason you have to feed it in separate meals, make it three a day at the very least.

At about six months you can move the kitten on to two meals a day, which is what we recommend for adult cats as well. At six months the fast growth is over; the kitten goes on developing, but more slowly. Two meals let you keep track of how much it is eating. That may not look important now, but obesity is a common complaint among adult cats kept indoors, and a few precautions taken today are worth several pounds off your cat in years to come.

Arrange the kitten’s mealtimes to suit your own timetable. But, as we have said before, never feed a kitten the moment you get out of bed. Do that, and the kitten will work out at once that food comes as soon as you wake — so it will set about waking you. And five in the morning is not too early for a small breakfast, is it?

If your kitten wakes you in the night, do not feed it to quiet it down. That is the beginning of a habit you will find very hard to break; cats have long memories where food is concerned. Feed it instead just before you leave for work. Do not let it connect your waking with its breakfast, and all will be well.

The same rule applies in the evening to your coming home. Feed the kitten the moment you walk through the door and it will fret whenever you are late — and a fretful kitten always behaves badly. Feed it instead when you eat yourself, or at the hour of your latest homecoming in the week. If you are usually in at six, say, but twice a week you stay on at the gym and get back around half past seven, then feed the kitten at eight, every day. It becomes a habit and settles into routine.

Where you feed it matters a great deal. If you do not want the kitten jumping up on the kitchen worktop where you prepare food, do not feed it at the other end of that worktop. The same goes for the kitchen table and the rest of it. A cat should feel comfortable walking up to its bowl; put the bowl beside something you would rather it kept off, and you have made trouble for both of you.

If you have a dog with a taste for cat food, put it somewhere else while the cat is fed. Then you can stand the cat’s bowl on the floor. Here is another advantage of feeding twice a day: the dog cannot steal the cat’s dinner, because there is nothing left in the bowl. Millions of cats have talked their owners into believing that they must have a bowl of food in front of them round the clock. It is not so.

And one more piece of sound advice: never start feeding a kitten from your own table. When those great green eyes turn up at you from the floor, simply repeat to yourself: “Twenty years, twenty years!” If you would rather not be pestered by this four-legged gourmand for the next two decades, do not hand it titbits off your plate.