How to feed your kitten
Cats have quite specific dietary requirements and it is important to make sure that their diet is nutritionally balanced to meet their needs. This is never more true than when they are kittens. During the first six months of their lives, kittens put on 75% of their adult body mass, so it is vital that their diet contains all the vitamins, minerals, proteins and other elements they need to grow into strong, healthy cats.
New mother and newborn
Most kittens aren't given to their new families until they are old enough to have been weaned off their mother's milk, but if your cat has a litter of her own at home, it will be up to you to support both her and their nutritional needs. Pregnant cats lose weight after giving birth, but their energy requirements will be double or triple their normal requirements because they need to produce so much milk.
Offer her free access to food throughout the day, so that she can eat whenever she chooses, and use a nutritionally-rich food such as kitten food to make sure her milk is full of all the things her growing litter needs.
Kittens themselves will need nothing but their mother's milk for the first few weeks of their life. It not only provides them with all the nutrition they need, but also helps quickly build up their immune system with their mother's antibodies.
Most kittens will start to mouth solid foods at about 4 weeks, but won't be ready for weaning onto solids until 6-8 weeks. Offer them small amounts of specially-formulated kitten food when they are ready for it. Little and often is the key here: a tablespoon of food 5 times a day is a good place to start, but adjust the amount depending on your kitten's appetite. If you choose a dry food, make sure it is moistened and crushed.
Clean water should be available at all times. Don't be tempted to use milk, even specially formulated kitten milk, instead of water. Milk is a food, not a drink, so should be treated as a food supplement not a source of hydration.
Growing up healthily
As he gets older, your kitten's appetite will increase. He might only have a stomach the size of a walnut at 8 weeks old, but his eyes are considerably bigger than this stomach, so the ‘little and often' approach is still a good one. He should be eating about four meals a day, although you should look to gradually reduce this to two meals a day by the time he reaches 6 months.
If your schedule doesn't make this constant feeding easy, try leaving out some dry food for him to nibble on whenever he chooses. By the time he is 10 or 12 weeks old, he should be eating solid foods quite happily and mum's job as a milk-provider will be over.
Wet or Dry?
Nutritionally there isn't a whole lot of difference between wet and dry foods. Both have their advantages but your choice of wet, dry or a mixture of both should be a personal decision for you and your kitten to make together. One thing to bear in mind is not to instil bad habits at an early age. Offer your kitten a variety of flavours and textures, and don't be tempted to feed him human food. If he only ever eats one kind or flavour of food, and you are forced to change his diet later on for clinical or practical reasons, there could be trouble: cats can be notoriously fussy eaters!
Dry foods:
- Are convenient to buy in bulk and serve in portion sizes of your choice
- Can be left out for your cat to graze on
- Help to keep teeth clean
- Are easy to use, easy to store and have a longer shelf-life.
Wet foods:
- Are more palatable and come in a greater range of flavours and texture
- Smell more appealing and are less likely to be rejected
- Can still be convenient if bought in single-serve pouches or trays.
Either way, for the first few weeks of ownership, it's important to stick to the same food the breeder fed your kitten while he was starting out. When the time comes to change over to your own preferred food, do it gradually. Mix a little bit of the new food into the old and increase the ratio over the course of 10 days until it is 100% new food. Don't be tempted to change too early: coming to live in your new home will be change enough for a young kitten without the added stress of a change in diet.
The change to adult food
Your cat might start looking like an adult after just 6 months, but don't be tempted to treat him like one just yet. Inside, his bones will still be strengthening and his muscles still growing, so it's important you keep feeding him kitten food until he's stopped growing.
At 12 months old, it'll be time to switch to adult food. Again, be careful to do this gradually, mixing the adult food of your choice with his kitten food for a period of 10 days until his stomach is used to it. Once this is done, you'll have the entire range of adult cat foods to choose from and can begin tailoring his diet to his and your individual needs as appropriate.