An experiment

[klwilliams]

The boys get fed when Chaz gets up in the morning (dry food) and at tea-time (wet food). The boys clamor for their food starting around 5:30 a.m., which means I get up and toss them out of the back area of the house. Which messes up my sleep.

We're trying an experiment. We've weighed them as a benchmark, and tonight left entirely full bowls (about three meals' worth) of dry food for each of them. We expect they will eat until they are sick tonight, but we're hoping over a (short) course of time that they will decide that they can expect enough food, and will stop thinking they are starving, starving. If not, they go back to twice-a-day feedings.

Comments

[galeni.livejournal.com]

Fingers crossed.

[saare-snowqueen.livejournal.com]

Good luck. It works for Neri.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Certainly this works with Horus the mobile stomach.

[madbaker.livejournal.com]

That may work. Cats are creatures of habit, though, and this can override any rational considerations.

[evil-macaroni.livejournal.com]

Good luck with that. If it were my butthead cats, they would start declaring starvation as soon as the bowl bottom is visible. Crunchie crisis:!!!

[badassslinky.livejournal.com]

Our monsters have a constant feeder of dry kibble, and will get wet food as a special treat. It seems to work out well, but they were raised like that. I hope the boys will acclimate nicely instead of just pigging out.

[darcyjavanne.livejournal.com]

Alas, two of my four will not stop eating when they're full and will bully the other two away from the food. I discovered that I could push back the 5am demand for food by ignoring the cats. 15 minutes of clamor, they get bored and go back to sleep. Kept that up for a week or so and now their furry stomach clocks are reset to my clock.

This has to be redone at the annual Falling Back of time, when breakfast coes a shocking hour later, but is offset by the delight of Sprning Forward when breakfast suddenly appears an hour earlier.

[klwilliams.livejournal.com]

Clamor can be ignored, but Barry starts chewing on things, like the alarm clock cord (severed) or the edge of a wooden cabinet (now a quarter-inch narrower), and to get him to stop requires getting up.