Cats are natural hunters and in need of day by day exercise. A straightforward approach to increase the quantity of activity in your cat’s day is to stop feeding your cat in a bowl and permit your cat to “hunt” for his or her meals.
As an alternative of just putting your cat’s meals right into a bowl or on a dish, you’ll be able to channel your cat’s natural hunting instinct by purchasing or creating feeding puzzles. This turns mealtime into an interactive game adding enrichment to your cat’s day.
Find out how to feed a cat with puzzle feeders
Dr. Jamie Richardson, DVM with Small Door Veterinary, recommends providing puzzle toys and interactive toys on your cat to play with on their very own.
Dr. Richardson specifically recommends the: Nina Ottosson puzzle toys and Doc & Phoebe’s Indoor Hunting Feeder.” An alternative choice is the KONG Cat Treat Meting out Ball. Although designed for treats depending on the side/shape of your cat’s kibble, you may as well use this for meting out dry cat food as a part of mealtime. These toys allow your cat to “work” for his or her food by determining interact with the puzzles/treat dispensers to release the food.
Find out how to have your cat hunt for food using DIY puzzles
You possibly can easily create puzzles on your cat to hunt treats in by repurposing boxes that get delivered. Take empty boxes and either leave them open or cut holes into them that your cat can “fish” together with her paws into. Then put all or a portion of your cat’s kibble for a meal into the boxes. By spreading the meal through multiple boxes of various sizes and different-shaped holes, your cat could have an interactive meal that gives mental exercise and stimulation.
You possibly can feed your cat wet food and still make mealtime interactive
In case your cat eats wet food for some or all of his meals, it’s still possible so as to add enrichment to your feeding routine. The Doc & Phoebe Wet Feeder is designed to extend enrichment while your cat eats and slow your cat all the way down to prevent him from scarfing his meal. You can even create slow feeders for wet food by utilizing food-safe use of silicone plates, cupcakes and cake molds. Purchase them in various shapes within the baking or cooking section of most stores. By spreading wet food around, the silicone’s shapes and texture give your cat something interesting to lick, and she’s going to must work to get all of the food out of the several cervices. Most of those molds are dishwasher protected making them easy to scrub and sterilize after feeding.
Turns mealtime into an interactive game. Photo: Nils Jacobi/Getty Image
Use search opportunities to feed your cat
Along with using or making puzzles for feeding your cat, you’ll be able to create more of a hunting experience on your cats by utilizing the cat furniture you have already got in your home. Take your cat’s pre-measured kibble and scatter it into cat tunnels, cat trees, or other climbing areas. That is an awesome approach to increase your cat’s overall physical activity level as he could have to go in the hunt for his meal as a substitute of just eating from a dish.
Find out how to add challenges
Adding enrichment to feeding time is fun for many cats. The more practice your cat gets, the higher she’s going to get at “hunting” for her food. Over time you’ll be able to begin to expand the search/puzzles you provide to make them more complicated. You can even mix multiple boxes into puzzle structures to make the hunt more complicated.
Supervision
Make sure you monitor your cat as they’re “hunting” for his or her meal to be certain that your cat finds all of its food and gets enough to eat.
If you have got multiple cats, it’s generally best to maintain your cats separated during mealtime. This is very true if you happen to are hiding food on your cat to go looking for. It will be certain that each cat is getting its appropriate serving of food for every meal. It can also prevent conflict or bullying between the cats as they hunt for his or her meals.
Featured Image: Chalabala/Getty Images
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