Cats are pure hunters and in want of each day train. A easy approach to enhance the quantity of exercise in your cat’s day is to cease feeding your cat in a bowl and permit your cat to “hunt” for his or her meals.
As an alternative of simply placing your cat’s meals right into a bowl or on a dish, you may channel your cat’s pure looking intuition by buying or creating feeding puzzles. This turns mealtime into an interactive recreation including enrichment to your cat’s day.
How you can feed a cat with puzzle feeders
Dr. Jamie Richardson, DVM with Small Door Veterinary, recommends offering puzzle toys and interactive toys to your cat to play with on their very own.
Dr. Richardson particularly recommends the: Nina Ottosson puzzle toys and Doc & Phoebe’s Indoor Looking Feeder.” Another choice is the KONG Cat Deal with Allotting Ball. Though designed for treats relying on the facet/form of your cat’s kibble, you can even use this for dishing out dry cat meals as a part of mealtime. These toys enable your cat to “work” for his or her meals by determining tips on how to work together with the puzzles/deal with dispensers to launch the meals.
How you can have your cat hunt for meals utilizing DIY puzzles
You possibly can simply create puzzles to your cat to hunt treats in by repurposing packing containers that get delivered. Take empty packing containers and both depart them open or reduce holes into them that your cat can “fish” along with her paws into. Then put all or a portion of your cat’s kibble for a meal into the packing containers. By spreading the meal by way of a number of packing containers of various sizes and different-shaped holes, your cat could have an interactive meal that gives psychological train and stimulation.
You possibly can feed your cat moist meals and nonetheless make mealtime interactive
In case your cat eats moist meals for some or all of his meals, it’s nonetheless doable so as to add enrichment to your feeding routine. The Doc & Phoebe Moist Feeder is designed to extend enrichment whereas your cat eats and sluggish your cat down to forestall him from scarfing his meal. You can too create sluggish feeders for moist meals by using food-safe use of silicone plates, cupcakes and cake molds. Buy them in varied shapes within the baking or cooking part of most shops. By spreading moist meals round, the silicone’s shapes and texture give your cat one thing attention-grabbing to lick, and she or he must work to get all of the meals out of the completely different cervices. Most of those molds are dishwasher protected making them straightforward to wash and sterilize after feeding.
Use search alternatives to feed your cat
Along with utilizing or making puzzles for feeding your cat, you may create extra of a looking expertise to your cats through the use of the cat furnishings you have already got in your home. Take your cat’s pre-measured kibble and scatter it into cat tunnels, cat timber, or different climbing areas. This can be a nice approach to enhance your cat’s total bodily exercise degree as he must go in quest of his meal as a substitute of simply consuming from a dish.
How you can add challenges
Including enrichment to feeding time is enjoyable for many cats. The extra observe your cat will get, the higher she’s going to get at “looking” for her meals. Over time you may start to develop the search/puzzles you present to make them extra difficult. You can too mix a number of packing containers into puzzle buildings to make the hunt extra difficult.
Supervision
Be sure you monitor your cat as they’re “looking” for his or her meal to make sure that your cat finds all of its meals and will get sufficient to eat.
When you have a number of cats, it’s usually greatest to maintain your cats separated throughout mealtime. That is very true if you’re hiding meals to your cat to seek for. This can be sure that every cat is getting its acceptable serving of meals for every meal. It would additionally forestall battle or bullying between the cats as they hunt for his or her meals.
Featured Picture: Chalabala/Getty Pictures
Learn Subsequent: 4 Issues to Contemplate Earlier than Making Do-it-yourself Cat Meals
