Flies on cat food

[lilyfrog]

My cats have a habit of leaving their breakfast food in the bowl untill I come home from workin the evening, and then eat it all when they are sure that I am home to give them some more.
I think it is because they were both abandoned in houses before I rescued them from the RSPC and they have learned to ration food.
Anyway, the problem is that in the summer the food gets covered in fly eggs when it is left out, and is inedable. Does anyone have any hints as to how to keep the flies off but let the kitties in??

[undercovers]

tricky one, my old cat was the other way round and would beg and beg to be fed constantly, wether hungry or not, he was owned by people before i got him but a bit feral and never been allowed in the house - hunting for food and having irregular meals. I got him a timer contraption that contained the food and the lid slowly rotated to allow him to get to different bits of it, this way he know there was always food coming (even if only a little bit), this calmed his feeding frenzy a lot. All i can think of is something along those lines really, get one with the compartment underneith for an icepack... this should teach the mog that it is pointless to ration food as it disappears quite quickly if they don't eat it. good luck

[undercovers]

sorry my spelling and grammar have all gone to pot in the above response, I blame the heat!
See this for an example product.

[B00]

I had same problem- till I switched to cat biscuits.

[lilyfrog]

do your cats enjoy the dried food as much?? mine seem to love a bit of gravy!!

[kev100]

The obvious answer Lily is if they dont eat it till you get home anyway dont put it out till you get home.

[lilyfrog]

Ah , but they eat some of it in the morning and then save the rest. They do eventually eat all the food so not feeding them in the morning would do them out of one of their meals a day, and I dont know about you but that would make mighty unhappy!!

[cat woman]

Hi lilyfrog, You could still feed your cats in the morning and when they have had enough put the remaining food in the fridge with cling film over it. Then leave dry food for them for in the day with plenty of water, do that for 3-4 days and see if that works. 

Good Luck.  cat woman.  :-)

[dmsjps]

Hi lilyfrog, I agree with cat woman, but I wouldn't give the cats the food straight from the fridge because they probably won't eat it. Just cover what they leave in the morning with clingfilm and leave it in the pantry or something until you come home. Us humans grunt at the suggestion of not chilling food, but cats grunt at having it chilled. Alternatively, if your cats will eat dry food, B00's suggestion is great because that way it can be left all day without any infestation from the manky old flies.

[ursula62]

In one of those catalogues that come in the radio times I saw a cat feeder with a timer on it. The two bowls were lidded and the lids spring up to expose the food at a given time.

What my sister does with her 3 cats is she feeds wet food first thing in the morning. If they don't eat it all she takes away the cat bowls and puts dry food out for them to nibble on in the day. Then they get another small wet food meal in the evening when she gets home.

In the summer cats don't eat as much during the day as they do in winter.

[rhonadanny]

I went to argos and got a cat /dog bowl that has a lid they put a paw on the step and the lid lifts up when paw is taken of lid closes took some time to teach them to do it you know no my knees pressing the step putting their paw on the step im sure you can imagen the rest. but it was my best buy so far.

[rhonadanny]

sorry about the bad spelling