Hi,

I'd be grateful for some advice here, as the situation with my cats is hard work at the moment.

We have 5 cats, well, one belongs to a friend but is lodging with us long term until she finds a house. We have our two original cats, who are black short hair, now aged 13, neutered brothers. Then we have an old tabby who adopted us at some point, she just walked through the cat flap about 7 years ago, we traced her owner but she just kept coming back, so they said she could stay. In retrospect we were not sure she was there's, as they said she was six months old, but the vet was not sure of her age at the time, but said she was definitely much older than 6 months, however they insisted she was theirs! She looks very old but the vet said last year that her teeth are in good condition. She may be about 13 too.

We have our Siamese kitten, who is now 9 months old, he is also neutered.

And then our friend's tabby cat, who is 10 years old and a neutered boy.

The main problem is they all want to eat all the time! They currently eat different food, but I'm working on that one. We've had several problems with the Siamese kitten's health, including a diagnosis with FIP which luckily wasn't the case, but one of the things he's always suffered with seems to be a dodgy tum. He gets very smelly soft stools and sometimes diarrhoea , which seems to be related to what he eats. So when we found out he was ok with Hills Kitten pouches we've kept him on those for now. However, the other cats eat Pets at Home Purely Senior pouches.

As a compromise I am now trying to VERY gradually mix in a little Pets at Home Purely adult pouch in with Max's Hills kitten food, in the hope that eventually I can get them all on that and hope that the older cats will be ok with adult pouches rather than Senior. The reason for this? Well, they all ask for food all the time (they seem to eat non stop!), I put food down for whichever cat is asking, then the older cats come along as soon as I turn my back and eat the kitten food and the kitten eats the senior food! As they are constantly eating I can't stand in the kitchen watching them all the time! Something has to change. It is impossible to ignore them, because they are all very vocal and miaow when they want food, they don't accept that they won't be fed now, but carry on miaowing, follow me around the house, asking for food!

I have started (yesterday) putting down Burns dry food for them in the hope that if they are really hungry they will eat it, but they don't seem to like it and also I have to watch the kitten doesn't eat it, in case it affects his tum.

Sorry, if this sounds like a petty problem but I seem to spend all the my time standing over them making sure they eat the right food, picking up bowls and putting down bowls, and I am getting quite stressed about it. The whole situation has been stressful since we got the kitten, as we have worried about his health for so long, then had to keep them separate because of fighting - they bite and scratch each other and the vet said to be careful as they can easily develop abscesses!

I would now like them all to live in relative harmony and become a pleasure to have around instead of a chore.

So, what does everyone else do in a multi-cat household? Do they all eat the same food? If so, what is best - senior food for all, adult food for all, dry or wet food? I started buying Pets at Home Purely because it has at least 50% meat in it, after reading that commercial food, in supermarkets has a very low meat content which could cause a lot of digestive problems in cats (which ours have, i.e. the black brothers suffer with vomiting and diarrhoea, and of course the kitten easily gets diarrhoea or at least loose very smelly stools).

I am very grateful for any advice at all and sorry that this message is so long!

Thanks for listening.

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wilchil64

"Only when the last tree is felled, the last animal killed and the last fish hauled from the sea will we realise we can't eat money!"