How to feed kittens and adult cats together without separating them
Kittens and adult cats require different nutrient profiles, but physical separation during feeding is often impractical in a shared home. This leaves owners struggling to balance whether to feed adult food to kittens or kitten food to adults, preventing a simple free-feeding solution and complicating daily care.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
Found another way around this?
Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.
- 1Feeding everyone kitten food unless the adults have a weight problemDid this help you?
- 2Play with them in front of each other and try to play with both cats at the same time.Did this help you?
- 3Doing scent swappingDid this help you?
- 4Conducting joint meals without issuesDid this help you?
- 5Allowing play and interaction under the doorDid this help you?
- 6Proceeding with short face-to-face interactionsDid this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“I’d like to be able to socialise Maya and have her learn important social skills like body language, intensity and disengagement but not at the expense of the smaller duo.”source ↗
“So the advice I need is now that Oliver wants to play how do I foster interaction with her?”source ↗
“It's not really feasible for me to separate them for every feeding. So my question is for kittens, is it better to stock up on kitten food for the adult cats or vice versa?”source ↗
“Yes I've realized that and it is a little bit of my problem. I'm trying to reach out to help with fosters and expenses but putting my babies in cages seem a little extreme rn.”source ↗
“That’s a great relief, it would be easy for Maya to pin them down and cross boundaries so that’s my main concern. I’d love everyone to be introduced safely without creating anxiety or stress”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
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- 4Adopted a cat with unexpected chronic health issues
- 11How to stop a cat from attacking after bringing home a puppy