Hi all, thanks for any advice and help you have to offer!
I adopted two kittens, a brother and sister, when they were 8 weeks old from someone who sort of makes a hobby of rehoming strays in their rural community. They are scheduled to be fixed tomorrow at 14 weeks old. These particular kittens were with 4 others and their mother, and at the point of adoption the person who ha them would basically cut a 40lb bag of cat food open and leave it on her deck to lure in strays for her to capture/spay/neuter/rehome. I do not necessarily agree with this, but she ends up making a huge impact on the stray count and the birth rate in a place previously overrun with stray cats, so I didn't really chastise her for this at the time.
The kittens are now 14 weeks old. At first I'd feed them each before work in the morning according to information I found online, and again once I got home (I only work 4 days a week) and it seemed to be alright. However, on my off days, I noticed they basically inhaled (jaws almost unhinged gigantic bites, swallow whole, in quick succession) their food in the morning and would immediately begin searching for more. I would basically try to entertain them, but they'd always end up trying to tear into loaves of bread, eat my dogs food (who also has scheduled feedings and does not have food out at all times), and basically just panic for more food eating anything they could find until it was time for them to eat again, then rinse and repeat throughout the night. I tried dividing their food into four different meals, but got the same results.
They are 14 weeks old now, and their food amount has increased with their size based on what their veterinarian charted that they should be eating. They had both become overweight from the pantry destructions of bread, tortillas, and anything else they could tear into, before I basically just emptied it of everything. They have gone so far as to hang off from/rip down window screens and ripping up carpet to the baseboards, turning lamps over, jumping and hanging off the refrigerator, etc, all while screaming for more food. I AM aware that kittens can be destructive out of playful ignorance, and I assure you this is not that. Each instance of destructive behavior has been when food is pungent or obvious in the room to which they're trying to burrow into...
They just started their 12 hours of being NPO prior to surgery, and I'm terrified of what they will do to my home in that time.
What am I doing wrong? Is this normal? What can I do to train them out of this behavior?
Submitted July 04, 2015 at 04:55AM by SquidMilly http://ift.tt/1C7JAf7 AskVet
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