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by Relsqui on September 25th, 2005

Relsqui

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At what age do kittens become cats?

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  • by scymitar72 on September 26th, 2005

    scymitar72

    For dietary purposes, i.e. when kittens can start eating adult cat food, it's anywhere from 6-12 months. It depends, really, on who you ask.

    Assuming you're asking for dietary reasons, I do have a few ideas on the subject. Making the switch from kitten to adult cat food can depend on the quality of the kitty's nutrition from birth to six months of age. For example, someone brought me a very sick kitty who had been rejected by his mother and was starving to death. Because he was denied his mother's milk and was forced to wean himself on dry adult cat food, he missed out on a lot of nutrients that would have helped him grow. At about 2 months old, he was half the size of his litter mates. After he was brought to me, I kept him on kitten food until he caught up in size for his age, he was about a year and a half when I switched him to adult cat food.

    If the kitty has had proper nutrition growing up, then, imho, I would switch at around 9-10 months of age.

    It's best to make the switch over a period of about a month. Just start mixing adult food in with the kitten food, gradually increase week by week until they are eating 100% adult food.

    Kitten food is very high powered food with a whole lot of calories for the little guys to burn up. Once they've done most of their growing and their level of activity decreases, you want to switch to an adult maintenance type food so you don't end up with obese kitties.

    Here are some helpful links about this transition:

    http://www.iams.com/en_US/jhtmls/nutrition/sw_NutritionQuestions_qanswer.jhtml?li=en_US&sc=C&bc=I&pti=PN&qi=131

    http://www.drsfostersmith.com/pic/article.cfm?dept_id=0&siteid=1&acatid=297&aid=471#answer%208

    http://www.purina.co.uk/cat/article.asp?id=47

    Hope this helps...

    Comments

    • Thanks a ton! This was in fact exactly what I was looking for.

      Relsqui

      by Relsqui on September 27th, 2005

    • to relsqui, if this is what you wanted, why weren't you more specific in your question?

      Grandma Roses - my avatar is my real dog

      by Grandma Roses - my avatar is my real dog on September 27th, 2005

    • in relsqui defense, sometimes you need to ask a broader question to find the right answers...this helped me a lot too

      Beeslo

      by Beeslo on March 14th, 2006

    • i started to give my cat adult food 2 months ago and she is just turing 9 mounths old. she is happy and enjoys her food.

      tinybubbles is sitting on the carpet read

      by tinybubbles is sitting on the carpet read on August 12th, 2006

    • I didn't ask a more specific question because I didn't have a more specific question. The general answers are perfectly acceptable.

      Relsqui

      by Relsqui on November 9th, 2008

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