- Water. Water is always available for all kittens and cats. We provide it fresh each day, in a clean stainless steel or ceramic bowl.
- Dry food. Fresh dry catfood is always available for all kittens and cats.
- Canned Food. Kittens receive canned food once a day; adults recieve it only occasionally, as a treat or if their appetite is "off." Any uneaten canned food is removed after a maximum of 12 hours (4 hours in hot weather), and the bowl is thoroughly cleaned.
Our Recommendations
This page has a few recommendations for bengal pet owners.
Environment
Even more so than regular cats, Bengals are climbers and jumpers. It is a good idea to get them a cat tree of some type so that they can exercise and play up high.
Litter Recommendations
We strongly recommend that you use ONLY non-clumping litter box filler because clumping litter will stick to a cat's feet, be swallowed when the cat licks his feet, and can then form dangerous clumps in the cat's intestines.
We recommend that you have a minimum of 1.5 litter boxes per cat (round up). If your house is a split-level or multi-story residence, we recommend that you have at least one litter box per floor.
We do not feed table scraps. Bengals are smart, and after you've ignored their attempts to get your food for a couple of days they will usually realize it's a waste of effort and quit begging or trying to snatch something. However, if you EVER, even once, feed them at the table, all your good work will be undone. If you want to feed them table scraps, wait until you have finished your meal and then take the scraps into another room and feed them there, away from the dining table. This way the cats will not come to associate your sitting around the table with food being handed to them.
There are several good cat food brands on the market, and you need not feed the same brands we use, though we suggest that you get your vet's opinion about which brands he or she recommends. Keep in mind that a change from one brand to another should be done gradually and may result in temporary diarrhea. We suggest that, for the first few days while the kitten adjusts to its new home, you feed the kitten food that it is used to (we will send a starter supply home with new pet owners as part of our Kitten Care Kit). This will lessen the stress of changing to the new environment. Once the kitten has settled in, you can begin changing over to another brand if you wish.
To be specific, we feed our Bengals as follows:
We feed a mixture of kitten and adult IAMS and Eukanuba brand cat food (sometimes mixed with Feline Missing Link Supplement).
Elderly cats and cats requiring special care recieve food as recommended by our veterinarian. The type of food provided is determined by the health of the individual cat and our veterinarian's recommendation. (It is usually Iams Senior cat food or the senior or an appropriate prescription form of Hill's Science DietŠ.)
Do not forget water!!