It never ocurred to me till I saw the header of this thread, but this must
be why the boys' appetites vary so widely.

I'm consistent with what I feed the cats in a day -- I go according to the
servings listed on the cat food bag. As per the vet, serving food at
regular times is better than just saying, "Oh, time to refill the cat food
dishes" at varying times from one day to the next.

I feed them before I go to bed at night. Most nights, when I go
downstairs, there are just a few kibbles left in each dish. But SOME
nights, there's a fair amount of food remaining, and other nights, the
dishes are completely empty and the cats are ravenous.

Maybe those extra-hungry episodes correspond with growth spurts. The cats
are 10 months old, so they're still growing. Which would be a good
thing... Stanley's gotten a little bit, shall we say, wider than I
expected over the past couple of weeks. Hopefully he'll grow into it, or
burn off the excess, before long. Goodness knows that they're both active
cats, chasing each other everywhere and wrestling all day.

It's a big adjustment, going from caring for one senior-citizen kitty to
raising two rambunctious kittens. Even when they're kittens who are
approaching their first birthday, they're still very much in "pounce on
whatever moves, especially if it's my brother" mode. ) Feeding the cats
is just one aspect of the day where the differences between older and
younger cats are apparent.

Donna and the hungry pair, Captain and Stanley