Weight and eatting patterns

I have a brown tabby maine coon mix male (from resue) of 8.5 months named Peter that I got at 4 months of age. Peter is a single indoor cat with lots of attention since someone is always home with him. At 8.5 months Peter is around 9.7 pounds with a PTP of about 88cm but has slowed growth considerably since he reached 9.4 pounds about a month ago. Mostly he seems fine, except maybe spending a lot more time cleaning as of late.

I am writing this because I am a little concerned about his weight and eating habits. While he feels plenty strong and is fed only the best food (Evo with half wet), his weight is rather low for his age compared to the pure breeds and, worse, he has suddenly stopped growing over the last month. I think his eating has slowed a bit too. He is eating only about a can of wet plus 1/8 to 1/4 cup dry a day. Given he is a mix, is this weight reasonable? Is he eating enough? Should I be concerned about his reduction of growth lately?

PS - A picture I snapped today is below. Notice the specks on his black bed. He seems to shed quite a bit of dander too. Is this normal?

He looks fine to me :nod: my experience with MC's is they eat little & often so as long as he is eating I would'nt worry about his weight. Louie has shed heaps of his kitten fluff over the last couple of months because of the heating I think, but he looks alot better for it :nod: his coat is lovely now & hardly ever a tat :nod:

He is now past the period of constant fast growth, so you should expect him to grow more slowly and eat less. They seem to usually have occasional growth spurts after that age. You can tell by an increase in appetite for a couple of weeks. Our 18mos old male just went through a couple of weeks of pigging out, and is now back to being very fussy and eating way less. This is normal.

Weight seems fine to me. While most people here seem to have males that will be closer to 20 lbs, some males are smaller. If you look at MC info, you will see that males are generally listed as 13 lbs and up (sometimes you see 14/15 lbs and up, but there are absolutely pure breed males <15 lbs). The MC mix that we adopted a number of years ago never got over 14 lbs. Everyone in the neighborhood still thought he was huge (people used to honestly ask us if that was a cat). Compared to our now 23 lbs 2.5 year old male, he was obviously quite small, but still normal MC range.

We see dander under mats sometimes, but do not just see it on bedding. Do not have any black bedding, however. Their skin can get dry if insufficient fat in diet, and of course during winter it can get very dry in houses and cause their skin to be dry just as with our own. Brushing is probably a good idea.

Yeah, his coat is sublime. I have never seen such a silky coat. I have seen many purebred maine coons that have a lot more hair, but most tend to not be as soft, except around the neck. My concern is that it looks like Peter is going to be a pretty small guy, which is fine although not my preference. He has a wonderful personality and is soft as silk, but he just isn't too big. I knew that by getting a rescue mix, that he might not get as big as a true purebred, but that was my choice. I just hope he is very healthy no matter the size.

I do brush him every few days with a fine-toothed brush. It seems to get a lot of fur out (probably mostly undercoat). That makes his hair very soft, but I think it is less puffy. I never brush the tail or legs, though. I don't think that is a good idea.

PS - The black thing he is sitting on is an old futon. It was not supposed to be _his_ bed, but he outgrew the cat condo we had for him (even after putting a huge cinder block on the base to keep it from tipping, he still could barely fit on it). As it turns out, he likes the futon a lot more than we do, so we let him sit there. I could easily put on a lighter cover to hide the dander. I just haven't.