No, I'm not talking about free cat food, although your cat might be able to hunt up some free food if you let it out once in a while. I'm talking about having kibble available for your cat to eat whenever it's hungry versus feeding it measured portions once or twice a day. Every kibble package includes recommended feedings, but I have never found that to be necessary. When the kibble is always there, it's no longer viewed as a treat, so they tend to eat kibble only when they're hungry. The treat is the canned food that I give them twice a day. Overeating has never been a problem with any of my cats. I have a gravity feeder for kibble that I fill about once every couple of months. One cat that I had, Obadiah, ate a whole lot of kibble but she preferred kibble to canned food so she wasn't really overeating. Years ago, when I was a paramedic, we got busy and I ended up working three days in a row and, while I was gone, the kibble feeder ran out of kibble. I had a much smaller one then. I am not sure which cat did it, or if they actually worked together on it, but I suspect that Baby Girl was the ringleader. There was an unopened 15-pound bag of kibble in one of the high kitchen cabinets, one that I couldn't reach without a step stool. When I got home, that bag was on the kitchen floor with just one hole in the center, so it served as a bowl. Keep in mind that none of my cats, at that time, weighed more than ten pounds and this was a fifteen-pound bag of kibble. Not only that but the door had a spring closure thing on it so it would automatically close unless held open. But somehow, they managed to feed themselves and to do it fairly neatly. If you have a cat, do you free-feed it or portion the food out?
We no longer have a cat, but our wonder ful barn cats just died over the winter at 21 years of age. She always had dry food available, and in her younger years, she did a fine job of supplementing her diet with rodents and the occasional bird. When she got old and would tolerate being in a warmer place, she always had dry food available and was fed wet food twice daily. She was never fat but she was very active and had our environment to deal with.
I've never had a dog of my own, but I am thinking that free-feeding a dog might not work so well. Free-feeding for cats works well, and it's a great idea if you travel. They don't need the canned food that we give them in order to survive, although I think the water that they are taking in with it is good for them, particularly as they age. If we're away overnight, or even for a few days, the cats always have food and water available to them.
Cranberry and I have adjusted very well to one another and she likes getting in the shower when I am done and lick water on the shower floor
I have had a house dog for almost 50 years, and have always had food available to them. As long as they were active, they were never overweight. Our sled dogs, on the other hand, were fed a mix of dry food and meat tice a day, and probably would have eaten themselves to death if given the chance. The sled dogs were generally very active and never got fat on our regimen, but would eat anything edible presented to them, including moose bones, hides and antlers.
When I had a dog and a cat, they got fed canned food twice a day and both of them had unlimited dry food available. I never had a problem with them over-eating. Perhaps it was the breed (the dog was a small terrier mix). I know some dogs (moreso than cats) who will not stop eating as long as there's food available.