In his later years, Timothy ate once a day around 6pm, and the last couple of years, ¼ at breakfast time and ¾ at 4pm. He had dry biscuits mixed with a serving of meat, often specially bought and prepared (shredded beef, chopped and boiled chicken, lamb or fried minced pork, chicken hearts boiled in stock etc – usually we kept a variety in the freezer so that there was a different meat each week).
We’d take his dinner and bowl with us on a daytrip – so he could stick to normal meal times even when we were out.
He forced our hand really: once when he was very young we went to Brighton and realised on arriving at Victoria station on the way home that it was past dinnertime, and we were still over an hour from home – with no food. We bought a box of Bakers Complete from Sainsbury’s and made a “bowl” for him. He ate a normal sized dinner on the shopping parade floor, and we headed home. When we got home, he waited by his bowl for his ACTUAL dinner. We gave it to him, and he ate it!
We learned that he expected his dinner in his own bowl, and nothing else counted. So we made sure to live by that expectation ever since.