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How much and how often to feed

The feeding guide on the bag does not know your cat is neutered, indoor, eight years old, and already a kilogram over. Here is how to work out the actual portion, and how to deliver it in a way that suits an animal built to eat sixteen small meals a day.

1. How much - the calorie calculation

Ignore the feeding guide on the bag as anything more than a starting hint. Those charts are generic, are usually generous, and cannot know whether your cat is neutered, indoor, elderly, or already overweight. Do the arithmetic instead; it takes a minute.

Three steps to a daily portion

1. RER = 70 × (ideal body weight in kg)0.75

2. MER = RER × life-stage factor, 1.2 for a neutered adult, 1.0 for an indoor or obesity-prone cat, 1.4 intact, 2.0–2.5 for kittens, 0.8 for weight loss.

3. Daily grams = MER ÷ kcal per gram of the food, from the calorie statement on the label.

Typical daily calories for a neutered indoor adult cat at a healthy weight, and what that looks like in food. Wet-food figures assume roughly 0.9 kcal/g; kibble roughly 3.9 kcal/g.
Ideal weight RER MER (×1.2) Wet food/day Dry food/day
3.0 kg 160 kcal 192 kcal ~213 g (2½ cans) ~49 g
3.5 kg 179 kcal 215 kcal ~239 g (~3 cans) ~55 g
4.0 kg 198 kcal 238 kcal ~264 g (~3 cans) ~61 g
4.5 kg 216 kcal 260 kcal ~289 g (3½ cans) ~67 g
5.0 kg 234 kcal 281 kcal ~312 g (~3¾ cans) ~72 g
5.5 kg 251 kcal 301 kcal ~334 g (~4 cans) ~77 g
6.0 kg 268 kcal 322 kcal ~358 g (~4¼ cans) ~83 g

Common mistake

Feeding to current weight when the cat is overweight. Always calculate from the cat's ideal weight, or you will simply maintain the excess. If you do not know the ideal weight, your vet can estimate it from body condition score.

Note

Calorie density varies enormously between wet foods, roughly 0.7 to 1.3 kcal per gram. Switching brands while keeping the same number of cans can change intake by 40 % without anything looking different. Recalculate whenever you change product.

2. Weigh the food

A £10 kitchen scale is the highest-return purchase in feline health care. Scoops and “cups” are unreliable: kibble density varies by shape and coating, and the way a person fills a scoop varies with mood and hurry. Measured against a scale, cup-based portioning routinely errs by 20 % or more, enough, sustained over a year, to move a cat from lean to obese.

Weigh out the day's total each morning into a container, and feed from that. When the container is empty, the cat has eaten. This also makes it obvious when someone else in the household has fed the cat too.

3. How often - meal timing

A free-living cat eats ten to twenty small prey items across the day and night. Nothing about a cat is built for two large meals, but nothing about a modern household is built for sixteen. The practical options:

Pattern Suits Watch out for
Two measured meals a day Most adult cats; the simplest workable default Long gaps can cause bile vomiting in some cats; add a small third portion if so
Three to four small meals Kittens, seniors, diabetic cats, cats that vomit on an empty stomach Requires a timed feeder or a flexible schedule
Free-feeding dry food Underweight cats, some multi-cat households The single most reliable route to obesity; impossible to monitor intake, which matters because appetite loss is often the first sign of illness
Puzzle feeders and food-dispensing toys Almost every cat, as part of the ration Start easy or the cat gives up; count the calories inside as part of the daily total, not extra
Timed automatic feeders Cats that wake you at 4 a.m.; wet-food models exist with ice packs Breaks the association between you and food, which is the point

Rule of thumb

If your cat wakes you before dawn demanding food, an automatic feeder set for 5 a.m. solves it in about a week. The cat learns that the machine produces breakfast and you do not. Feeding the cat yourself when it wakes you teaches the opposite lesson very efficiently.

4. Making the cat work for it

Indoor cats spend a few minutes a day eating food that took no effort to acquire, and the rest of it with nothing to do. Food-based enrichment addresses both boredom and speed of eating.

In multi-cat households this is also a competition tool: separate, spread-out feeding stations reduce the resource guarding that causes one cat to gain weight while another slowly loses it.

5. Changing food

Cats are neophobic about food and their gut microbiome adapts slowly. A sudden switch commonly produces diarrhoea or outright refusal, and a cat that refuses food is a serious problem rather than an inconvenience. Go slowly.

A standard seven-day transition. Double the length of each step for a cat with a sensitive gut, or a cat you know to be fussy.
Days Old food New food
1–2 75 % 25 %
3–4 50 % 50 %
5–6 25 % 75 %
7+ 0 % 100 %

When the cat refuses outright

Anorexia in cats is an emergency

A cat that eats nothing for 24 hours should be seen by a vet. A cat that eats nothing for 48–72 hours is at real risk of hepatic lipidosis, in which the body mobilises fat faster than the liver can process it and the liver fails. Overweight cats are at highest risk, and it can be fatal. Never attempt to force a diet change by withholding food, and never assume a cat is “just being fussy” for more than a day.

6. Treats and the 10 percent rule

Treats should be at most 10 % of daily calories, and those calories come out of the meal portions rather than being added on top. For a 4.5 kg cat on 260 kcal that is 26 kcal , which is roughly three or four commercial treats, or one small cube of plain cooked chicken.

Two things reliably wreck a good feeding plan:

Better treats: single-ingredient freeze-dried meat or fish, small pieces of plain cooked chicken or turkey, a licked lid, or a few kibbles from the daily ration used as training rewards. Note that a number of common human foods are toxic to cats.

7. Weight management

Obesity is the most common nutritional disorder in pet cats and roughly half the cats in developed countries carry excess weight. It shortens life and drives diabetes, osteoarthritis, lower urinary tract disease, hepatic lipidosis, and anaesthetic risk.

Body condition score

Weight alone is misleading, a 5 kg Maine Coon and a 5 kg Siamese are different cats. Use the 9-point body condition score, where 5 is ideal and every point above adds roughly 10 % body weight.

An ideal cat (BCS 4–5)

  • Ribs easily felt under a thin fat covering, like the back of your hand.
  • A visible waist behind the ribs when viewed from above.
  • The belly tucks up when viewed from the side.
  • A minimal primordial pouch: the loose belly flap is normal in cats and is not fat.

An overweight cat (BCS 7+)

  • Ribs difficult to feel through fat.
  • No waist; the body is oval or rectangular from above.
  • The belly is rounded and hangs, and the flank swings when walking.
  • Fat deposits over the lumbar spine and at the base of the tail.

Losing weight safely

Rule of thumb

Weigh the cat monthly on the same scale and write it down. A cat can lose 15 % of its body weight before an owner who sees it every day notices, and unexplained weight loss is the earliest sign of hyperthyroidism, chronic kidney disease, diabetes, and cancer. A £15 baby scale catches problems months before they become visible.

8. Multi-cat households

Cats are not communal feeders; they hunt alone. Feeding several cats from adjacent bowls creates competition that is easy to miss because it plays out as body language rather than fighting.

Sources