How Much To Feed a Cat

When you welcome a new cat to the family or your cat needs a new diet, choosing what food is best for them can be a challenge. Once you decide what the best diet is for your feline, the next step is figuring out how much to feed them.

Many factors go into how much you should feed your cat. If you are not sure where to begin, ask your veterinarian. They know your pet’s individual needs best.

What Determines How Much Your Cat Should Eat?

How much your cat should eat per day is based on a variety of environmental and medical factors. Your cat’s age—kitten, adult, or senior—is one of the most important factors.

Kittens often need more calories per day, thus more food, to keep up with their growth and development.

Once kittens reach adulthood, at one year old, their needs diminish a bit since they are likely at their long-term weight by then.  

Senior cats (those more than 7 to 8 years old) often need fewer calories than adult cats if they are developing medical issues, and also to keep them from becoming overweight.

Obesity is a serious medical condition that affects how much your cat can eat daily. It can lead to many health issues and puts stress on an aging cat’s joints, which makes arthritis more uncomfortable.

When considering how much your cat should eat, their gender might come into play as well, but usually their breeding status (intact or spayed/neutered) is more important.

Cats that have not been spayed or neutered tend to need more calories per day, since their sex hormones keep their metabolisms at a much higher rate.

When a female cat is pregnant, her daily food intake will need to increase to help her body grow tiny kittens.

How Much Food Should a Cat Eat per Day?

Knowing how much to feed your cat is a very important part of keeping them healthy. It’s not necessarily the portion size that you need to control, but the number of calories your cat is getting per day.

On most cat food and feline nutrition resources, the kcal (kilocalorie) is the unit of measurement used, but this be used interchangeably with calories.

This information can be found on the bag or can of cat food near the ingredients and the recommended volume of feeding (ex: 250kcal/cup or 250kcal per can).

To figure out how many calories per day your cat needs, your veterinarian will do a calculation based on the factors discussed above, using your cat’s weight in kilograms and their body condition score.

A general guide to go by is that cats should eat about 25 to 35 calories per pound of body weight. For example, if you have a 10-pound cat, they should eat around 250kcal per day.

The number of calories needed also depends on how active your cat is. Cats that are less active tend to need fewer calories.

If you need to know how much your cat needs to eat daily based on their physical and medical needs, speaking with your veterinarian is best.

How Much To Feed a Cat Chart

This chart can be used as a guide to start feeding your adult cat (ages 1 to 7 years old).

Knowing there are many factors that go into how much your cat should eat daily, it’s always best to talk to your veterinarian before you make long-term decisions about your cat’s daily calorie intake.

The recommendations can vary greatly in both directions from this chart, which is why your vet is the best resource to know how much your cat needs to maintain their health and good body condition.

To convert calories into portion sizes, figure out the number of calories in a cup or in a can of cat food. This information is found below the guaranteed analysis and the ingredient lists on most cat food.

If the bag says the diet is 500kcal per cup of food and your cat weighs 10 pounds, your cat needs 250 kcal/day, which is ½ cup of food daily. If they eat two meals a day, then they get ¼ cup at each meal to get their caloric needs for the day.

It’s also good to keep in mind that treats should never make up more than 10% of your cat’s daily calorie intake.

If your cat gets treats daily, then the number of calories they get in their treats plus the amount they get from their food should equal the total calories they need daily.

In most cases, cats that eat both wet and dry food would not get equal volumes of wet and dry food but equal caloric measurements.

For example, if your cat gets 250kcal per day and they eat wet and dry food, they should get 125kcal per day of wet food and 125 kcal per day of dry food split into their meal portions.

Science diet adult cat food comes in wet and dry, chicken and rice formulations. The canned food is around 180 kcal/can and the dry food is 500 kcal/cup. The cat that gets 250 kcal/day would get around ¾ of a 5.5oz can per day and ¼ cup of dry food per day (often split into 2 meals).

How Much Food Is Too Much for a Cat?

We tend to relate food with love and offer our feline family members a bit too many calories per day.

If your cat eats too much (over their recommended daily meals), you may notice they are gaining weight, they are not as active, or they start developing health issues.

Obesity is defined as being at least 20% or more above normal weight. Obesity is also the most common nutritional disorder in domestic cats.

A study done at the University of California, Davis from 2006 to 2015 found that 41% of the 9,062 cats were obese.

Obesity in cats puts them at much higher risk of:

• Diabetes

• Arthritis

• High blood pressure

• Skin disease

• Liver disease

• Urinary tract disease

• Heart disease

It also makes anesthesia a much higher risk.