Cat feeding is a crucial topic for anyone who decides to adopt one, small or large. One of the main questions concerns the daily amount of food to be fed to the feline to satiate him and make him grow in a healthy way. What about you, do you know how much a cat has to eat?
How to calculate food doses?
Before filling your cat’s bowl with kibble, it is advisable to consider the age, habits, lifestyle and his physical characteristics. An adult cat has different needs and requirements from a few months old kitten. Furthermore, it is necessary to evaluate what type of food you intend to give the cat: dry food or wet food?
If the cat eats wet food, the correct dose of food is about 40 grams per kilo of body weight, for example an animal that weighs 4 kg should eat 160 grams of treats per day. However it should be specified that in the cat’s diet there cannot be only wet, but this must constitute at most 20% of the total.
If the cat eats dry food, the correct dose of food is about 40 grams for each kilo of weight, and the total divided by three, because dry food is more concentrated than wet and to obtain the same requirement, a smaller amount is needed.
So be careful not to stuff the bowl when it is empty; cats, in fact, have a tendency to eat everything they find inside, just for the sake of emptying it, but then they will have to deal with diseases such as obesity, just as happened to the cat Bazooka, which was continuously fed by its elderly owner, up to weighing 16 kilos!
Feeding the cat throughout the day
How many and at what times of the day should the cat eat?
An adult cat must eat no less than three times a day, especially if he feeds on biscuits it is recommended to let him have eat several meals throughout the day. In any case, the first rule to adopt is certainly to follow the indications given on cat food package.
A kitten up to six months old needs a lot of energy, so it doesn’t need a large quantity of food, but rather a series of closer snacks, even four, five a day.
Other factors must always be taken into consideration: a cat living in an apartment is more sedentary than a cat living in the garden, the latter burns more calories and has a higher energy requirement, consequently it needs more food. A tip we give you is to always feed at the same time and in the same place, away from the toilet box and in a quiet corner, cats are known to be creatures of habit.
Sterilized cat, what to do?
When it comes to cat feeding, it is necessary to know whether she or he has been neutered or not; most domestic cats are, in fact, sterilized.
A sterilized cat varies greatly in his lifestyle habits and also changes in the metabolic level: partly because of boredom, partly due to hormonal disturbances, the cat will find itself spending much more time eating or requesting food.
It is a good rule to feed him with special food for castrated cats (which must contain sodium, rich in vegetable fiber and with few calories) by administering two or three times a day and avoiding leaving them available, so as not to entice him to eat continuously and risk the overweight. For a 4 kg sterilized cat, which prefers to stay warm to sleep and has an energy requirement of about 200 kcal, a can of 85 g per day wet and a ration of 30 g of dry will be sufficient.