Feeding a Cat: Portions, Timing and Common Mistakes

Cats are obligate carnivores that evolved hunting small prey, eating many little meals across a day and a night. Almost everything that goes wrong with cat feeding traces back to feeding them on a dog's schedule, in a dog's quantity, from a dog's bowl.

None of that is obvious, and none of it is anybody's fault. Most of the advice we all absorbed about feeding pets was written with dogs in mind.

How many meals

Two meals a day is the practical minimum. Three or four small meals suits cats better, and splitting the same daily ration into more meals often reduces the night-time waking and food-demanding behaviour owners find so difficult.

Timed feeders help if nobody is home during the day, and they let you spread the ration without spreading your own schedule.

Portions

Start from the packet guidance for the cat's ideal weight, not its current weight, then adjust to the animal. A typical adult cat needs far less food than most owners assume, and cat portions are small enough that eyeballing them goes wrong quickly.

Measure with a scale rather than a scoop. The difference between an accurate portion and a generous one is a few grams per meal, which becomes a kilo over a year.

Check condition fortnightly: you should feel ribs easily under a thin covering, see a slight waist from above, and see the belly rise rather than hang from the side.

Free feeding, and why it causes trouble

Leaving dry food out all day is convenient and creates three problems.

1. You cannot see what the cat eats. Appetite loss is the earliest sign of nearly every feline illness, and free feeding hides it completely until the cat is visibly unwell.
2. Weight creeps. Cats with constant access to food eat more than they need, particularly indoor cats with little else happening.
3. In multi-cat homes you have no idea who ate what. One cat quietly eating most of it while another loses weight is common and takes months to notice.

Scheduled meals fix all three. If you want the grazing pattern, use several small scheduled meals or a timed feeder rather than an open bowl.

Multi-cat households

• Separate bowls, spaced apart. Cats do not share a dish comfortably, and one will simply wait and lose out
• Feed in different rooms if one cat bullies or bolts the other's food
• Watch the quiet one. The cat that hangs back is the one that ends up underweight
• Never assume equal intake from a shared bowl. Weigh each cat every month or two

The bowl itself

Many cats dislike their whiskers touching the sides, so a wide, shallow dish is better received than a deep one. Keep food away from the litter tray and away from noisy appliances.

Water should be somewhere separate from food entirely. Cats instinctively avoid drinking beside where they eat, which is one reason a water bowl beside the food bowl goes untouched.

Common mistakes

• Feeding dog food. Cats require taurine, which dog food does not supply adequately. Long-term feeding causes heart and eye disease. This is not a small difference between species
• Cow's milk. Most adult cats are lactose intolerant; it causes diarrhoea and provides nothing they need
• Topping up rather than measuring. The bowl never empties, so nobody knows the intake
• Treats given by several people, each assuming they were the only one
• Sudden food changes, which cats resist strongly and which cause digestive upset
• Feeding raw fish regularly, which can interfere with thiamine
• Assuming a fat cat is a happy cat. Overweight cats are at higher risk of diabetes, urinary disease and hepatic lipidosis

Changing food safely

Over at least a week, mixing increasing amounts of the new food in. Cats form texture and flavour preferences young and can be genuinely stubborn about change.

Never starve a cat into eating something new. A cat that goes several days without eating risks hepatic lipidosis, which is far more serious than the diet you were trying to improve.

Weight loss done properly

Overweight cats must lose weight slowly and under veterinary supervision. Rapid weight loss in a cat can itself trigger liver disease, which makes crash dieting genuinely dangerous rather than merely ineffective.

Small portion reductions, more meals rather than fewer, and play-based activity, reviewed with a vet who weighs the cat.

Cat feeding is where cheap decisions compound quietly: a slightly generous portion, a shared bowl, an open feeder, none of which look like a problem for two years and all of which arrive together as a diabetic, overweight cat with urinary trouble.

Every Skeepy Pet HMO plan includes unlimited vet consultations, at any vet clinic in Nigeria, so having a vet weigh the cat, score its condition and tell you the actual number for your animal costs you nothing beyond the trip.