How much wet food to feed a cat per day

Feeding a cat is just like feeding the rest of your family. As a pet parent, we need to provide our little felines with the nutrients they need to grow and stay healthy, with enough calories to live life to the full.

The type of food is less important than the nutrition it provides.

Whether wet or dry, it’s more about giving your feline friend enough calories to live life without making them pile on too many pounds.

If you’re a new pet parent and wondering how many pouches of cat food to feed your new family member each day, this post is for you.

We’re going to share some of what we’ve learned over the years and give you our top tips and advice to help your cat live their best life.

How many pouches of cat food a day does a cat need?

How many pouches you feed your cat depends on their age, whether they have been spayed or neutered, their activity levels, their size and any underlying health conditions they may have.

You can use this table as a general guide for adult cats:

Remember that these are averages and don’t take into account breed, but you can still use this as a rough guide.

And, as most wet cat food pouches have calories on the side, you can easily see how many pouches to feed a cat per day.

If you’re still unsure, visit your vet as they know your pet best and can offer personalised advice to help.

How often should you feed your cat wet food?

How often you feed your cat depends on their preferences. Just like their humans, some cats will prefer one large meal per day while others will prefer smaller meals.

Some cats prefer grazing, but that isn’t always practical for wet food. Especially in warmer weather!

We suggest feeding a kitten four to six small meals a day up to their daily calorie intake. As their tummies are only small, they would be much better off eating little and often.

Older cats, however, can have anywhere between one to three meals per day up to their daily calorie intake.

As you spend more time with your new family member, you’ll quickly see what meal schedule they prefer. 

So don’t worry if it takes a little while to figure out. If it’s not working for them, they’ll soon let you know!

Should you feed your cat wet and dry food?

You can feed your cat wet and dry food if you want to. There’s nothing wrong with mixing food types as long as you bear in mind the daily calorie intake.

You could mix wet and dry in the same bowl or provide wet meals and dry food for grazing.

It’s up to you and your cat to decide what and when to eat. Just be careful to manage those calories!

If you do serve dry food along with their breakfast and dinner, subtract the average calories for the given weight of dry food so you’re not overfeeding them.

As much as cats like to pretend they’re always hungry, it’s important not to overfeed them as it could make them poorly and eventually lead to medical complications.

How to serve wet food

Now you know how many pouches of cat food to provide a day, let’s quickly talk about how to serve it.

If you’re around during the day and have one or two cats, serving them wet food in a bowl should be enough.

But if one cat likes to help themselves to the other’s dinner, you may need to step in.

If you’re not home during the day, we would recommend an automatic pet feeder. The Closer Pets range of automatic feeders has chilled food storage to keep wet food fresh and can even open on a timer.

Once you know your cat’s preferred dinnertime, you can set the feeder to open at that time.

If you have multiple cats, you may want to consider our MiBowl Automatic Microchip Pet Feeder. It uses the same principle as a microchip cat flap, where only the correct chip will open it, keeping it safe from other cats.

Even though wet food can provide most of your feline’s moisture requirements, it’s always a good idea to keep fresh water around too.

If you’ve ever seen your cat lap up some water from a running tap, you should try fresh flowing water from a water fountain to help encourage them to drink.

Generally, cats tend to not drink enough, so we need to give them every opportunity to hydrate.

Running water is what they would prefer in nature and a water fountain is the next best thing.

How many pouches to feed a cat

We hope this post contains enough information for you to make an informed decision about how many pouches to feed your cat.

It’s less about ‘how many pouches should I feed my kitten’ or ‘how many pouches should I feed my cat’ and more about how many calories.

Feed them enough to get the most out of life but not so much that they gain unhealthy weight.

Your cat or kitten will soon tell you what they want to eat, when and how, so you don’t have to worry too much about that!