The 4 felines in my household would gladly accept second helpings at mealtime, but I do my best to disregard their begging eyes and sweet mews. Twice a day, I take advantage of measuring spoons and scoops to dole out their kibble and canned food. Twice a yr, my felines are weighed at my veterinarian’s clinic during their wellness exams. The scales on the vet clinic serve to validate that measuring my cats’ meals has kept all of them at healthy weights.
“It is crucial for people to get into the habit of measuring their cats’ food at mealtime to forestall excess body weight, which shortens each the health span and life span,” says board-certified veterinary nutritionist Dr. Sean Delaney, founding father of Balance IT, a pet dietary website run by veterinary nutritionists.
Kelly Kanaras, communications director on the Pet Food Institute (PFI) agrees, adding, “There’s a myriad of health issues related to cats being obese, including diabetes, heart disease and joint issues.”
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Count those calories
Usually, indoor cats should eat 25 to 30 calories per pound of weight. So, for a 10-pound adult, that may calculate to 250 to 300 calories. Take into account that the advisable serving amounts on industrial cat foods serve only as guidelines. As well as, age, breed and other aspects play roles in determining a cat’s best meal portion size.
“The calorie needs for each cat shall be different based on their age, whether or not they are neutered and their activity level,” says Carolyn Orr, PhD, an animal scientist at PFI, which is headquartered in Washington, D.C. “The caloric requirement decreases with age and reduced activity. A ten-pound kitten would wish over 500 calories while a traditional, neutered adult cat of the identical weight would wish 260 calories.”
A calorie is scientifically called a kilocalorie or kcal. A calorie is a unit of energy in a serving of food. If you would like to dive deeper, a calorie is defined as the quantity of warmth needed to boost the temperature of a kilogram of water by 1 degree Celsius. Clear as mud, right?
Measure food
Fortunately, you may have easy options to exactly measure kibble, canned food or homemade diets. There are calorie-counting calculators on web sites and apps you’ll be able to download to help you in tallying your cat’s each day calorie consumption. There are even handheld digital pet food scales.
You can even control your cat’s each day food consumption through the use of an automatic cat feeder.
To aid you hone your proper portioning skills, Dr. Delaney recommends the calorie calculator for cats, a weight management tool from the Pet Nutrition Alliance, designed to assist the veterinary health team make dietary assessments and suggestions to assist their patients maintain or achieve a healthy weight.
“You need to use this calculator to get an initial advice,” he says. “Adjustments to the quantity fed based on a person cat’s body condition every two to 4 weeks is then typically recommend to keep up a really perfect body condition,” he adds.
You can even reach for a digital scale in your kitchen.
“A digital scale is the simplest method to measure food because different foods have different densities, so measuring by volume could be inaccurate,” Kelly says. “All cat foods have labels that display the quantity of calories in a serving.”
Keep kitty lively
Veterinarians also encourage us to pair up exercise with portion control to maintain our cats fit.
Skip the food bowl every so often and put a meal inside a pet food puzzle or sprinkle the meal on a snuffle mat to encourage your cat to smell out, bringing out his inner hunter.
Alice Moon-Fanelli, PhD, a licensed applied animal behaviorist in Connecticut, says you’ll be able to reduce stress by doing all your best to serve meals the identical times every day.
“My cats, Matteo and Zanetta, are quick learners,” she says. “They’ve never received free-feed kibble. They appear to have accepted the concept of mealtimes.”