How much should a cat actually eat in a day? The pouch box says one thing, the biscuit bag another, and mine share anyway

Vet weigh-in this week and it wasn't a triumph. Millie (7) is 5.6kg and apparently should be more like 4.5. Otis (4) is fine, naturally, he does laps of the garden fence for a living. The vet said the words "let's look at her feeding" and I realised I could not actually answer how much she eats in a day. Which was embarrassing, because I'm the one feeding her.

Current system, if you can call it that: dry food down all day, topped up when it looks low, plus a pouch each in the evening. And here's what's melting my brain now I'm trying to do it properly. The pouch box says an adult cat needs 3 to 4 pouches A DAY (surely that's the pouch company talking?). The biscuit bag says 55g a day, which when I weighed it out looks like a punishment, it barely covers the bottom of the bowl. And neither number tells me what to do when a cat eats SOME of each, from a shared bowl, while her brother hoovers up whatever she leaves.

I always thought cats just self-regulate? Otis clearly does. Is there an actual number of grams, or calories, or anything, that a cat is supposed to eat per day, and how do you count it when you're mixing wet and dry?

No advice on the two-cat logistics because I'm currently losing that exact war (Alfie has discovered the kitten's food is basically rocket fuel and raids it daily). But one thing that fixed Alfie's chunky era: kitchen scales. The scoop that came free with the bag turned out to hold nearly double the amount I thought it did. "Topped up when it looks low" was exactly how he got round, an honest bowl audit was step one for us.

The wet/dry confusion got me too, and the answer that unlocked it: the numbers look wildly different because wet food is mostly water. A pouch weighs 85g but most of that is moisture, so gram for gram it's much less energy-dense than biscuits, which is why "3 pouches" and "55g of dry" can be describing a similar day of food. You can't compare the grams, only the calories.

Practical two-cat system that ended our version of this: each morning I weigh the whole day's dry into a jar per cat, and everything comes out of that jar, meals, puzzle feeder, treats-for-tricks, all of it. When the jar's empty, kitchen's closed. For the sharing problem we did separate rooms at mealtimes for a while, then eventually a microchip feeder for the dieter (secondhand, they're everywhere once you start looking). The jar thing sounds fussy and takes 90 seconds.

Solidarity on the 55g looking like a punishment. When Smudge got put on a measured amount I genuinely weighed it twice because I assumed the scales were broken. Scattering it in a puzzle ball made it last three times longer and stopped the reproachful staring. Mostly.

MillieAndOtis said:

I always thought cats just self-regulate? Otis clearly does.

This is the belief I'd most like to retire, so thank you for typing it out. Some cats genuinely do self-regulate, your Otis sounds like one. But a large share of neutered, indoor, lightly exercised cats will steadily out-eat their needs if food sits down all day, and at 5.6kg against a 4.5kg target, Millie has already answered the question for you. Free-feeding two cats from one bowl has the added problem that nobody, including the vet, knows who ate what.

To your actual question: there is a number, but it's in calories, not a universal scoop. A typical neutered indoor adult needs somewhere around 180 to 220 kcal a day, less for weight loss, and the feeding guide printed on your specific food is that arithmetic already done for its recipe, by the cat's weight and life stage. That's why the pouch box and the biscuit bag disagree: 3 pouches of mostly-water wet food and 55g of dry are closer in energy than they look. If you mix the two, take a fraction of each guide (half the wet allowance plus half the dry allowance, for example) rather than adding two full ones together, and weigh the dry on scales, because as Kevin found, scoops and eyes flatter the cat. Treats count too, and should stay under about 10% of the day.

Then let Millie's body overrule the packaging: you want to feel her ribs easily under a thin layer, like the back of your hand, and see a waist from above. Check every two to three weeks and nudge the amount, don't slash it. Rapid weight loss is genuinely dangerous in cats, so a diet should be boring and slow, and her target and daily calorie figure are things your own vet or vet nurse should set and monitor, since they've had hands on her. The site's guide to how much to feed a cat covers the whole method, and the cat obesity and weight loss piece deals with the getting-it-back-off part. The jar system two_tabbies describes is exactly what I suggest in clinic, right down to the treats coming out of the ration.

Three-ish week update. Vet nurse clinic set Millie a daily calorie number and a target of 100g loss a month, which sounded pathetic until she explained that's the safe speed. We do the jar system (both cats, seemed only fair), scales live next to the kettle now, and a microchip feeder off the local selling page sorted the thieving, after two days of Otis treating it as a personal insult.

Millie is down 150g and has started doing a thing at 5pm where she sits on the empty bowl. The vet nurse says this is negotiation, not starvation. Holding the line.