How long can wet food be left out?

Hi everyone. I have finally transitioned my cat over to an all wet diet after months of trying! Right now he's on Natural Balance Duck & Green Pea or Venison & Green Pea. The problem is he eats it very slowly - like over the course of 4 hours or so. He did this with his dry food too so I think it's just a habit now. How long can I safely leave wet food out before bacteria growth starts? I've never had a cat that didn't eat all their wet food in under 30 minutes. I'm also finding the way he eats it kind of strange. He licks around the sides first and then sort of mows through the middle and it ends up flattening the food in the bowl, so I think he has a hard time getting to it. I've tried every kind of bowl and plate I can find. He is hands down the sloppiest cat I have ever known. Does anyone else have a cat that does this?

chinacat468 said:

 
Hi everyone. I have finally transitioned my cat over to an all wet diet after months of trying! Right now he's on Natural Balance Duck & Green Pea or Venison & Green Pea. The problem is he eats it very slowly - like over the course of 4 hours or so. He did this with his dry food too so I think it's just a habit now. How long can I safely leave wet food out before bacteria growth starts? I've never had a cat that didn't eat all their wet food in under 30 minutes. I'm also finding the way he eats it kind of strange. He licks around the sides first and then sort of mows through the middle and it ends up flattening the food in the bowl, so I think he has a hard time getting to it. I've tried every kind of bowl and plate I can find. He is hands down the sloppiest cat I have ever known. Does anyone else have a cat that does this?

Click to expand...

Honestly, I think this should be fine. I can only speak based on personal experience, not statistics, so take my opinion with a grain of salt, but mine frequently munch on their wet food for 2-3 hours and are always fine.  If you are really concerned, you can probably teach him to eat it faster by leaving it out for less time.  He will fairly quickly learn that there is such a thing as 'mealtimes' and that if he doesn't eat then he will not get to eat until the next mealtime.  You have to be careful when starting to do this though as if cats don't get enough food in a day there can be major health complications.  I'd start, for example, by only leaving out the food for 3 hours for a few days, even if some is left, then reducing this to 2 hours, and so on.  I know this might be hard depending on your schedule though.

Good luck!

I'm a 50% dry / 50% wet feeder so my cat eats the same way.... slooooooowly.

The vet told me you can safely leave wet food (not wet kibble!) out for around 6 hours. In reality, I leave it out for around 3 to 4 hours, and I'll trash it sooner if it starts to look like it's drying out.

Thank you both! I think after 4 hours he is done with it because it starts to get dry anyway. He's at a steady healthy weight so I'm confident he's not underfed if he leaves a little at the bottom. I thought about doing the set meal times but I will wait need to wait until I'm able to be home a lot during the day so I'm certain he's getting enough to eat. But that will be the next step because if his health issues don't improve on the wet food I'm going to transition to raw. I'm just not comfortable with it yet until he starts eating faster because I assume you can't leave raw out that long.

Well, I just tried a new food for him, Nature's Variety LID Lamb, and he seems to be gobbling it up! Maybe my sweet boy was trying to tell me he wasn't a big fan of duck or venison. We shall see.

My two really like the Nature's Variety LID Lamb as well.  They are real kibble addicts who are very picky about wet food but they seem to really like this food.  They aren't real crazy about duck either.

He ate about half of it in one sitting which is more than any other I've tried!