is this enough food?

Hi so my cat sophie, who is a female cat a little over a year old, is a bit overweight. She is currently about 12 lbs. So our vet put her on Purina OM Overweight management wet food. Getting her to eat it is no problem, she loves it. Our vet said a third of a tin, but sophie seemed very unhappy. she has started biting my feet and legs, to the point where i cannot sleep and end up feeding her at 6am just to settle her down. I have decided to start giving her half a can a day, in the hopes that she will be satisfied but still be able to lose the weight. But im worried that this still cannot be enough food for a day. The purina website states 2 cans a day for weight loss. Sophie has also never been just on wet food, it used to be mostly dry with a tin of wet every now and then. Im thinking she might also just be grumpy about not having food to graze at all day. 

so im wondering is this enough food?

any insight into my situation would be greatly appreciated, i would very much like to be able to sleep past 6am   

When you talk about the wet food, what size cans are you referring to? 3oz, .5oz, or bigger? We'd be able to help a little more if we knew how many ounces she was getting per day.

As far as your kitty getting grumpy, she might be grumpy for obvious reasons...she's on a diet. Cats know change, especially when it concerns their food. She'll be grumpy for a few days/weeks until she gets settled into the new routine/food amounts. How many meals does she get? Maybe portion out the meals into 3-4 times a day to keep her comfortable/feeling full. You could also leave her last feeding right before bed, so she won't be "starving" at 6am  

This link can be pretty helpful if you haven't seen it before: http://www.catinfo.org/?link=felineobesity

The vet who runs that page has a general formula you can follow: 13.6 * Sophie's ideal body weight in lbs + 70 = total amount of calories she should be consuming per day.

If she only has a couple pounds to lose - like let's say she's a larger cat and 10lbs would be an ideal weight for her - you can do 13.6 * 10 + 70 = 206 calories per day. According to the Purina OM website, the canned OM formula is 128 calories per can. So still going with the example of 10lbs being ideal weight, she should get around a full can and 4/5 of the second can. Using this tool, you can find how many calories are in each ounce of food (it's 20 calories per ounce). Of course, adjust to your cat's ideal weight. If you're not sure what her ideal weight would be, you can always ask your vet.

Like @Nora1 said, she's mostly grumpy because it's different, not necessarily because she's always hungry. In the future, if you need to make diet changes, you can do them more slowly. In essence, if she was being free fed dry, it would have been easier for her to go from free fed dry to meal fed dry, and then meal fed some wet and some dry, and then meal fed all wet. I don't think there's much point in back tracking now if she's already eating wet, but you can definitely portion her wet into several smaller meals. We also feed our cats their last meal when we go to bed, so the time between meals is shorter.

Thanks to everyone for the insight, The can is 5.5 oz. i have been giving her half a can a day, which is split into 3 meals. I also fed her last meal last night right before i went to bed, and i finally got to sleep past 6 am

Definitely not feeding enough food if you're only feeding 1/2 can a day and the can only has 125 calories! I think your Vet led you in the wrong direction there. Did she know you were going to do wet exclusively? You must have misunderstood her, 1/3 of a can would only be about 40 calories a day. She will starve on that!

Most regular pate type (regular) foods are around 200 calories per can, in which case you could just feed a whole can a day split into 3 meals and she will still lose weight most likely. The expensive diet food, you should be feeding almost 2 cans a day so it will get pricey, and still be at the same calories as 1 can of regular food. The diet foods have a lot of fiber to make them feel full without the calories.

Thanks chloe92us  for your insight. i had a feeling a third was way too little which is why i started giving her half a can. Yes my vet did know we would feed her only wet, it was her suggestion to stick with wet food only. unfortunetly the vet's office is closed for the weekend, but i will call monday to sort all this out.  This food is very pricey, i just bought 5 tins at $10. 

A half a can is waaaay too little too!

That's why I said to ditch the diet food, and just feed her one full 5.5 oz can of a regular pate food a day, split into meals. It will be much cheaper. She should be eating 1-2 FULL cans of the diet food.

Going to a wet food diet on its own will cause her to lose weight! But cats require a certain amount of calories, and she's not getting it. 65 calories a day is dangerously low!

Totally agree. Once you have the basic foundation of how to calculate how much food your specific cat needs, a diet food is quite honestly just paying extra money for the sake of paying extra money. Just look into the calorie counts of other wet foods and you can easily make the switch. I have a feeling other brands will be better for her anyway, since the Purina OM's wet ingredients list rice as the third ingredient (and the first is water), so it has more carbs that cats won't absorb as nutrition and they'll just poop it out. Look for low carb and/or grain-free wet foods (not hard to find.. even Friskies pates (2.5%) are lower carb than Purina OM (6.5%)). Higher protein and lower carbs help cats feel fuller longer, and the added water in wet food aids in digestion as well.

My cat sophie let know that half a can was defintly not enough food. But the food is way too expensive. So we bought some Perfomatrin ultra healthy weight dry food today and some of the wet of that brand. im still trying to figure out how much to feed her. i was thinking 1/8 dry moring, 1/8 dinner and then a quarter of the 5.5 oz tin of wet? feeling like that might be still to low.... we are now home enough now to feed her only wet, but id would still like to feed her some wet at night. any ideas on how to portion this out?

If you're feeding regular canned food, start with a FULL CAN (5.5 oz) per day and ditch the dry. It is easiest to get cats to lose weight on wet food.

I don't know how many calories are in the dry food you bought. Assuming it has 400 per cup (and it will say so on the bag), 1/4 cup total a day would only be 100 calories. 1/4 can of wet would probably only be 50 calories. So, no, you're still not feeding enough.

Aim for 20-25 calories per pound a day. So if she's 10 pounds, she would need 200-250 calories. This is assuming she is spayed and a fairly lazy house cat.

If she was free feeding dry before, and is fat, she could have easily been eating a cup a day- you have no way of knowing. But based on what you've posted up to now (and including your recent update), you're really underfeeding her. It's important they don't lose weight too quickly.

The performatrin healthy weight dry food only has 338 calories per cup. I looked it up on their website. So 1/4 cup a day would only be 85 calories per day.

I can't find their canned food, so I can't say for sure on that one.

You would be better off ditching the dry food and feeding her 1 5.5oz can of wet split into 2 or 3 meals daily. It doesnt have to be diet food.   Even Friskies would be better than diet dry food for an overweight kitty.

If she'll eat the wet well, I say get rid of the dry too. If you have a lot left, there are some good tips about getting a chunky kitty moving and how you can use the kibble you've bought as a treat (if you can't return it): http://www.thecatsite.com/t/281699/...y-chunky-cat-lol-and-questions-about-exercise

I personally think Performatrin is a pretty good brand, and affordable for what it is. I buy the 13oz cans now that I know the cats like it, but the 5.5oz cans are easier to portion out if you're not sure about servings. It's also easier to feed an all wet diet than it is to supplement other types of food and worry about counting calories of one brand, and then another brand, and then some dry. If you want to continue supplementing with dry or have larger cans that you'd like to be able to measure out calories accurately, look into a cheap digital kitchen scale and use the calorie calculator linked in post #3 to see how many calories are in the number of ounces you're providing. This works for both wet and dry, but requires a bit of extra work on your end to calculate the amount for each brand.