Calories vs company recommendations

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minniethecalico

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Hello all - I'm a brand new first time cat owner as of yesterday... a long time in the making. We're on a budget but I want to feed her as well as I can within the budget. We're thinking of doing a wet/dry combination... I'm thinking Orijen as dry food since it's very high quality and when I buy it in a giant bag it's less than $1/day. I'm looking at Dave's for wet food since it's pretty high quality for the cost. However, I'm noticing on the 12.5oz cans of wet food that the company's suggestion is 1/2 the can for a 6-8oz cat. My cat is 9lbs. After checking the website, this would be feeding her 600 kcals DAILY. This seems excessive, since from what I've gathered, she's supposed to be eating around 200 kcals daily. Am I missing something? She's 1-2 years old, not a kitten.
 
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2cats4me

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minniethecalico said:
Hello all - I'm a brand new first time cat owner as of yesterday... a long time in the making. We're on a budget but I want to feed her as well as I can within the budget. We're thinking of doing a wet/dry combination... I'm thinking Orijen as dry food since it's very high quality and when I buy it in a giant bag it's less than $1/day. I'm looking at Dave's for wet food since it's pretty high quality for the cost. However, I'm noticing on the 12.5oz cans of wet food that the company's suggestion is 1/2 the can for a 6-8oz cat. My cat is 9lbs. After checking the website, this would be feeding her 600 kcals DAILY. This seems excessive, since from what I've gathered, she's supposed to be eating around 200 kcals daily. Am I missing something? She's 1-2 years old, not a kitten.
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Hello , I got this info off a cat care site ..  The figures may be a little more or less depending on activity level . 

Orijen and Daves are great choices for cat food too ...

Yeah , you cannot always go by the manufacturers  websites , sometimes they can be misleading ..

  1. The average indoor cat should have 20 calories  per pound to maintain weight. The average outdoor only cat should have 35 calories  per pound to maintain weight. Indoor/outdoor cats are somewhere in between. o If your indoor cat weighs 10 pounds, then they should be eating approximately 200 calories  per day.
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minniethecalico

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Okay, so I'm not crazy? I'm just a little flabbergasted that their recommendation is 3x what a cat should eat daily. It seemed a little absurd to me, so I was just wondering if there was something I ought to know that could make up for the discrepancy.
 
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2cats4me

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minniethecalico said:
 
Okay, so I'm not crazy? I'm just a little flabbergasted that their recommendation is 3x what a cat should eat daily. It seemed a little absurd to me, so I was just wondering if there was something I ought to know that could make up for the discrepancy.
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No you definitely not crazy .. It can get confusing knowing what and how much to feed ..
 
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No, you're not crazy, @minniethecalico! If your cat is very active, though, she might need a little more than the 200 calorie range... I don't track our cats' calories very carefully but they're 7-8 pounds each, about two years old, and very active indoor cats who eat quite a bit (probably an average of around 225 calories/day, maybe even a little more) and are in a healthy weight range.

Enjoy your new cat and welcome to The Cat Site!
 
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Most companies will have VERY generous feeding recommendations, and it's no wonder (along with free feeding and high carb cheap foods) that we're seeing as many overweight pets as we are. I like using this calorie calculator for all of the foods I've bought because all foods will vary, some very slightly and some very widely. At first I used a food scale to measure the weight of the food to determine what 2oz looked like (for most wet foods I've encountered, 1oz = 28-31 calories) and now I just eyeball it. We have one moderately active cat at 5lbs who eats about 150 calories a day, and a 10lb cat who is lazier but needs to gain weight, so he is offered closer to 300 calories, so our cats are getting about 30 calories per pound and maintaining. You can always consult your vet for number specific to your cat.


If your cat gets used to a set amount for feedings and it satiates their hunger, I find especially when feeding wet, they learn to moderate themselves too. There are some cats, however, who will just eat because food's available.
And that's where your knowledge would step in!
 
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I think that recommendation on the can isn't too bad---that would be about 220 calories so that's about right for an active 6-8 lb cat. A little high for inactive cats but not terrible. They're assuming you feed only canned food. If you feed dry food you have to adjust the amount of canned food you feed. The higher quality foods are less likely to overestimate, IME.

Ohhhhh. . .I'm looking at a can of Dave's right now and I think I see the problem. It says it has 1245 kcal per KG, I think that's what you were looking at. It's only 442 kcal per CAN :D. So half a can is only 221 kcal (for the flavor I have, Turkey & Giblets). Yeah, if half a can had 600+ calories, that would really make kitties fat! :lol3:
 
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minniethecalico

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Oh my goodness - this makes so much more sense! Thank you! :)
 
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