Now, this isn’t a hard and fast rule, and you absolutely don’t have to do it. You definitely don’t need to if your cat is particularly good at regulating his or her food intake, and doesn’t gain too much weight. And you might have trouble doing this if you have multiple cats that you feed.
That being said, if it’s at all possible, I would personally recommend measuring how much your cat eats per day. That can take the form of measuring it out for the day, taking from the same daily amount for each feeding, or measuring it out each time you feed your cat.
I personally have a bit of a hybrid system for feeding my cats. I do two things – feed them food (kibble) mixed with water twice a day, and I also have an automatic feeder toy (the Petsafe Simply Feed, I love this thing, reviewed it here) go off at set times throughout the day.
The feeder – while obviously measured – makes it impossible for me to know how much exactly each cat is eating throughout the day from it. But the food I give each cat at night is measured out, and I measure it out each time I feed them, as that’s the most convenient thing to do in my case.
I have to give each cat a different amount of food at the start and end of the day because my cats do not eat equally from the feeder. In fact, right now, I don’t think one is eating from the feeder toy at all (I need to change the food in it to one he prefers to see if that will fix the problem – as he used to eat from it super often!).
But I would recommend trying to measure your cat’s food intake for a few different reasons, all related to their health and wellbeing of course.
Reasons Why It’s Good to Measure Your Cat’s Food Each Day
1. To avoid weight gain
My cats will typically gain weight if they’re free fed or given as much food as they want. To avoid a catastrophic amount of weight gain (if you have cats like mine, surely you will already know!) you’ve got to measure out your cat’s food each day to make sure they’re not overeating.
That being said there are plenty of other reasons to measure out food even if your cats don’t particularly eat to the point where they are super duper overweight. One of which is..
2. To prevent cats from binge eating and then vomiting.
I feel like some of the cats who’ve been in my life do things thing where they binge eat so much more than their stomach can handle, then vomit when, moments later, they realize they’ve hit their physical limit and it was just way more than they could handle.
Measuring out food helps with this. Slowing down a cat eating – like with a slow feeder cat bowl, or using toys like one of my favourites – the Catit Design Senses Food Maze (reviewed here), is a really good way to help prevent this type of ate-too-quickly vomiting.
But another way is to make sure that the amount your cat is eating in one go is not too much for his or her stomach. So timed automatic cat feeders can help with that, and so can measuring out food in general so that you know your cat’s limits and only give what he or she can handle in her tummy at one time.
3. So you can notice when a cat is not eating enough.
One of the things you may not realize if you’re free feeding your cat or giving a cat as much as he or she wants to eat are times when his or her appetite is low, and they’re actually not eating enough.
This can be a symptom of a bunch of different medical issues, but if you don’t notice because you’ve never measured your cat’s food, this can be an early symptom of a medical issue that you happen to miss.
Having food left over at the end of the day is no big deal if a cat’s eating as much as he or she should and there was just too much food that happened to be delved out that day. But if your cat leaves food that should have been eaten because you measure out how much your cat should be eating for a day and he or she hasn’t finished it, it’s easy to tell there’s a problem and start troubleshooting with the information you have.
I absolutely don’t think that measuring out food is vital in any way and that in many cases, it’s not a necessary thing to do.
That being said, the reasons I can think of are definitely important enough that I personally do try to measure out the food I give to my cats each day.
If you want to make life easier on yourself when measuring, make sure to keep a measuring cup instead of a miscellaneous scooper to get the cat food out when you’re “plating” it. Or you can fill up a dedicated jar once a day with the right amount of food then give that out throughout the day.
This is a good system to use, and one I spoke about in my article about how you can feed your cat more than once (even unlimited snacks!) each day without overfeeding accidentally.
But whether or not you measure is of course entirely up to you!
Your Thoughts on Measuring Cat Food?
Do you personally measure out food for your cats each day? For each feeding? Do you think this is a good idea to do?
Love to know your thoughts in the comments section down below!
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