Cats are usually pretty good at stopping when they are full. Some, however have been trained by usually well meaning owners to overeat. In the wild, cats tend to be lean and muscular as a result of hunting for their food.
Because cats have a simple stomach structure, once the stomach is filled with food, it will empty within a few hours as food moves into the small intestine.
It can be difficult to check if a cat is overweight. The best way is to put your hands on your cat and feel the fat on their body. You should still be able to easily feel bones and flesh underneath. For cats with lots of fur, you can't just go by how they look, because the fur conceals body size.
Free-choice feeding encourages overeating, which can lead to excessive weight gain. Gaining too much weight will put your cat at risk for significant health problems such as osteoarthritis and diabetes mellitus. Free-fed cats can still gain weight on “weight loss” or calorie-controlled food when they overeat.
I would not give your cat as much as she wants, obesity is a problem in our pets because they eat too much and don't exercise enough. There are guidelines on the bags of food that tells you how much your pet should be eating of that specific food.
"If a cat can maintain his weight, free choice feeding is okay," says Dr. Kallfelz. Even dry food left out for your cat to free feed needs to be fresh, so be sure to provide new food each day. If free feeding doesn't work, you need to control how much they eat.
The digestive system of a cat is built to eat 2-3 small meals a day. Grazing or free feeding is a term, which refers to allowing your cat access to dry food all day, everyday - can severely impact the longevity of their lives.
As a general average, if you are feeding a commercially produced high-quality dry food with a good quality protein source, then an indoor cat would be fed about 1/3 to 1/2 cup of food per day. This amount of quality food is approximately between 167–250 calories.
Generally the average adult cat should weigh around 10 pounds and needs about 1/3 to 1/2 a cup of food per day. That's equivalent to around 250 calories.
Makes training more difficult: Free-feeding often makes dogs less food-motivated, which can make training more difficult because treats lose value when a dog is not hungry. Makes potty training more difficult: Free-feeding can make house training a lot more difficult if you have a puppy or a newly adopted dog.
While kittens should be fed up to three times a day, once a cat becomes an adult (at about one year of age) feeding once or twice a day is just fine, says the Cornell Feline Health Center. In fact, feeding just once a day should be acceptable for the majority of cats.
Some of the common causes of an increased appetite are: Worms: Worms, or intestinal parasites, feed off what your cat eats and steal most of the nutrition from their food. This means that cats eat and still feel hungry, as they're getting very little of their diet's nutritional value.
The obvious reason
Cats have small stomachs; on average about the size of a ping-pong ball, so their eating patterns can involve several breaks rather than eating an entire portion in one sitting. It's also possible that your cat is filling up on food from another source.
How long can a cat go without eating? In any case—ill, picky, or feral—a cat that doesn't eat might survive for as long as two weeks without food, but not without serious health consequences. A cat that goes about three days or more without eating will begin to utilize fat reserves for energy, just as a human will.
The vast majority of dogs, however, will stop eating once they've had enough. They might eat to the point of nausea, or until they throw up, but rarely, if ever, until they die. Dogs, cats, horses, and goats have all been known to eat themselves to death. But again, this only happens rarely.
How often should cats eat wet food? What do vets recommend? Wet food is not a special meal or an occasional treat. Cats can and should eat wet food every day because it agrees with the feline digestive system better than dry or semi-moist food.
Wet food is more expensive and less easy to use but can be beneficial in cats prone to lower urinary tract disease, constipation and that are overweight. Dry food can be a very efficient way to provide calories in thin cats with food volume limitations and allows for the use of food puzzles and food toy dispensers.
Most cats need 4-5 ounces of canned food per day, total. Pate-style varieties tend to be higher in calories per can than the varieties that more resemble people food with chunks and gravies- this can be useful when trying to fine-tune the number of calories per day being consumed.
Too much snacking in between meals may be the reason why your cat won't eat wet food. Complementary food isn't a problem when kept below 3% of the overall diet. Anything over that is not healthy or helpful. Giving cats treats willy-nilly can mess up their appetite and hinder their metabolism in the long run.
If your cat only eats dry food, she is likely to be getting less nutrition than a cat eating wet food. Many low-quality dry foods contain a lot of fillers. Throwaway lines like these are typical of the overly simplistic advice you find online about feline nutrition.
Some cats are notoriously finicky and skipping one or two meals is not unusual. Other cats may be prone to eating less following sporadic vomiting episodes due to hairballs, plant ingestion, or other unexplained reasons.
Like people, cats can go longer without food than water. Cats can survive for about two weeks without eating but only three days without drinking. The longer your cat goes without proper nutrition, however, the weaker they become, so it's important to contact your vet if you suspect they haven't eaten in a day or more.
Cats who eat dry food that you can make readily available may be left on their own for 24-48 hours as long as fresh water is accessible as well. Beyond that time frame, water may get too dirty to drink and the litter box full.