How many calories?

[fragrancehound]

How many calories does a cat need to eat/drink on a daily basis?

[mrspunkysmom]

The human formula is 12 Calories (12kcal) per pound per day to maintain current weight.

After much searching I found these.

http://www.thepetcenter.com/imtop/catweight.html

http://www.vetinfo.com/catnorm.html

This is the one you really want:

http://www.vetinfo.com/catdiet.html#Normal%20food%20and%20water


Cats require approximately 45kcal/lb/day of metabolizable energy (ME). The type of food they eat and the cat's activity level will determine the amount of food necessary to meet this requirement. For a normally active 10 lbs. cat, hunting mice on its own, this is about 10 mice a day. For a 10lb. cat eating cat food, this is about 1 cup of dry food or 10oz of canned food a day.

This makes sense. My critters eat far more for their body size compared to what I eat. They are also about 100 times more active or so it seems. This means that my cat can consume 3.75 times the amount of calories that I can per pound of body weight. GEEEEEEEE

I'm glad you asked this question.

Now if only the Calories and such were posted on the cans and bags of cat food.

As far as I know, it still takes 3500 Calories (kcal) to gain or lose a pound of weight. That means that if your cat needs to lose one pound you should cut his caloric intake by 3500 Calories for the week or month. If you cut it by the week, then take off 500 Calories per day. Of course, one pound is a lot for a little critter, so perhaps the weight loss should be spread out over a period of two or more weeks.

Edited: I thought about this and realized that my 12 lb cat would need 540 calories per day or 3780 calories per week to maintain weight. I don't know that I would want him to lose 1 lb per week, but 1 lb per month would be good. That would mean a drop of around 100 Calories per day which is slighlty less than 20% reduction.

Of course I have no idea what he is getting right now. He's healthy and he runs all over the place as does the other one, so I'm not worried.

Anne

[fragrancehound]

I asked my vet today and she said that my cat needs a minimum of 300 calories a day. Panther weighs 15 lbs.

Obviously each cat is different depending upon age, weight, activity level, etc..

HTH some of you!