There is a requirement for new portion size in UK cat food judging by the picture below:
Not all domestic cats leave a lot of food behind in the bowl after feeding but a good percentage do and that includes my cats (past and present). Almost every time my cat will leave about a third of the portion that I’ve given him behind which usually goes to waste.
I feed my cat with standard pouch portions. It is wet cat food supplied in pouches which weigh 100 grams each and there are 12 box. A mouse weighs around 30 grams or less. On that basis a standard pouch of wet cat food = 3 mice. Too much.
In the UK you can also buy cat food in large cans and small cans. Of course, you can also buy dry cat food (Kibble) supplied in a large bag.
It occurred to me, that the manufacturers could or perhaps should rethink packaging of their wet cat food to take into account the requirement for greater flexibility and portion size. The portion sizes at the moment are too large in general. This is why a lot of cats leave a lot of cat food in the bowl.
A study found that cats that eat smaller meals but more often were more active and lost weight. Added water had the same effect. Also I believe that cats prefer to eat more frequently and less at each sitting than people and therefore the amount put down should reflect that. What I mean is that the portion should be smaller and served up more frequently and as mentioned the cat caretaker should be given a degree of control over portion size. This can be achieved if the cat owner can place a variable number of small portions in the bowl.
I don’t believe it is practical to use part of a can or part of pouch because the food goes off once opened.
When you think about it this is actually what a person does when s(he) feeds dry cat food to her cat. Dry cat food is very flexible with respect to portion size. Wet cat food isn’t. Wet cat food should be in small portions and these portions can then be added together to form the correct amount of food to suit any individual cat’s eating habits.
What I came up with was a fudge-like cat food which is wrapped up in sweet-like wrappers but which are about 3 times larger than the average sweet. The weight of each would be about 10-20 grams. Each portion has a liquid centre! This sort of packaging is in between dry cat food and the current packaging of wet cat food. Each wrapped portion would be air-tight.
When a person feeds their cat with this intermediate type food they can put in the bowl anything from 1 to 5 portions. The cat caretaker will learn the amount that their cat usually eats at a sitting. Once the number of portions of this intermediate-sized wet cat food has been ascertained, everything else being equal, the cat should eat all of it.
It all equals out because you can’t get half of it out of the damn pouch. We give the pouches to Cujo to chew on. He thinks it’s a treat.
LOL!
I’ve actually gotten some of those pouches as a treat. I hate them. The only way to deal with them is to spoon them out.
Marvin has a couple favorite pouches. I put a little water into the empty (well, almost empty) pouch, swish around and dump into the bowl with the rest. The extra water doesn’t hurt.
Excellent. Added water does good. All domestic cats should drink more water. Good to help prevent urinary tract infections.
I’m trying to think in terms of just a few cats, but it’s hard.
I suppose that manufactured food really should come packaged in smaller portions.
I wouldn’t know what to do with 30 grams of cat food here.
I think opening 150+ cans or pouches like that would injure me.
I, mostly, buy the huge cans because I have to feed so many.
Sometimes, there are leftovers, but that becomes raccoon food. Nothing wasted here.
Dee, you need number 10 cans, like restaurants use. They equal 13 cups, or 38 mouses. Wouldn’t that be nice for colony angels like you? Can’t we get the manufacturers to do that?
LOL!
I wish.
You really have kind of a good idea, Dw.
I could really make use of gallon containers (they’re really not as heavy as toting a gallon worth of cans) and use a big scoop.
Thanks.
Now, how to go about it. It would be so much cheaper too. Less garbage. Fewer wrist injuries…. I wonder what places like best friends do? Alley cat allies? Other feral cat organizations. Seems so silly to have to open little cans. I think it would be important to use it all up at the same time if it came in gallon jugs.
Honestly, I wouldn’t want to enter a cat food making plant. Ignorance is bliss. But it could be worth asking the question. Do it Dee!
We waste a lot of food here, the boys like to eat from saucers and so they push a lot off with their noses which gets scraped up and binned along with the remains of their meal. We usually split a sachet between them which makes about 50gms each but I’ve noticed lately that some cat food now comes in 85g sachets which is slightly too much for one but not quite enough for two. Also Sheba now makes 50gm sachets, though the boys aren’t keen on it. I think it depends on what the food is, if it’s something they like they can eat a full one each and look for more, other times they might barely lick the top and walk away. We’ve always fed our cats on demand, when they come in food is always available as well as a hero’s welcome home, I think that encourages cats to come home and check in quite often rather than stay out a worryingly long time. There is a cat who lives near us who has come to us for food for many a year, she has a home but comes for extras, her dad knows she comes and doesn’t mind, so often she finishes up all the odds and ends which is much better than binning them.
That describes both Marvin and Bigfoot. Marvin gets marvelous wet food, and I make it wetter with water because he laps it up. But always leaves the last three bites. Bigfoot is stubbornly only a dry food eater, and he bores a hole in the middle. At first I thought I could trick him and just fill the hole, but he knows. I think he doesn’t like the wayward spittle that ends up on the surrounding kibble. So, out it goes. Fresh bowl down. I don’t mind being his servant!
Shadow, who still seeks out good quality wet food here, even though his life partner is no longer with us. And he eats every single morsel. Always has. Yellow used to put her paw on his head to move him aside so she could eat. He looks like he could miss a meal too. Big, black and handsome. But probably too big. So I don’t over do it.
Good idea, measuring a can according to a mouse weight! Anything to keep from wasting so much food.
I love your descriptions of all the different eating habits DW
🙂