I have become a fan of wet cat food in small pouches (sachets). I am convinced that the standard size wet cat food pouches are too large. Do you have the same thoughts? Domestic cats like to eat small amounts frequently rather than, like humans, three meals a day. In a previous article I said that a 10 lb cat needs about 200-300 grams of wet food per day. My experience tells me that the lower figure is more accurate (200 grams). This is a bit more than two 85 gram sachets or four smaller 50 gram sachets. The smaller ones are therefore more in tune with domestic cat eating habits as simply by observation I can tell that my cat eats perhaps about five times per day or more.
On this measure the pouch on the left in the photograph above is too large. The obvious result is that a cat does not eat all of the food put before him at one sitting. He may eat all of it if hungry but too often there will be waste as shown in the photo below. You don’t want to waste Hills wet cat food because it is too expensive. The large sachet contains 85 grams of food compared to 50 grams for the smaller sachet.
It is pleasurable for a cat guardian to see their cat eat all of the food in the bowl. There are many advantages. It saves money and it saves having to find a way to dispose of what is uneaten.
I know that you can recycle uneaten wet cat food. Perhaps you can give it to feral cats under a TNR program (a bit fanciful). Or to foxes but this can create neighbour problems. A lot of people don’t like food being put down (although I do it myself) because it attracts wildlife which upsets some people. Anyway, it is claerly far better if your cat eats all the food that he is given. And if the pet food manufacturers can accommodate this anomaly (if they agree with the assessment), then why don’t they do it?
Perhaps they are deliberately making the sachets too large in order to create waste which they might think helps to generate increased profits. I suppose there is a balancing act between packaging waste and costs versus the quantity of food per sachet. Perhaps I am being cynical but you have to be when it comes to commercial enterprises. They do anything to increase profits. They don’t pay suffient attention to the negative aspects of packaging, for example. Businesses often don’t look at issues in the long-term. It’s all about making immediate gains and to hell with the future i.e. environmental issues.
Sometime ago I wrote about the size of the pellets of dry cat food. I remarked that there are often too small. This can result in cats swallowing the pellets rather than chewing on them. Since then pet food manufacturers have produced what they call oral health dry cat food. The pellet size is much larger. I only buy my cat oral health dry cat food for this reason.
Yes, meals should be what the cat needs and will eat in one sitting. Anything more would either be a waste, requiring the customer to store and re-serve it later, or that the cat would end up eating more than necessary in the one sitting, resulting in becoming overweight.