How To Time Cat's Kibble Meals?

I'm trying to get my free-fed dry food-loving cat on timed meals, and was curious about how others on here have done this. Based on her weight Smo needs between 250 to 350 calories per day, and I want to feed her 350 to make sure she's eating enough. Her current food has 482 calories per cup, and I was planning on feeding her 3/4 cup per day (or about 360 cals) spaced out every 4 hours. Then right before bed, leave 4 tablespoons of food in her bowl so she has enough to eat at night.

I plan on feeding around 40-60 calories worth of wet food per day between meals if she'll eat it, but right now the only wet food she likes is Inaba Churu (6 cals per tube, she eats a max of 2 per day).

Does this sound like a good plan? Smo's used to eating around 500 cals per day because she overindulges in kibble, and she's never gotten overweight on that much food. I want to make sure she's eating enough and at appropriate intervals while not shocking her with too many changes at once.

Hi!
If you haven't seen this it may be of help to you;
Transitioning Free-fed Kibble Kitties To Timed Meals

How many ounces of wet food is that?

M maggiedemi Each Churu tube is 0.5 oz, so at most she gets 1 oz of wet food per day. Back when she was eating wet food I'd measure out about 1.5 oz then mix in 4 tsp of water, so she'd be getting about 2 oz total - that's the max she would eat in a day.

A couple days ago I was timing her Tiki Cat kibble meals, and putting out exactly 2 tbsp every 4 hours. So I know she wasn't overindulging, but I noticed her urine output shrunk very noticeably, when I hadn't changed anything else. She was also drinking the usual amount (aka not much).

I really do think the Tiki Cat is affecting how much she pees, because her urine output was very healthy before I started feeding her that exclusively. It started shrinking gradually and only by a little bit, until she suddenly had cystitis. I can't figure out what it is about this kibble that would affect how much she pees, though. Could it be the high fish content? It's a very high protein food (I think about 44% protein) and all that protein comes from herring and salmon.

I got worried yesterday and thought I'd put out her old Nulo salmon & lentils instead, which is salmon and a lot of chicken and turkey. She's been eating just that for the past 12 hours and drinking a moderate amount, and is already visiting the box to pee more often that she has in the last week.

She won't eat any more than 1oz of wet food per day? Have you tried other brands?

M maggiedemi Yes, when she was eating wet the max she would eat was 2 oz. Right now the Churu treats are all she'll eat, but I'm wary about giving her too much because it's mostly pureed tuna. Also I'm not sure if they're helping her pee.

I've been doubling down on getting her to eat more wet food since her ER visit last Friday, and serving her both familiar foods and wet food she's never tried before. She was eating a couple ounces of different wet food (FF Medleys, FF in gravy, Purina Urinary), but over the course of a few days decided she didn't want wet food at all. I would try serving her the ones she'd eaten before, but she would just sniff her bowl and walk away.

I went to Petco early in the week and bought maybe 30 different kinds of good-quality food in gravy, in fish flavors she normally eats without hesitation. I've tried serving the food blended, unblended with gravy, mixed with toppers, and tried only serving things once and trying to serve them reheated to room temp. I've also been timing her kibble meals and have tried withholding food completely for 5-6 hours to stimulate appetite. Nothing has worked so far - all she'll eat is Inaba Churu.

The only thing I can think of that might be deterring her is that I have to blend her food smooth to get her to eat enough of it, since she'll only eat the gravy otherwise. We recently had to get a new food processor after the old one went kaput, and it is pretty dang loud. I wonder if she's associating the scary noises with her food and is put off from eating it. I've tried just glopping food with gravy on a plate, but even the gravy-heavy ones only have a couple licks of gravy.