What's the lowest amount of calories a cat needs?

[lizzieloo]

All relevant info:

I have a 7.5 year old, very lazy indoor cat. When she was 2.5yo she ballooned up to 15.5lbs as she kept sneaking into the new kitten food. The vet told me I need to put her on a diet and her ideal weight was 11-12lbs for her size and she should be eating 220 calories. I found a way to keep her out of the kitten food, and stopped free feeding for 2x a day feeds. Coupled with being very playful with the kitten she went down to 11.5lbs over 2 years. But I knew 220 calories was too high for her and found that 180 calories on her diet food was the right number...every 3-4 days I would give her a bit more as she would get "extra" hungry. She always seemed hungry on this diet food - Performatrin UItra.

Last Sept when she had just turned 7, I switched her to new pet food on account of new hairball issue and increasing amounts, like every other day. So I put her on Science Hill hairball formula mixed with a bit of Purina One grain free for variety and frankly I wanted to lower the cost a smidge. She LOVES them both so much more and I feel bad that she had the diet food so long which she hated. Hairballs stopped. (I also had a vet visit and she wasn't concerned since the food fixed hairballs.) I also added 1/5 of a can of Friskies per night mixed with lots of water.

I weighed her today and SHE HAS GAINED 1.5LBS SINCE SEPTEMBER! Which is when I did the food switch. She got her rabies shot this morning and she was deemed healthy with her physical exam but we chose to get a blood and urine sample as her water consumption quadrupled since Sept which she said the food may make her very thirsty but could be something worse...I get the results next week and I'll ask my vet her opinion on the food thing. I figured I had calculated her calorie consumption wrong so told my vet I'd figure it out at home and we didn't discuss the food and weight part. But I double checked and she is getting approximately 180 calories a day. She does seem much more satisfied with her food consumption as she isn't begging as much and occasionally leaves a few pieces.

But I'm wondering if anyone has any cats that are quite below the recommended calorie amount and if this is common? She is super lazy since my other cat died and I'm not able to consider a playmate right now. I try to play with her but she stopped playing with me when I got the second cat at age 2 and hasn't yet forgiven me lol. The second cat died 2 years ago and she still wont usually play...

Can the food type make a difference in weight even if the calorie amount is the same?

 

[Azazel]

In a nutshell, yes, it is not only important how much calories you feed but also what those calories are composed of. There is a general rule that to maintain body weight for an indoor moderately active cat you should feed about 20-25 kcal per lb of weight per day. But, it varies so much based on what kind of food you are feeding. A cat that is eating food that contains lots of unnecessary fillers will need more calories because it may be less nutritionally dense. If feeding a food with little to no fillers and one that is nutritionally dense then you will need fewer calories. An example of this is people who make their own homemade raw food typically feed much fewer calories than 20kcal per lb because the foods they make are very low in fillers and dense in muscle meat, organs, and bones that are really nutritious. They also seem to be more filling for cats.

Also, in terms of weight loss, reducing calories can work, but you also want to make sure that most of the calories that your cat is getting is from animal protein. Weight gain occurs for cats primarily on high carb and fat diets and kibble tends to be high in both and low in animal protein. So the general recommendation is to feed wet food only for weight loss since wet food tends to be higher in animal protein and lower in carbs. You gotta be careful with wet food too though because some tend to be really high in fat. Although, cats tend to handle high fat better than high carbs so as a general rule canned is always going to be better for weight loss than kibble which is high in carbs. Purina and Hills are brands that have particularly high carbs in their dry foods. The “weight loss” and “indoor” claims are a marketing scam.

 

[lizzieloo]

This is very interesting and makes sense! Thank you so much for taking the time to respond. I've just looked into the brands I fed and these are the stats:

Old food performatrin ultra
Protein 33%+
Fat: 10%+
Fibre: 5% max
Carb: ?

And I'd mix a bit of reg performatrin
Protein 32%+
Fat 18%+
Fibre: 3% max
Carb: ?

New food:
Science Hill hairball
Protein: 34%
Fat: 19%
Fibre: 9%
Carb: 31%

with a smidge of Purina One Grain free instinct
Protein : 35%:
Fat:14%
Fibre: 2% max
Carb: ?

Friskies wet food is very low fat and carb but only 10% protein.

*****

So, all of the protein on the dry food is the same but I'll have to do further research to determine where the protein source is coming from/kinds of protein to determine quality. The fat content has gone up quite a bit as well in the new foods which explains why she loves them and has probably contributed to weight gain. The fibre in the SH is higher and my vet had told me the fibre is what makes it good for hairballs.

SH listed 31% carbs but none of the others listed carbs. Is it because the others brands are being dishonest and hiding the carbs or because SH really does fill their food with more carbs?

 

[lizzieloo]

I just googled how to find the carb intake so I'll do some math tomorrow and she where they are all at.

 

[Azazel]

Yep, companies don’t usually say the carb amount because they don’t want you to know. You can estimate it by subtracting all of the as fed values from 100. The values on the label are also misleading because they don’t give you the percentage of protein/fat/carbs out of the total calories. Those are really the values you want. A helpful page for calculating these values is this one: Commercial Cat Foods

It’s pretty safe to assume that if the first 5 ingredients in a food aren’t meat/animal sources then there is some amount of protein coming from non-animal sources.

 

[She's a witch]

Friskies wet food is very low fat and carb but only 10% protein

Friskies has much more protein than 10%, you need to figure out the dry matter basis to get the correct number. Dry food lacks water so it shows the correct amount as fed. Because of moisture in the wet food, it looks like it’s less protein than in dry which is hardly ever true.
If you don’t want to stretch your math skills, you could use some databases that did the calculations, such as: CatFoodDB - Cat Food Reviews to help you find the best cat food for your cat

 

[lisahe]

I particularly like the food chart on catinfo.org -- here -- because a vet compiled the data using numbers from the companies. It only covers wet foods. Dr. Pierson also has advice at the top of the chart, suggesting staying with under 10% dry matter carbohydrates. We keep our cats' carbs even lower.

 

[She's a witch]

I particularly like the food chart on catinfo.org -- here -- because a vet compiled the data using numbers from the companies. It only covers wet foods. Dr. Pierson also has advice at the top of the chart, suggesting staying with under 10% dry matter carbohydrates. We keep our cats' carbs even lower.

I agree, I like this chart too! It’s great because it shows the % of calories from protein/fat/carbs which tells much more then simple dry matter %.

 

[lizzieloo]

Wow both of those resources are really great!

I think I'm going to donate the purina one but keep the Science hill for now for the hairballs...but I'm going to buy some of the Go! grain free one to mix in.

I'm also going to look at pure can food for a bit to get her to lose the weight.

Thanks so much! Researching the right pet foods seems so overwhelming sometimes.