If you’re a proud and dedicated cat parent, you know how much work goes into loving your feline companion, from ensuring he gets enough interactive playtime to feeding him a nutritious and well-balanced diet. Dry commercial food is a good nutritional foundation for most cats. However, before you choose a dry formula for your cutie, make sure you know how many calories it contains. In “common parlance,” kilocalories and calories are interchangeable.
Dry Cat Food and Calories
Some cats thrive solely on dry food, while others thrive on a mix of dry and wet food. Kittens should only consume dry food appropriate for their age. Dry formulas labeled “balanced” or “complete” are intended to mimic the essential nutrients that cats consume in nature, which range from carbohydrates to fats and proteins. If the words “supplementary foods” appear on the packaging of dry food, that food does not meet a cat’s complete dietary needs and is not appropriate for main meals.
Dry food, according to veterinarian Arnold Plotnick, is more concentrated and typically contains more calories than wet food. This means that cats can eat a small amount of dry food and get the same amount of calories as a larger serving of wet food. Dry cat food calorie count per cup typically range between 350 and 500 kilocalories. The calories in 5.5 ounce cans of wet cat food range between 120 and 190 kilocalories.
Finding Calorie Counts
To find out how many calories are in dry cat food, it’s not always as simple as turning the package around and reading the label. Unless their products are classified as “light,” cat food manufacturers are not required to include calorie counts on packaging. Although calorie counts are not required for all products, some pet food manufacturers do. Purina® Pro Plan® Adult Weight Management, for example, is a rice and chicken dry food with 427 kilocalories per cup. Some pet food manufacturers provide caloric information for all of their products on their official websites.
Figuring Out Dry Food Calories
Although the calorie count for your preferred dry cat food may not be listed on the packaging, you are not required to be unaware of it. Examine your dry food bag’s “Guaranteed Analysis” section. The specific percentage values for each food, ranging from fiber to crude protein, should be included in this list. The website of the Feline Nutrition Awareness Effort organization includes a user-friendly calculator that will help you calculate not only the calorie count for your cat’s dry food, but also its carbohydrate percentage.
Talking to Your Veterinarian
Caloric requirements differ between cats, and are influenced by factors such as age and level of physical activity. Growing kittens, for example, require significantly more calories than average mature felines, according to author and feline expert Brigitte Eilert-Overbeck. It is entirely up to you and your veterinarian to decide what food your cat should eat. The caloric requirements of an 8-year-old pudgy tabby will differ from those of a much younger and trimmer cat. Before recommending a daily calorie range, your veterinarian will consider your cat’s health and history.
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