How many meals a day should you feed your cat?

If you look for it, there's a lot of conflicting information around on the recommended daily number of meals you should feed your cat. Recent articles claim that a single meal a day will prevent obesity; others say that free-feeding is the best way to feed a cat, as they naturally eat small meals throughout the day; free-feeding is also promoted by the kibble industry, to make cats eat more…
In this article, I will explain what science has to say on the different feeding methods and how to choose the best way to feed your cats, regardless of whether you're feeding raw or kibbles! I will start talking about free-feeding and then I'll explain how to define a number of fixed meals if your cat eats raw or wet food.

Free feeding, is it the best way to feed your cat?

Let’s talk about free-feeding, and why I don’t recommend it in the majority of cases. First, free-feeding is something that can be done only if you feed dry food, as raw meat or canned food will spoil if it’s let outside. Here I won't talk about all the issues inherent in feeding kibbles, which would need several articles by themselves.
There are two main arguments for free-feeding: it’s the most natural way to feed a cat as they hunt several small prey throughout the day and cats are able to regulate their food intake by themselves.

Let’s look at how cats eat in nature. There isn’t much data on the number of prey eaten by feral cats in a day from direct observation: most of the data comes from the analysis of the prey found in the stomach content of feral cats.
In one of the rare studies in which feral cats were observed directly, they were hunting an average of 7.2 prey a day. The cats ate 72% of the prey killed, which leads to an average of 5 prey eaten per day [1].
Most studies report that feral cats consume between 200-300 g (7-10 oz) of prey every day. The average prey size in several studies was 40 g (1.4 oz). However, feral cats are generalists, meaning that they eat prey as small as insects and as big as 500 g (18 oz) young rabbits. This gives us an average of 5 to 8 meals a day, with some variation as the number of meals could be higher or smaller (as low as once per day) depending on the size of the prey [2],[3],[4],[5].
However, when advocates report the benefits of free-feeding, a much higher number of meals is often reported, as high as 12-20 a day. This number comes from results from laboratory studies [6],[7]. In these studies, a cat is caged with food available, and the number of meals the cat takes is recorded. In one study, this number resulted in an average of 16 meals per day. These numbers are much higher than the natural behavior of feral cats. This is not surprising, as behavioral studies show that the lower it “costs” in terms of effort to get a meal, the higher the number of meals will be, and the lower their quantity [8],[9]. So, if it’s easy for a cat to get some food, it will eat many small meals; if it’s more difficult, the cat will eat a few, bigger meals. Additionally, a cat locked in a cage doesn’t have anything else to do but eat, so this might be another reason why the numbers are inflated, but this is my personal take on these studies.
My point of view on this is that while feral cats eat several small meals a day, it’s not as high as what is often claimed. The reported high numbers of meals may come from the data on laboratory cats. Moreover, an important point that is often forgotten when free-feeding is promoted as natural is that wild cats don’t have food available at all times without any effort.

Now, let’s talk about the cat's ability to regulate their food intake. This is in fact true: cats will stop consuming food when they have eaten enough calories. However (as you could expect there is a but), many cats will overeat when free-fed. Studies have shown that free feeding is a risk factor of obesity, especially in young and neutered cats [10],[11],[12],[13]. There are various reasons that can cause a cat to overeat. Firstly, kibbles are made to be highly-palatable (they taste good to your cat); there are even companies dedicated to improving the palatability of kibbles. Kibbles are also very energy-dense, which means that by eating a small quantity your cat gets a high amount of calories (in comparison to wet food or raw food). 

Additionally, like for us, cats can overeat because they are stressed or bored, which happens especially in indoor cats without a stimulating environment [14],[15]. So, while a cat is able to regulate its food intake in theory, in real life the amount of overweight and obese cats keeps growing.
You can now see that the two main arguments for free feeding aren’t that strong and don’t necessarily apply to all cats.

Another argument against free-feeding is that it doesn’t allow you to monitor the amount of food eaten by your cats daily. This can be very problematic as a decreased appetite is often one of the first signs of illness.

For all these reasons, I don’t think free-feeding is adapted to most cats. However, if you must free feed, here are a few things to mitigate its issues.

• Make it free-feeding but not ad libitum: measure daily the amount of food you are giving to your cat. So your cat can eat when they want, but the quantity of food is limited to prevent overfeeding.

• Make the food available only in puzzle feeders, which means that your cat will need to “work” to get the food. This will both create a mental enrichment as it simulates hunting behavior and prevents overeating as the food is more difficult to get [16],[17].

Now that we have seen that free feeding may not be the best way to feed your cat let’s look at meal feeding and what the best number of meals is.

Meal feeding

One of the questions people often ask when they start feeding raw is how many times a day they should feed their cat. I don’t think there is a one-fits-all answer, but let’s look at what you need to take into account when making this choice. 

Several meals a day

Several studies have reported that feeding several meals at a fixed time will increase the cat's physical activity in comparison to one meal a day. This is because of a phenomenon called food anticipatory activity: basically, the cat starts being active before the expected mealtime. In these studies, cats that were fed 2 or 4 times per day were more active that cats fed once per day. It’s also interesting to note that as the cats were fed during the day, they were also less active at night! This is something to take into consideration if your cat likes to run everywhere at 3 am [18],[19],[20].

A single meal

A recent study showed that feeding one meal a day compared to four meals a day could have some benefits: cats had higher levels of satiety hormones, meaning they may feel less hungry than cats eating several meals a day. The cat fed one time a day also ate less: this is probably because there is a maximum amount of food that a cat can eat in one sitting. 
The hormones levels of the cats showed that eating once per day could promote lean body mass (muscle) and reduce fat mass [21].
This study is the first one investigating the effects of a single daily meal, so I would be cautious about the results. Nevertheless, this shows that feeding one time a day is a viable option that could even have benefits.

My opinion

It seems that both the several meals a day and the single meal approaches have some benefits, so it’s up to you to find what works for your cats. Don’t hesitate to try different options to see what fits your cats and your schedule. I personally feed Néline and Praline 3 times a day: in the morning at around 8 am, after work at around 6 pm and before going to sleep at around 11 pm.
An important point is you shouldn't forget about mentally stimulating your cats just because you feed them on a fixed schedule. You can still put a few treats in a puzzle feeder during the day. You can also take advantage of the energy of your cats before mealtime to play with them before feeding them: in this case, you almost recreate a natural behavior of hunting before eating.
The moment before a meal is also a good moment to practice trick training, which is a great way to mentally stimulate your cat and bond with them.
Finally, I also try to do all the “annoying” care, brushing, nail cutting for my cats before mealtime, so that they can get a huge reward and positively associate these cares.
If your cat is generally stressed, being precise in the mealtimes can help it to have a clear and defined routine, something that cats generally appreciate.

Kittens

Kittens need several meals a day: in fact, their stomach capacity is limited and so they need to eat regularly. The recommendations for kittens are to feed three to five meals per day until 6 months of age and then feed two or three meals per day until one year old [22].

Multi-cat household

If you have several cats and some of them steal the food from the plate of the others at mealtime, you can try to feed them in separate places or to crate them. This can also help if some of your cats are stressed when eating around others.

To conclude, free-feeding isn’t the best way to feed cats in general, and the ideal number of meals is what fits you and your cat!

Sources

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[9]Kanarek, R. B. (1975). Availability and caloric density of the diet as determinants of meal patterns in cats. Physiology & Behavior, 15(5), 611–618.

[10]Harper, E.J., Stack, D.M., Watson, T.D.G. and Moxham, G. (2001), Effects of feeding regimens on bodyweight, composition and condition score in cats following ovariohysterectomy. Journal of Small Animal Practice, 42: 433-438.

[11]Russell, K., Sabin, R., Holt, S., Bradley, R. and Harper, E.J. (2000), Influence of feeding regimen on body condition in the cat. Journal of Small Animal Practice, 41: 12-18.

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[13]Alexander LG, Salt C, Thomas G, Butterwick R. Effects of neutering on food intake, body weight and body composition in growing female kittens. Br J Nutr. 2011;106 Suppl 1:S19-S23.

[14]McMillan, F. D. (2013). Stress-induced and emotional eating in animals: A review of the experimental evidence and implications for companion animal obesity. Journal of Veterinary Behavior: Clinical Applications and Research, 8(5), 376–385.

[15]Zoran, D. L., & Buffington, C. A. T. (2011). Effects of nutrition choices and lifestyle changes on the well-being of cats, a carnivore that has moved indoors. Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, 239(5), 596–606.

[16]Sadek T, Hamper B, Horwitz D, Rodan I, Rowe E, Sundahl E. Feline feeding programs: Addressing behavioural needs to improve feline health and wellbeing. Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery. 2018;20(11):1049-1055.

[17]Dantas LM, Delgado MM, Johnson I, Buffington CT. Food puzzles for cats: Feeding for physical and emotional wellbeing. Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery. 2016;18(9):723-732

[18]M. R. C. de Godoy, K. Ochi, L. F. de Oliveira Mateus, A. C. C. de Justino, K. S. Swanson, Feeding frequency, but not dietary water content, affects voluntary physical activity in young lean adult female cats, Journal of Animal Science, Volume 93, Issue 5, May 2015, Pages 2597–2601

[19]P. Deng, E. Iwazaki, S. A. Suchy, M. R. Pallotto, K. S. Swanson, Effects of feeding frequency and dietary water content on voluntary physical activity in healthy adult cats, Journal of Animal Science, Volume 92, Issue 3, March 2014, Pages 1271–1277

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[21] Camara A, Verbrugghe A, Cargo-Froom C, Hogan K, DeVries TJ, et al. (2020) The daytime feeding frequency affects appetite-regulating hormones, amino acids, physical activity, and respiratory quotient, but not energy expenditure, in adult cats fed regimens for 21 days. PLOS ONE 15(9): e0238522

[22](2015). Canine and Feline Nutrition (Linda P. Case et al.).