Hello Fellow Bengal Owners! I was hoping to get some feedback on how much your Bengals eat. Here is my situation....I have one 10 year old boy that I adopted three years ago. He was a stud and show cat and retired at the age of 7 and was put up for adoption. He is my love! I am so happy and blessed that I got him! Like most Bengals, he fetches, loves water, and is the best travel companion ever! He sits on the arm rest in the front seat and checks everything out! So cute!
Anyway...the problem!!! He is CONSTANTLY HUNGRY!!! EVEN 10 MINUTES after I feed him, he's begging again for more WET food!! He is free fed dry food which he does nibble on throughout the day, but it's the wet food that he is CRAZY about. He chases me to the kitchen and tries to cut me off if I'm walking past it to guide me in! He drives me nuts!! I feel like I'm starving him, but I know I'm not. When I adopted him, the breeder told me to give him 1/3 of a small can of wet cat food every OTHER day which I did for the first year along with all-you-can eat dry food. She told me to keep him on Natural Balance because he does really good on it and he LOVES it, so I did. After a year and his constant begging, I started giving him 1/3 can EVERY day, along with dry food and occasional boiled chicken, raw London Broil, or tuna for treats. NOW, after STILL not being satisfied, he is getting 1/2 of a 6 ounce can of wet food per day, in the evening. I am STILL being harrassed for MORE all day long!! Is this normal? I don't want to feel like I'm starving my cat, but I don't want him to become overweight either. This drives me nuts! He is 12 pounds, and he only has two teeth due to dental disease, but it hasn't caused any problems with him eating his dry food as he swallows the kibble whole anyhow. Could someone PLEASE tell me how much wet food you give your cats and if you think I should be giving mine more? Do you think it would be better to give him 1/4 can in the morning and 1/4 can at night? The guidelines on the can say "One can a day per 8lb. cat". By this standard I AM starving my cat, but per the breeder I am overfeeding him now as she had originally advised me to feed him only 1/3 can every other day! Aaaagh! So frustrated! PLEASE HELP!!! THANK YOU!!

Hi & welcome
Your boy sounds beautiful. Wow 10 years old may be a record age on here, have you got any pictures
I have 4 moggies and 1 Bengal (called Sol). I would say he has a much bigger appetite than my mogs. He is really greedy.
Have you weighed your boy to get an idea of how heavy he is? Although in my experience (which isnt a lot with bengals) they vary in weight a lot.
Anyway onto feeding..... I give mine wet food twice a day, on top of that they get fresh prawns & chicken as treats.They have dry food down constantly. My cats (except Sol) have always been snackers really and eat little and often.
The wet food you are giving sounds to me like quite a small amount. Have you tried increasing it?
Some cats are greedier than others so maybe no matter how much he has he will always be wanting more.
I'm no expert though but i'm sure you will get some opinions from so more experienced Bengal owners.

all my cats have two pouches per day (100g each) plus access to dry food all the time

Thanks for the replies and the welcome! Is 10 old for a Bengal? How long do they normally live? Oh God, it better be like 20 or I will be very sad!! I can't imagine life without my baby boy!!

To answer your question....he is appx. 12 pounds, at least he was when I took him last to the vet a few months ago. But I increased his food since then.

I would LOVE to post pictures, but I don't know how! Can you tell me how please?

Thank you!!!

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Sounds like he's a smart cat and knows that wet food is better for him than dry.

How much of the dry does he eat over the day, do you know? You can figure this out by weighing the dry food bowl before and after you fill it and keeping a log for a couple of days of how much disappears per day on average. Then you can figure out what proportion of the recommended feeding amount for his weight that is.

If you're feeding him 1/4 can in the morning and 1/4 can in the evening, that amounts to a third of the recommended daily amount for him (which would be one and a half cans if only fed canned). He should be perfectly fine as long as he doesn't eat more than two thirds of the recommended amount of the dry in addition to that (e.g. if the recommended amount is a cup, he should not be eating more than 2/3 of a cup). If you're concerned about him gaining weight because he eats too much, you can put just the appropriate amount of dry food into his bowl each day. Of course that might result in even more begging for food! If he doesn't even eat the recommended amount of the dry food, he might simply not like it and prefer to go hungry and bug you for wet food instead. No harm in giving him more of the wet in that case - it's mostly water anyway, so unless he eats a lot of dry food with it it's unlikely he'll gain too much.

If he's eating in total a lot more than he used to or should be eating, I would also talk to the vet about it. It could be an overactive thyroid or something else going on. I've had fosters who were exceptionally ravenous and it turned out they had tapeworms. Better to get any medical issues ruled out before assuming it's a behavioral thing, especially if he's already older. Sometimes older cats don't digest food as well as younger cats and have a harder time extracting the nutrients from it, so if that's the case he might really still feel hungry even though he's eaten the recommended amount.

I have the same situation with Sheena. She is about 10 lbs., at 8 months. She is getting so fat and all she wants to do is eat. I give her 3 oz of wet food in the morning and 3 oz at night. If I leave dry food out she will devour it all so I don't do that. I give her 1/4 dry. Treats during the day. But never seems like enough and she's appears to be getting fat - stomach hanging. My other cat (Bombay) gets the same and is fine with it. I don't want to over feed them. I give them the recommended portions. Really? You guys leave unlimited dry food out all day?

At 8 months old, do not restrict her food. She will go through spurts of growth and spurts of packing on weight.

Six ounces of food is not enough for most kittens. My boy ate at least 8 oz, sometimes 12, daily until he was well over a year old. He eats less now, as a 3 year old.

Are you sure she is fat?

Most Bengal cats have a primordial pouch. Some more exaggerated than others.

The primordial pouch is a flap of skin that allows wild cats to jump and run freely. Another theory is it allows the cat to gorge on food when there is a good supply, as they need to do this in the wild, when they have a kill.

Bengal cats are much closer generationally to a wild cat than your average domestic cat. Even 9 or 10 generations removed is far closer to the wild cat than other domestics.

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~ Kyenta

Grace is over 13 pounds, close to 14 at a year and a half. Her and her sister split a 3 oz can in the morning and at dinner time. They also split 1/3 cup dry food three times a day. They both look over weight to me but I have always had pencil thin siamese with "tight as a drum" abdomens. Grace's pouch is huge and sways when she runs. I don't see how I can feed them less. They don't get table scraps and are active young cats. They do however mostly sleep between 11 am and 6 pm, even when the patio is open for them.

Another really old topic has come back to life. I've read that a cat on wet food needs 1 oz for each pound of weight. Raiden doesn't eat quite that much a day. Recommendations are on the bag of dry food, but every cat is different. For example, an outdoor cat would need more calories than an indoor cat. So, everything is just a general rule. The key is whether the cat is at an ideal weight and body size.

I get itchy when people talk about their cats maybe getting fat, because Thomas was half starved when I got him, his prior owner thought he was 'fat'. Maybe he was overweight at some point in his life, but I could feel his ribs. He had fatty liver and intestinal issues, and he had been supplementing his calories with wild rodents.

Also, he had never had wet food before, and inhaled the whole can and barfed it back up the first time. I have to ration it now, and he will beg and beg for it. Luckily he really likes the grain free dry food, and his weight is pretty normal now.

Because so much of it depends on how active they are it's really more about how they look and feel than how much in ounces they're eating.

If you google cat weight chart you'll find some image charts showing what is healthy vs overweight. As has already been said please keep in mind that Bengals tend to have a pronounced primordial pouch (belly that hangs) so you need to look more at their ribcage and how they look from above rather than how they look from the side.

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Dallas, TX USA
Diesel - snow Bengal born 09/01/2013 adopted Feb 2014
Tuck, Chloe, Buddy, Lewis & Tia - rescue kitties
Clyde, Bleu & Coal - Great Danes

I'm glad to hear about the pouch, because I thought maybe Thomas' stomach got stretched out from weight changes. He has the poochy look for sure.

Raiden has a huge primordial pouch!!! I thought he was a female when he first showed up at my house.