Sphynx Cat Diet and Feeding

Sphynx cats have higher energy demands than normally coated cats. Without a full insulating coat they lose heat more easily and use more energy for thermoregulation, which is one of the reasons the breed is known for a strong appetite and often eating more frequently than other cats.

You will sometimes see this described as the Sphynx having a metabolism around 20% faster than a coated cat. Higher metabolism and energy requirements are well recognised in veterinary descriptions of the breed, but there is no good reason to treat 20% as a fixed number for every Sphynx. A small neutered female living in a very warm home and a large, active male are obviously not going to need exactly the same amount of food.

Body condition matters more than a formula. A healthy Sphynx should be well muscled and maintain an appropriate weight without becoming either thin or overweight.

This site recommends a properly balanced raw diet or high-quality complete wet food as the main diet for Sphynx cats.

Cats are obligate carnivores and their metabolism is adapted to obtaining much of their nutrition from animal tissue. Experimental feeding studies show that cats regulate their macronutrient intake, although the exact proportions selected vary depending on the foods and study design. Their physiology nevertheless remains strongly adapted to obtaining protein and other essential nutrients from animal tissue.

Moisture is another reason for preferring wet or raw food. Cats naturally obtain a large proportion of their water through what they eat. Studies comparing diets with different moisture contents consistently find that cats eating high-moisture food have a higher total water intake than cats eating dry food, even though cats eating dry food drink more from the water bowl. Higher dietary moisture also increases urine volume and produces more dilute urine.

Dry food therefore provides very little of the cat’s water through the food itself, leaving much more of that intake dependent on drinking.

If raw is fed, balanced is the important word. Raw meat on its own is not a complete diet. A properly formulated raw diet needs to provide the correct balance of muscle and organ meat, an appropriate source of calcium, essential amino acids including taurine, fatty acids, vitamins and minerals. Simply feeding different pieces of raw meat does not automatically provide everything a cat needs.

Raw feeding also carries microbiological risks. Raw meat and commercial raw pet foods can contain pathogenic bacteria and other infectious agents. Good sourcing, storage and kitchen hygiene are therefore essential, and raw food should be handled carefully to reduce risks to both cats and people in the household.

How often should a Sphynx eat?

Kittens need to eat frequently. They are growing quickly, have relatively small stomachs and have much higher energy requirements for their size than adults. Four or five meals spread through the day works well for young kittens.

Adults can normally eat less frequently. Three meals a day is a reasonable starting point, although some Sphynx do better with smaller meals given more often.

There is no need to turn this into a rigid feeding schedule. What matters is how much the cat eats across the whole day and what happens to its weight and body condition over time.

Free-feeding dry food is not recommended here. Leaving food permanently available makes it very easy to lose track of how much a cat is actually eating, particularly where several cats share a home, and it makes changes in appetite much harder to notice.

What should be in the food?

Not all cat food is equal and the front of the packet tells surprisingly little about what is actually inside it.

The first thing to check is whether the food is complete. A food labelled complementary is not designed to provide the cat’s entire nutritional requirement by itself, regardless of how good the ingredients may look.

Then look at the actual composition.

Cats have an unusually high requirement for dietary protein compared with many other mammals and retain a number of metabolic adaptations associated with obligate carnivory. They can digest properly processed carbohydrate, so carbohydrate itself should not be described as inherently toxic, but physiologically cats remain adapted to a diet based predominantly around animal tissue.

Clearly identified animal ingredients are preferable to vague descriptions because they make it much easier to understand what the food actually contains.

The ingredient list still needs some common sense. Ingredients are listed by weight and that weight can include water, so simply seeing meat first on the list does not tell you everything about the nutritional composition of the finished food.

The same applies to labels such as grain-free. Removing grain does not automatically make a food high in meat or low in carbohydrate. Grain can simply be replaced with potato, peas or another source of starch.

Ultimately, the useful questions are quite simple: Is it complete? What is actually in it? Does it provide appropriate animal protein and fat? How much moisture does it contain? And does the cat maintain a healthy weight and body condition on it?

That tells you considerably more than the marketing on the front of the packet.

Sources

For the macronutrient section, the experimental work is particularly useful: cats preferentially selected a profile providing about 53% of metabolizable energy from protein, 36% from fat and 11% from carbohydrate in one controlled study. That doesn’t mean every cat food needs to reproduce those exact percentages, but it supports the underlying point about feline macronutrient selection.

For hydration, Buckley et al. experimentally changed only the water content of otherwise nutritionally standardised diets and demonstrated the effect of increasing dietary moisture on urine output and dilution. A newer study using both colony and privately owned cats also found higher total water intake on 100% wet than 100% dry food, despite dry-fed cats drinking more separately.