Feeding 5 cats on a budget: wet and dry mix tips

Five cats on a budget — that's a real balancing act, and you're right to think about mixing wet and dry rather than going all-in on either. Wet food is genuinely better for cats: it keeps them hydrated, more satisfied, and it's closer to what their bodies are built to eat. But at scale, pure wet feeding gets expensive fast. A mixed approach — wet food in the morning, dry in the evening — is a practical, nutritionally sound compromise that a lot of multi-cat households use successfully. Before I point you toward what I'd actually buy, can you tell me roughly how old your cats are, whether any of them have health issues like kidney problems or urinary trouble, and what you're currently feeding them?

That's a really sensible position — you're not trying to cut corners on quality, you're trying to manage volume. With five healthy adult cats, a mixed feeding routine works well. For the dry food portion, the thing that matters most is picking something with a decent meat content and no excessive filler. A lot of budget dry foods are mostly cereal, which cats don't digest well and which can leave them hungry and overeating. What dry food have you looked at so far, or have you not got that far yet?

The fact that they're not keen on supermarket dry food is usually a sign — cats aren't being fussy for no reason, those products often have very low meat content and rely on artificial flavour to compensate. On the label, you want to see a named meat as the first ingredient, protein content above 30%, and fat above 15%. Cereals and derivatives should be low or absent. Given your situation — five adult cats, no health conditions, budget is a real constraint — I'd recommend Felix As Good As It Looks dry food in the large bulk bag. It's not a premium brand, but it consistently outperforms its price point: real chicken as the main ingredient, cats genuinely eat it, and bought in the 10kg bag on Amazon it works out at a very low cost per day across five cats. Pair that with one small pouch of wet food per cat in the morning and you've got a balanced, affordable routine. Does that fit with what you were thinking, or were you hoping to keep the wet food as the main part of the diet?

Yes, it's a legitimate concern — cats have a naturally low thirst drive and don't compensate well for dry food by drinking more water. That's why keeping wet food in the mix matters: even one pouch per cat per day adds meaningful moisture to their diet and reduces the risk of urinary issues over time. If you're doing the morning wet, evening dry split, you're covering that. One extra thing worth doing with five cats: make sure you have multiple water bowls around the house, away from the food bowls. Cats drink more when water isn't right next to their food — it's an instinct thing. That small change can make a real difference with a dry-heavy diet.

That's a solid plan. The 10kg bag lasts well if you store it in an airtight container, and the cost per cat per day becomes genuinely low. Keep an eye on their weight over the first few weeks — with five cats it's easy to overfeed dry food because it's always available. If you're free-feeding the dry, consider putting a fixed amount out twice a day rather than leaving it topped up constantly. It helps with weight management and means you actually notice if one of them goes off their food, which is often the first sign something's off health-wise.