Important Cat Food Storage Tips You Need to Know

This post about cat food storage tips is sponsored by Wellness® and the BlogPaws® Pet Influencer Network™. I am being compensated to help share the availability of Wellness Complete Health and NEW Complete Health Grain Free Cat Food available at PetSmart, but we only share information we feel is relevant to our readers. Neither Wellness or PetSmart is not responsible for the content of this article.

When it comes to what I feed my cats, I sometimes think they eat better than I do. I really feel that it’s important to invest in quality cat food for better nutrition and overall health. After all they eat the same thing every day, so it’s important.

I’ve been feeding Wellness Cat food to my cats for over a decade. Wellness® Complete Health™ is our first choice in cat food, and it's been recently reformulated to be grain free! Wellness® Complete Health Grain Free recipes are formulated with carefully chosen ingredients and formulated with vitamins and minerals for optimal health.

Nixie and Milo enjoy both canned and dry food. In fact, Nixie is so adamant about getting her canned food she will knock whatever she can find off the counter (including cans of Wellness) when she’s ready to fed. Please, no one tell her that Wellness has declared it’s the Year of the Cat or we’ll be in real trouble!

Choosing a good cat food is just the first step. It’s also important to safely store cat food. Do you know all of these cat food storage tips?

To make it easier to feed Nixie and Milo everyday, I keep a small amount of their dry cat food in a small countertop container that I embellished, just for cat food storage.

It’s easy to make your own cat food storage:

Find a container that you can easily wash. I chose a glass container that was already in use in my pantry and repurposed it.
If you want, embellish the container with stickers.
Fill with cat food and a small measuring scoop
Clean out regularly.

Cat Food Storage Tips You Need To Know

There are several things you need to consider while storing cat food to keep the food fresh and your cat safe.

Don’t be tempted to throw away the original packaging.
You may be tempted to dump the cat food into a bin and toss the bag, but it’s important to keep the bag. Pet food bags are designed to maintain freshness as long as possible. It also contains important information like cat food’s barcode, expiration date, and batch code – which are important to have in case of a pet food recal.

Don’t leave the bag open.
Sealing the bag or your cat food storage container helps prevent exposure to air and humidity. Bot of these things increase the risk of bacterial contamination like salmonella.

Keep cat food out of the sun.
Don’t store your cat food bag or container in direct sunlight. Increasing temperatures can speed up food degradation.

Never feed your pet expired food.
Specialty food is costly, but best buy and use by dates are established to keep your cat safe. Don’t risk illness or large vet bills by feeding your cat expired food.

Never mix old and new cat food.
As tempting is to dump the remainder of an almost empty bag in a new one, STOP! You might be contaminating the new bag. It’s better to finish off the old bag completely and then open the fresh bag.

Don't forget these important pet food serving tips

Dry food
Technically, dry food can just be left out in your cat’s bowl as long as it is a cool, dry area and out of direct sunlight. BUT, you should really wash the bowl and give them fresh food each day.

Canned food
If your cat hasn’t eaten their canned food within 4 hours and the temperature is above 50 degrees, it should be thrown out. Open cans should be covered and refrigetated, but no longer than 5-7 days

Water
Make sure your cats always have access to water, and keep their bowls clean. My cats love running water, so I use a pet drinking fountain.