How Long Does Wet Cat Food Last

Feeding your adorable felines is always one of our most important concerns. And it is not easy since different cats require different types of foods and nutrients. Not to mention, most of the time your cat will not finish its meal with one sitting. Now, if you’re using dried foods, things would be a little bit easier since they won’t go bad very quickly. But for wet cat foods (or canned ones), it only took a couple of hours for the bacteria to affect their quality.

So, it is important to know how long your wet cat food will be able to last depending on different environments.

Involving factors

There are many reasons for your wet cat foods to go bad, such as its current states (opened or closed), the surrounding environments (temperature, humidity,…), and the ingredients.

Normally, to find out about your wet cat food expiry date you just have to check the given information by the manufacturer. It might not be exactly accurate, but you can still trust the information.

But for opened ones, they could begin to decrease in quality relatively quick. The food will start to go bad if being out in the open air from 20 to 30 minutes under normal room condition. So it is important to keep them in your refrigerator for better longevity.

The reason for that is because most bacterial tend to be more aggressive under higher temperatures. It triggers them to speed up the decomposition process, thus shorten the expiry time of your wet cat food. And aside from temperature, humidity is also a critical element that affects your cat food. It is proven that organic matters that stay under humid condition will decompose faster than those that don’t.

One more factor that you should care about is air. Everything would be fine when your foods are still safely stored in their cans. But when you open it (which allows the air to have direct contact), your cat food can go bad pretty quick. It is because the key element to the organic decomposition reaction is oxygen, which is plenty in the air. That also explains why most foods are often kept in airtight conditions.

Preservation

Now that you’ve known the causes, you can come up with your own preservative methods or try some of ours. They are all based on scientific facts and have been widely proven.

Low temperature

The simplest ways to apply this is to place your unfinished cat food can into the fridge. The low temperature will cause the bacteria to slow down their decomposition process. This is also the method that the Eskimo use for their caught fishes.

Use airtight containers

They are designed to keep the air from entering which slow down the decomposition process. You can use a plastic zip bag to keep the wet cat food from being consumed by bacteria.

Clean the fridge

Do you know that your refrigerator can become extremely gross under the magnifying glass? It is because the environment is surrounded by bacteria. Refrigerated foods do go bad, just at a much slower speed compared to those that were kept under normal condition. So cleaning your fridge once in a while will reduce the chance that this could happen.

But if you are a busy person, you can try using the automatic feeders to keep all the food safely preserved. These products provide an excellent environment to maintain food’s freshness for days even when you don’t come home very often. They even come with the ice pack to keep wet cat food refrigerated.