How to Keep Flies Away From Cat Food: 5 Tips & Tricks
Updated on
You want to keep your furry friend happy and fed, but sometimes when you leave their food out for too long, you end up with flies everywhere. What can you do if you have a fly problem around your cat’s food?
Here are five different options to help tackle the problem, along with a few essential cat food safety tips that might help.
The 5 Tips on How to Keep Flies Away From Cat Food
1. Cover the Food
| Effectiveness: | High |
| Cost: | Low |
If you’re having a problem with flies around your cat’s food, one of the most effective remedies is to cover the food. There are plenty of different ways that you can do this, and as long as you can get a seal around the cat food, it’ll keep flies away.
Moreover, covering the cat food typically helps preserve the food longer, especially if it’s in the fridge.
- Effective
- Helps keep food fresh
- Your cat can’t eat the food when it’s covered
2. Put Out Fly Traps
| Effectiveness: | Moderate |
| Cost: | Moderate |
If you can’t keep the flies from coming inside, the next best thing that you can do is kill them when they get there. There are many different types of fly traps that you can use, all with varying levels of effectiveness.
While you’ll have to keep replacing the fly traps to keep up with the overall effectiveness, they’re worth investing in if you can’t keep the flies away. The right fly traps will catch enough flies to keep them from repopulating, so it can lead to a permanent solution.
- Effective
- You can get the flies before they go into the cat food
- You don’t always catch all the flies
- You need to keep replacing fly traps
3. Keep It Away From Sunlight
| Effectiveness: | Low |
| Cost: | Low |
If you’re trying to keep flies away from cat food, you need to find a perfect location for the food. While you might like where it’s at now, if it’s sitting in the sun, chances are that the flies like it too.
Moving the cat food to a cooler place in the shade won’t keep all the flies away, but it’ll certainly help. It’s a quick and easy way to help keep the fly population down around your cat’s food. Keeping cat food out of the sun will also keep it fresh longer.
- Free
- Keeps food fresh longer
- Not the most effective
4. Feed Smaller Portions
| Effectiveness: | Moderate |
| Cost: | Low |
This doesn’t mean feeding your cat less food; it means breaking up your cat’s meals into smaller portions, so they eat each portion every time you feed them.
If the food isn’t sitting around, the flies have nothing to congregate to, and this can completely solve your problem. But this does require you to multiply your cat’s feeding schedule, and it also means your cat has to get on a feeding schedule if they aren’t already.
If your cat doesn’t come over and eat as soon as you put the food down, it doesn’t matter how much or how little you put down for them to eat.
- Free
- You have to feed your cat more times throughout the day
5. Keep Your Home Clean
| Effectiveness: | Low |
| Cost: | Low |
The fly problems in your home are not simply because your house isn’t clean enough. However, there’s no denying that homes with more clutter, food waste, and trash lying around bring in more flies.
Keep up with the dishes, take out the trash often, and clean up the clutter in your home. You should find that there are fewer flies around the house and your cat’s food.
- Completely free
- Not always the most effective
- Requires a bit more work
How Long Should You Leave Cat Food Out?
When it comes to figuring out how long you can leave out cat food before it spoils, it comes down to what type of cat food you’re using. If you have dry cat food, you can typically leave it out for about 48 hours before you should toss it.
However, wet cat food won’t last nearly as long, and we recommend throwing it out after 1 or 2 hours after it is placed in the feeding dish.
If you find fly eggs in the cat food or notice that it’s spoiled in a different way, you should throw it away immediately.
Dealing With Spoiled Cat Food
If you accidentally leave the cat food out for too long or if you find fly eggs inside it, you need to dispose of it right away. Be sure to bag it up completely, and throw it away outside.
This is especially true if you’re already dealing with flies. If there are fly eggs in the cat food, even if you can’t see them, they’ll hatch in the trash can, leading to even more flies in your home. If you take them outside, they can hatch out there and you won’t have to worry about them finding their way inside to the cat food.
While providing our feline companions with high-quality food is paramount, selecting the right food and water bowl is equally important. The modern yet practical design of our Hepper NomNom Cat Bowl combines cat-catered features, like whisker-friendly shallow dishes and slight elevation, with a contemporary style aimed at protecting your floors from messy eating and drinking. The NomNom is entirely dishwasher safe and was thoughtfully created with your cat’s health and well-being in mind.
Conclusion
If you have flies buzzing around your cat’s food, you don’t have to live with the annoyance and potential health hazard for your pet.
You can take action and get those pests under control. While it might be more work up front, it’ll leave you and your cats feeling happier when you don’t have flies buzzing around and interrupting your day.
Featured Image Credit: Johnny Harvester, Pixabay
