Monthly Cost of Owning a Cat (With Calculator)

The monthly average cost of a cat will depend on your choices of cat food, litter, and any medications. And months where the cat needs a vet visit, will increase the cost for that month.

Other expenses can include toys, treats, cat beds, dental work, anti-flea medication, pet insurance, other cat stuff, or setting aside money each month for cat expenses.

The information below is for maintaining your cat. When you have a new cat or kitten, there are one-time costs (supplies like litter boxes and spay or neuter if not “fixed” when adopted).

The problem with ranges

The problem with ranges, as pointed out by All About Cats, is that it’s a wide range depending on many factors.

Ranges can be misleading as the price range for wet food, dry food, and litter varies by brand. It can also vary by location. The price of cat food at my local grocery store in Michigan is likely going to be different than the price at your store in California or South Dakota (or wherever you live!).

Are you going to buy the $5 litter box or the $30 litter box?

My recommendation is to use the calculator below, filling in the costs from your receipts, or looking online at your preferred online cat supply store.

We get some items using Amazon’s Subscribe and Save and Chewy’s Autoship (which lowers the cost slightly). Amazon and Chewy links are my affiliate links. If you click them and make a purchase, I may receive a commission.

Also, in general, the more wet food you feed your cats, the higher your cats will be. Without knowing your feeding plan, it’s not possible to provide an accurate estimate.

Some months will be higher than others. For example, I use flea medication on my two outdoor cats that allow me to pet them, only in warmer months. In the winter, when it’s too cold for fleas, they are not treated, which lowers the cost of the cats for the winter.

Also, some months you may have a vet visit (and vet costs, even within my area, vary).

You can read my post here, about how to have enough money to cover cat vet costs.

Cat Monthly Cost Calculator

When I designed this calculator, I only had a vague idea of how much my 11 cats cost each month. With items coming from Amazon, Chewy, prescription food from the vet, and local grocery and purchased throughout the month, getting to the total wasn’t straightforward.

At the time of making this calculator, I was using three different brands of wet food every day, which is why there are entries for up to 3 brands.

• The calculator is set for 31 days, but you can change it to 30 if you would like. Also, if you would prefer to calculate a weekly cost, change the number of days to 7.
• Enter the cost of one cat of wet food. This seemed most straightforward as I haven’t seen any wet food that comes in a pack of 31.
  • If you purchase cans in a multi-pack, to get the cost of one can divide the price by the number of cans (ex. $16.00 / 20 = $0.80) – your phone or computer should have a calculator on it.
• If a quantity is asked for, be sure to fill it in, even if it is 1, for your total amount to be correct.
• Dry food is harder to factor in. And there are different ways to think about it.
  • Suppose you are buying a bag every two months. Then you could put in the price for either half a bag to know the price for that month.
  • Or enter the total price, and know the total amount for the cat spent that month.
• Sections can be collapsed to hide or unhide them.
• The total amount will be updated as you fill in the information.

You can watch a video demo of the calculator here and you can see how I spend over $500 a month on my cats here.