The honest answer: monthly, for most cats
Monthly is frequent enough to catch a real trend within a reasonable window, and infrequent enough that it's actually sustainable long-term. Weekly is overkill for a healthy cat and can introduce noise from normal day-to-day fluctuation. Annually, on the other hand, is really only frequent enough to catch a change after it's already been happening for months.
When to weigh more often
- An existing condition where weight is part of monitoring it
- A recent medication change that can affect appetite
- Any noticeable change in eating habits, in either direction
- A senior cat, where weight becomes a more important number generally
You don't need a vet-grade scale
A consistent home scale, even a standard bathroom one for larger cats, weighing yourself holding the cat and then subtracting your own weight, is accurate enough to catch a real trend. Precision to the gram matters far less than consistency in when and how you measure.
Why the chart matters more than any single number
One weigh-in tells you almost nothing on its own. A line across several months tells you almost everything, whether it's climbing, dropping, or genuinely stable. Halo's weight tracker plots that line automatically against a target range, so the trend is visible at a glance instead of requiring a mental comparison to a number from four months ago.