On Sunday, November 1, the clocks in most of the US go back an hour. Your cats will not notice. Your feeding schedule will, because it is tied to the clock and the colony is tied to the light.

The standard advice for community cat caretakers is to feed at the same time and place once or twice a day. That advice is sound. The part people miss is the second half of it: Humane World for Animals also says to feed during daylight hours, to avoid drawing in nocturnal wildlife like raccoons, opossums and skunks. When the clocks change, those two rules can start to disagree.

Check your evening feeding first

If you feed in the morning, the change usually helps you. Sunrise comes an hour earlier by the clock, so your usual time is more likely to be in daylight than it was last week.

The evening feeding is the one at risk. If you put food out at 5:30 and leave it for the standard 30 minutes, that is fine in daylight. After the change, the same 5:30 can land at dusk or after dark where you live. Look up your local sunset for November 1 and for the first week after. If your feeding and your 30-minute pickup do not both finish before it, you have two choices: move the feeding earlier, or move it to the morning.

Shift gradually if you can

Moving the whole routine an hour overnight is a big change for cats that run on routine. We could not find colony-specific research on the best way to shift. The only guidance we found on easing a clock change was written for house cats, and it suggested moving mealtimes in small steps over several days. Treat that as a reasonable idea, not an established method. If your evening feeding needs to move, doing it in a few stages costs nothing.

Keep the 30-minute pickup

Humane World recommends removing uneaten food and dishes after about 30 minutes, to avoid insects, wildlife and disease. Shorter days make this easier to forget, because it is dark when you would normally come back for the dishes. Set a phone alarm for the pickup, not just the feeding.

Expect to put out more food

The same Humane World guidance notes that cats eat about 15 percent more in cold weather. Their general figure is roughly half to three-quarters of a cup of kibble per cat per day, depending on the cat and the food. As the nights get colder, check whether the bowls are coming back empty, and adjust.

Write down the new schedule

A clock change is exactly when a shared routine slips. One person remembers the old time, another the new one, and a feeding gets doubled or missed. Pick the new times, tell everyone who covers the colony, and put them somewhere everyone can see. If a colony depends on a friend or neighbor to feed when you are away, Humane World’s advice is to have them feed at the cats’ usual time, so give them the new one explicitly.

If your caretakers share a colony, Purralytics lets them log each feeding and leave notes on one shared record, so a missed or doubled feeding shows up the same day.

Source: Humane World for Animals, Feeding guidelines for community cats. Check your local rules too, since some places restrict when community cats may be fed.