How long is it safe for canned catfood to sit?

I usually feed my cat dry food, but he just had dental treatment (scaling and one extraction) and I was told to either soften the dry food in water, or feed him canned food for the next 4 days. How long is it safe for me to leave out the canned food out for him?

I feed my cats twice a day. If they don’t eat it, it sits there until the next feeding. Usually they return to it until it’s all eaten. If the food goes bad, your cat will tell you by not eating it.

My experience has been if you won’t eat it, neither will the cat.

You’re actually wrong about that, Hawkins, because he normally eats kibble, which I wouldn’t even try.

In addition he barely touched the first can (which was chicken in gravy, and looked like real meat) but he’s eaten about a third of the second can, which is turkey and looks like…canned cat food.

My cats are retarded (actually, just picky). If I feed them canned food, they inevitably lick lick lick the juice from the bowl, leaving the little meat bits for me to toss into the trash.

Joe