Help me get my fat cat slim (again).
May 23, 2012 9:16 PM   Subscribe

I got my cat back! Yay! But he's fat again... boo! I'm concerned that putting him on a diet again will do him damage.

A few months ago, I moved to Albuquerque, NM and because of finances and housing, I had to leave my cat, Mr. Mister with a friend of mine. Well, life had gotten better for me and I went and got Mister yesterday. We're on our way to Albuquerque now. But, holy cow! He's huge again! I plan on taking him to the vet as soon as possible to see if there's anything wrong with him. I think it's more that my friend didn't exercise him and fed him a lot. I asked this thread a long time ago and got some great advice which got Mr. down to, if not a svelte kitty, at least a smaller kitty.

My question is... I know he needs to lose weight again. It looks as though the weight is bending his legs! That could be an optical illusion but he is just too big. However, I don't want to put him on a crash diet again. He's gained a lot of weight in a little time (he's only been at my friend's for four months) and I don't want to do him harm. Should I go at this at a slower pace this time? He's going to have a much bigger place to live this time than the last time I asked the question, more room to play and better food than I could afford last time. I still have the feeding ball and he'll have wet food. I'm seriously worried about him. I'm grateful to my friend for keeping him for me, but wow.
posted by patheral to Pets & Animals (13 answers total)
 
Definitely no crash dieting! Cats are even less tolerant of that than humans due to the risk of hepatic lipidosis. I have had good results using these calculators to find the amount of food to feed my kitty to help take her weight down to a manageable level on a slow basis. It helps you calculate the caloric content of your cat food, then figure out how much you should be feeding each day based on your kitty's needs.

Pet weight loss is like human weight loss: diet will determine weight loss, take it slow and steady. But incorporate exercise to help your kitty's overall mobility and fitness. Maybe try to incorporate at least 15-20 minutes of playtime a day. Your cat may initially not do much more than stare at whatever you're swirling over his head, but it will stimulate him and as you keep it up so will his energy levels and play abilities.
posted by Anonymous at 9:37 PM on May 23, 2012


You might want to confirm with your vet, but you kitty should be okay as long as you keep his weight loss under 2% of his body weight per week.
posted by moira at 9:37 PM on May 23, 2012


(Your kitty looks just like our previous kitty, who had gained so much weight that his front legs were spread wide apart like a bulldog's. Before we adopted him, he'd spent over two years on teensy amounts of Hill's diet food, and he was still maintaining 17 lbs. We switched him to grain-free wet food and watched his weight carefully to make sure he wasn't dropping too fast. It worked beautifully for him.)
posted by moira at 9:45 PM on May 23, 2012


Grain free wet food. As much as he wants, really. He'll be fine.

The caloric difference between wet and dry food, especially high quality wet food, can't be overstated.

That's all you need to do, IMO.
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 9:59 PM on May 23, 2012 [7 favorites]


The caloric difference between wet and dry food, especially high quality wet food, can't be overstated.

Yes, yes, yes, this! Grain-free. Not corn-free or wheat-free but grain-free.
posted by DeltaForce at 10:11 PM on May 23, 2012 [3 favorites]


This indeed. Low-carb works even better for obligate carnivores than it does for us, and it works pretty well for us.
posted by flabdablet at 1:53 AM on May 24, 2012


Nthing grain free wet food - put him on a "Catkins" or "Kitty Paleo" diet which is natural for cats anyway (wild cats don't eat grains!). It takes fewer of those high-quality meaty calories to fill a cat up. Bonus is that Mr. Mister's litterbox won't be as stinky either.

Also, spend some time playing with him with a wand toy and that will get him some good exercise.
posted by Rosie M. Banks at 5:33 AM on May 24, 2012


Excellent plan to take Mister to the vet, if you can possibly afford it might be a good idea to ask for blood work to check blood sugar levels and if everything else is okay. Also watch if there are any changes in frequency of urination and how much he drinks (diabetes is a real thing in cats).

The picture shows a bowl with food, is he is free fed? There are cats that eat from emotional stress. Is Mister a stress eater? You might find him eating less once he is happily reunited with you and accustomed to his new home. Also make sure that IF he is likely to go eat whenever something stressful happens to engage him in a different activity in those situations. Let him eat when he is hungry, but not because he is bored or there was something that stressed him.

Nthing that dry food is high calorie; one cup of dry food has 7 times the calories of one cup wet food. Did your friend feed him only dry? A different type of food than you did before? Possibly high grain?
Try to find food that has no/low grain content and have him loose weight gradually. As others have said here already.

New bigger apartment? Yay! Is there space for some kitty shelves or other things he could use for climbing? Any exercise is good.

Good luck to Mister!
posted by travelwithcats at 5:55 AM on May 24, 2012


If you can afford the grain free wet food, it is definitely the way to go. If you can't, well, any wet food is still better than dry food, regardless of brand.

http://www.catinfo.org/

This page, written by a vet, has certainly changed the way I feed my cats. It's a horribly formatted site, but just stuffed with useful information, plus stories (and pictures) of tremendously obese cats that were handed over to her, and that she got down to a healthy weight. Somewhere in there is a list of cat foods she recommends (it's a little out of date, there's a lot more good stuff out there now that has come on the market since this was originally written) if you can't make your own (which really, no one can).

Of course, now I basically suspicious of all my actual (real life) vets, and their relentless pimping of Science Diet dry, which is just crap, and which my cats would rather starve to death than eat. From what I've read it seems like most nutrition classes taught to vets of a certain age were taught by representatives from Science Diet.
posted by instead of three wishes at 6:22 AM on May 24, 2012


Yeah, all us cat freaks will say the same thing. The better this HANDSOME CREATURE of yours eats, the better his weight will regulate. Now let me sound like a loon: my cats never eat corn or grain, and they are magnificent wild animals. They get fed twice a day, like dogs, and they go to town on it like cougars. We also make sure they get some exercise every day.

So good news! Don't starve your cat. Just find a way (without breaking your bank!) of feeding him great. (Ordering food online helps: for instance, Weruva is insanely expensive at the pet food store, but is like half-off online.)

And he's not actually like mega-obese; just tubby. I've seen muuuuuch fatter. He's just been eating kitty Big Macs every day!
posted by RJ Reynolds at 6:38 AM on May 24, 2012


Response by poster: Thanks for the answers, guys. I usually don't put food in a bowl for Mister at all, so he's not generally free fed when I have him. I have the SlimCat food distributer ball (pictured here) which I fill with dry food (as grain-free as possible) in the morning. It holds about half a cup and takes him a good while to empty. The food pictured in the bowl is because we're travelling, and I don't have that with me (it would be a pain to try and find in the hotel room, right?). I plan to give him wet food as well as the dry in the feeder ball when we get home, about half a can a day should do it.

I'm mostly concerned with him losing, gaining, and losing weight in such a short period of time. I mean I put him on a diet last year, and it looks like he'll be on another this year. I don't want this yo-yo dieting to do damage to his system.
posted by patheral at 6:54 AM on May 24, 2012


I think you're going to do best with a slow, steady diet. Like you said, it seems like rapidly gaining and losing weight probably puts more stress on his system, so I'd do what you did before to get his weight down, and maybe just take it a little slower. But I suspect he'll be fine, since he responded well to the diet the first time.

I'd like to recommend Chicken Soup for the Cat Lover's Soul brand dry food! Yes, it sounds super commercial, but surprisingly, it is a very high quality food. Check out this site. They rate pet food with detailed analysis of ingredients. This food is the absolute best value. It's the only non-grain-free food to have earned the five-star rating. It is about half the price of the completely grain-free foods, and the small amount of grains it has are in the form of barley and rice, not corn or wheat products. Of course, if you can afford it, foods like Orijen, Evo, and Wellness Core are even better.

I read your previous thread, so you probably have a good handle on why wet food is best, but if, like me, you have to feed some dry food for financial reasons, I can't rave enough about this food. My cats switched to it with no complaints.

(Also, as I hope most of you know, anything with the name Hill's or Science Diet is an evil horrible, rip-off scam, which under-educated vets get kickbacks for shilling.)
posted by catatethebird at 8:31 AM on May 24, 2012


Response by poster: I took Mister to the vet yesterday when we got into town. He went from 18 to 22.5 pounds! O_o The vet says that he may not lose weight as well this time around because he's older now, but slow and steady is the way to do it. Catatethebird, he's been eating the Chicken Soup for the Cat Lover's Soul brand cat food at my friend's house. She gave some to us to bring on our trip. However, I suspect the cats were free feed. Maybe?

The vet did some blood work, and we'll be hearing from her if there's anything to worry about. Other than the few extra pounds, he seems to be in good shape.
posted by patheral at 8:52 AM on May 25, 2012


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