Help my cat get fat

My older cat stopped eating due to stress (she was only 5 at the time) and got down to a hair under 5.5lbs. I can’t even imagine 4lbs!

Canned pumpkin is only good for kitties with digestive problems and hairballs, unfortunately, they can’t use much of the calories.

But kitten chow can work, and we also used the high-calorie prescription food, I can’t remember the brand but I think it was Eukanuba.

I am in the identical situation. I had to put my younger cat down (10 years old) when she became suddenly ill. It turned out she had kidney failure and cat’s don’t show signs of distress. The only thing I can look back and say is that she may have urinated more but I couldn’t tell because of multiple cats. The litter box seems to have much less urine in it now.

Anyway, my 18 year old cat starting disappearing and the vet said she had thyroid problems. She was at 5 lbs last I checked. I asked the vet 2 things: what to feed her, and will she ever gain the weight back. He said to feed her anything she’ll eat, and no, she will never gain the muscle mass back.

She is as active as ever but she is also channeling Leona Helmsley at dinner time. She won’t even look at dry food and is now getting fussy on which canned food. I recently had her abscessed teeth removed so I know she can eat dry food (I caught her crunching down when she didn’t know I was watching). I’m doing the transdermal thing which seems to eliminate any barfing. My biggest problem is that she snarfs down her food and then mashes some of it flat. She then refuses to eat what she mashed. I have to play games like feed her 5 small portions a day to keep from wasting food. Being unemployed it’s very frustrating to throw money at her and not get results. If she doesn’t like something she literally won’t look at it. I get a “children-of the-corn” stare from her. The only thing I know she has trouble with is salmon. I think it’s too oily for her.

I’m in the middle of this too with my 18 year old cat. Also had it with my 20 year old a year and a half ago. He just got sick and gave up.

Zephyr is also 11 on the hyperthyroid test. We got her down to a 5, but the meds were getting her sick. She’s impossible to pill (fights, screams and foams at the mouth). I dosed her food with a liquid compound (tried both fish and chicken) and she refused it most of the time.

I completely stopped the meds when she got down to 6ish pounds (from 10.5) and brought her slowly back up on food.

Stuff I used:

Petalyte (electrolyes with some chicken flavor)
Petromalt
Clam Juice
Parmesan Cheese (grated from the can)
Butler Tartar Control Treats

The key thing was the Royal Canin Recovery formula canned food. Have to get this from the vet, I think Science Diet has one too. Got her eating again and slowly moved her back to the Wellness chicken (no grain) canned.

One thing that helped a lot was mixing and microwaving the food. Tested with the back of a finger for temperature. It probably took 3 weeks to getting her back to eating in substantial quantity.

A word about Hyperthyroidism, since I did a ton of research trying to figure this out.

Zephyr went blind as a result of the uncontrolled HT. She was losing her vision, but the vet had said “old kitty”. Part of what I think drove her weight loss was the sudden onset of complete blindness. She’s adapting now and relying much more on scent and whiskers to navigate.

HT is very deceptive. Basically it overdrives the metabolism, increasing heart rate and BP to the point were complications from those arise. BUT, if you get the HT under control on a relatively old cat, it may reveal kidney issues. Since the HT overdrives the kidneys with increased blood flow, getting the HT under control may drop kidney function and then the cat gets sick from that.

Everything I’ve read about the radiation treatment says it’s the way to go. The return on investment is a year and a half in just raw cost terms, and medicating a cat for life just sucks if you can avoid it. I’d have done it ina heartbeat if it was generally available when my cats were first diagnosed with HT, but at that time the treatment was tapazole pills and neither cat tolerated that.

The dermal compounding sounds like the next best shot, and I may try that next. My vet isn’t confident that Zephyr would be accepted as a radiation treatment candidate because they generally want to demonstrate you can control with meds before approving for the radiation procedure.

I’m so glad your senior citizen is doing better, MissTake.

I have a question rather than a recommendation.

Whenever I open a can of evaporated milk (not sweetened condensed) my cat is all over it. He’s there in an instant, up on the counter and bodily shoving my arm away so that he can stuff his face into however much of the can is open. This usually leads to a protracted keep-away session, but nothing makes Gimmo determined like some evaporated milk. He doesn’t react to ANYTHING else that way, not even tuna (which he also comes running for, but stays on the floor and meows at me).

So…

a) Is evaporated milk a terrible idea for cats? I will give him a teensy little drink of it, but probably about a teaspoon or less.

b) Has anyone used the milk they have available for cats at pet stores? Would Bernie appreciate that, MissTake?

Keeping a greyhound underweight for racing would be a tremendous disadvantage - the purpose of racing is to make money, and a dog who is fed so little as to be underweight will not develop much muscle or be a good racer, let alone a money maker. On race day before post time, each greyhound is weighed and that weight can be no more than 1½ pounds higher or lower than its set weight or it will be scratched from the race. As much as I am opposed to the racing industry and feel that the food some greyhounds are fed is abhorrent, I can say from personal observation that while actively racing the dogs are provided decent nutrition.

Yes, they are lean while racing, and will gain a couple of pounds post-retirement, but by no means are they underweight for a very active dog. Most of the more emaciated greyhounds are those who have already retired from track life and are either kept at the kennel or returned to the farm. They are nothing more than a liability to their owners at that point, so there is little motivation to provide adequate care or nutrition. There are always exceptions to every rule of course, on both sides of the spectrum. I’ve got a retired racer who holds multiple track records in Arizona and spent 2 years on the farm before I adopted him - came in fat and sassy and spoiled. Our girl was a mediore racer, came to us from the farm skinny and full of worms, and has numerous perfectly round and hairless scars all over (our vet guesses cigarette burns).

Canned pumpkin has around 80 calories a cup. Feeding it in quantities large enough to make a dog gain weight would give them diarrhea due to the amount of fiber. I’d hate to see someone try to fatten a dog up using this and have a mess on their hands. Dogs do love canned pumpkin though, and adding to their food might encourage them to eat more. It is often recommended as an additive (1-2 tbs) to a retired racing greyhound’s food to help normalize their stool - greyhounds have notoriously bad poop. Small amounts of pumpkin help solidify runny poop, larger amounts will loosen up a constipated dog.

Don’t mean to be snarky or hijack the thread. Lots of myths abound in the greyhound world, just trying to dispell some.

jay-c,
(greyhound owner, foster mom, and friend of both a former track veterinarian and head of The Ohio State University’s Greyhound Health and Wellness program)

Cats have something very like lactose intolerance, so he may get the runs if he gets too much. Oddly, they make probiotic for cats also, so that will help him digest the milk. Honestly, human probiotics are the same, so a little bit of them of some of that Activa yogurt or similar prodcut would help.

Hmmm, I just remember that John and his (now ex) wife used to add pumpkin to the dogs’ food, and the reason given was to help the dogs gain and keep some healthy weight. I know that dogs and cats have different nutrional needs, which is why I noted that the OP should ask for vet approval of adding canned pumpkin to the cat’s diet.

I can attest to the fact that adult cats frequently can’t digest milk well at all. All of my cats will have noxious diarrhea if they are allowed to drink as much milk as they want to. My husband thought that milk was a good food for cats, due to all the pop references to giving cats a dish of milk or cream. The cats, of course, love milk and are quite aggressive in trying to get some.

I’m delighted that Bernie has put on some weight.

Whenever I’ve had a sick kitty, I’ve fed them human baby food. They seem to like the chicken the best.

I picked up a package of organic baby food - a nukerwave kind - but haven’t given it to her yet. She’s going through her cat food like nobody’s business so we’ve slowed on the human food. Okay, TheKid wasn’t paying attention to her plate last night and Bern snarfed some pepperoni and cheese pizza. Yum - cat ass/pepperoni burps. But otherwise she’s only been allowed a bit of beef and I made some broth from some lamb bones my sister gave me.

I did pick up dog food gravy - tried a few different kinds. NOT loving it. My nephew’s dogs have been benefitting greatly from Bernie. Sadly, my sister’s doxies are on diets. They get bupkis.

Next week should be interesting. She’s going to have the pet sitter here for a few days. I know we’ve been spoiling her rotten, and that will be an adjustment.

Today in the mail we received a condolence card from the animal hospital. Every one who we had contact with when Cleo was alive wrote a nice note. sniff While TheKid was reading it and crying Bern hopped into her lap and put her paw on her hand. tears flowing freely

We have two cats who passed away in the last year as a result of kidney failure brought on by Chinese made Fancy Feast and Science Diet. We have had many cats over the years and we always assumed that cats throwing up was somehow part of what they did and their metabolism…jokes about cat puking sounds about in popular culture because people assume that it is part and parcel of domesticated cat life. :eek:

After the kidney failure started and while we were giving two of the cats fluids, my partner started to cook them chicken with green beans and rice…and topping it off with taurine powder, which they love. After a couple of weeks, we noticed something strange…none of the cats were puking anymore, EVER! One with exceptionally long hair seems to force out a hair-ball once a month AT MOST, but the seemingly clockwork puking was gone…now, we have stopped cooking and feed them a completely homemade -and good enough for humans- cat food called “Whiskers’ Own Organic Chicken Dinner” which also comes in turkey and other flavors…The stuff smells and tastes delicious (i actually tried it, with no hesitation). :stuck_out_tongue:

It became apparent that the glop most of us feed our cats is rotten stuff. I don’t care if its science diet, newman, whatever…it is absolutely disgusting crap and the fact that our imprisoned animals eat it is because they have no choice and are bred on it. It is the same mistake humans always make; assuming that somehow animals are going to be OK with treatment we would never consider for ourselves…THEY AREN’T. Your cat is just as disgusted and injured and unhealthy by the horrible canned food you feed it as you would be if that was all you ate.

We were blown away when we realized that we had been torturing our cats with that noxious stuff (and i don’t care how healthy they claim to be, it is all nasty stuff) for years…NO WONDER THEY KEPT PUKING! :mad:

The fact that it took two cases of tainted food causing them kidney failure to awake us to that fact is too bad…:smack: but, I can guarantee you that cat food is dangerous, horrible gunk, often made with fat and protein solutions distilled from leftover cat and animal bodies collected off of our nations’ roads that the cat food companies buy for pennies… So, unless you just don’t have the money to do so, please wake up to the fact that your cats are no more happy with the poison you are feeding them and that their puking once or more a week is no more natural than if it was happening to you. Go out, buy some chicken and rice and beans with some broth for salt and taurine for vitamins, and feed it to your cat and see what happens. I promise that this experiment will make you see commercial cat food in another light.
Sincerely, sadly, and finally awake, :rolleyes:
PierreBear