Two years ago, the vet disapprovingly told me Tikva was too fat. He gave me a prescription for diet cat food, and told me she needed to be about five pounds skinnier.
Last year, Tikva was still fat. The vet told me to be more careful when measuring her food. I’m pretty sure I wrote a thread called “My cat is still fat”, but it seems to have been eaten by the hamsters.
This afternoon it was vet time again, and- yep, you guessed it- Tikva is still the same sixteen pounds she was in 2009. This time the vet told me to feed her multiple small meals instead of all at once. I just got an automated feeder (although it’s got some remarkable design flaws), so for the first time I can actually do so.
And so, Tikva embarks on her third year of low calories and high expectations. Wish us luck.
I have the same issue with Mojo my ravenous boxer of doom. The solution that worked this year was a vacation just before their vet appointments. The only time Mojo doesn’t eat is when someone else is taking care of him and he spent 10 days at the boarding kennel. They hand fed him and he (of course) ate all his treats but he still lost the couple of kilos the vet has been complaining about for the last two years.
I’ll have to remember to schedule his appointment next year for right after another vacation. The things we struggle through for our pets
One of our dogs is too skinny, if you can believe it. She could stand to gain a pound, maybe two. Our other dog is a pound or two overweight. Can’t they just swap? They eat out of the same bowl, and we can’t bear (or be bothered…) separating them for meals.
I have had the Cookie Monster on a diet for the past five years (because you can’t crash diet a cat as apparently their little livers can’t handle the broken down fat).
She gets 25g of dry food in the morning, and 25g of dry food in the evening, and that’s all she ever gets. The reason she got so big is that I left her with some people for a year who had a food dispensing hopper and she just ate and ate and ate beause the food kept on replenishing itself.
She’s lost nearly half her body weight, but now she’s plateaued, and still fat. I don’t care any more. She’s 11 and hasn’t had any health problems in her life, touch wood.
One of my cats is too fat, but I have almost no control over that so the vet can put a sock in it.
When I first adopted him I kept his cat food in the closet. He figured out how to open the closet and get in to eat his fill. Then I put the food in a tupperware container in the closet. He figured out that it he knocked it over and jumped on the container a bunch of times it would burst open and provide him with food. Then I got him an automatic feeder. He beat the hell out of it, tried to unhinge his jaw to just swallow the whole feeder, and eventually figured out how to pry the top off of the thing to get to the food inside. I got a different automatic feeder that had a better design that actually helped him lose some weight until he figured out how to reach up inside of it and turn the blades to get food whenever he wants it. The couple of times I actually managed to keep him out of his food he broke into the pantry and ate bread, muffins, crackers, and anything else he could get his little teeth into without too much difficulty.
Now I do my best to put up the automatic feeder unless it is time for them to eat and just call it a day. If he is that determined to be heavy he has earned that extra weight.
Are you sure someone else isn’t feeding her? I had a dog when I was a kid and he got fat. We later learned all the neighbors were feeding him. Everyone was using him as a garbage disposal for their leftovers.
“But he looks so hungry”
“If I don’t feed him he won’t like me”
“He’s not fat, he’s fluffy” (No he’s FAT)
After stern warning to all our neighbors and we still found them giving him an occasional soup bone, but it took a year and he lost his 25lbs.
You feel bad for them, 'cause they don’t understand why they can’t eat and they are so darn cute and can easily con you into giving them more food.
Sadly, our cat is too thin, having consistently lost weight in the past month to where she is now just over six pounds. We’ve had her rehydrated by the vet, and tried an appetite stimulant with poor results. She’s 18, and may have just decided she’s had enough in this world.
I predict that she will not get so much as 1/2 lb thinner until you change the type of food you feed her, not the amount. Prescription diet cat food is usually lower in fat and even higher in carbohydrate than regular processed cat food. High-carbohydrate processed food is always going to be sub par for the health and normal weight maintenance of a naturally lean obligate carnivore species such as cats.
I am not a vet but firmly believe most of them have no idea how to feed dogs and cats.
That said Tivka looks chubby, but not dangerously obese IMO, and very cute. It’s not going to be the end of the world if she stays fat. She’s maintaining the same weight and that’s a good sign.
I’m pretty positive. Tikva lives in my room (she’s a world-class scaredy-cat). Anyone is going into my room for anything, let alone illegally feeding the kitty, they’d hear it from me. Actually, her spending so much time hiding in my desk or closet probably has something to do with her high BMI.
My poor little chubby dog is on diet food too. She was chubby when I got her, I thought she was doing better because now I can see her flanks, but she actually gained weight.
We are a “Goldilocks” household.
One cat is toooo fat. Another is tooo thin. and the third is Just Right. How the heck are we supposed to cope with that?!
The fat one eats the thin one’s leftovers. The fat one also has bladder issues and is on a urinary health food. He eats that and anything else he can sneek.
The thin one is healthy, she’s just small. She’s 10 years old and weighs about 8 lbs, wet.
Her mom, is just right at 10 lbs. Then we have 3 year old Max who tips the scale at 16 lbs.
No, that is not right. Prescription diets have different recipes. Hill’s weight loss prescription diet used to be higher in fiber compared to others. OTOH, Purina’s lines of prescription diets are actually higher in protein compared to other brands, and their line was touted (during my training, a couple of years ago), as being better for cats.
Agree. We cut out dry food except once a week, as a treat, for ours and they are lean and active. Our 14-year old fat fart lost weight and now plays like a kitten. We just buy the canned wet food. Still processed, I guess, but way better.
Fat kitties will lose weight if they only get good quality wet food. All kibble has at least 40% grain and as rhubarbarin has said, cats are obligate carnivores. They don’t do well with carbs. When you first look at the cost of high end gooshy food, you will gasp with shock, but after you try it, you will realize that you are spending less on food and litter.
Don’t just plop a big spoonful into the bowl, read the instuctions and feed kitty a little less than is recommended. If your normal sized kitty seems hungry after eating, give it a little more. Feed kitty at least 2 times a day, and if you can manage it, feed 4 times a day. Cats evolved to eat small meals, sleep, then hunt again.
Good luck and avoid fancy feast and grocery store brands like the plague. They are like feeding children Happy Meals. Stand firm and remember that you are bigger than them and it is your house!
pbbth, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have laughed, but I did. I wonder if you might buy some small maze feeders…the one that kitty has to move around to get a piece of kibble out and scatter them around when you go to work.
Or just quit feeding kibble.
I do admire how resourcesful cats can be when properly motivated, your cat might learn to do the one thing they keep humans for…open up cans
My cat is so fat…she has to walk with her back arched so her belly won’t drag the ground. We haven’t taken her to the vet because we are all deathly afraid of her. She will remove a limb or maim other important body parts if we even THINK about putting her in a carrier for a trip to the (whisper when you say this) ‘vet’s office’. We took her in when our daughter found her as a feral kitten. You would think a feral kitty would run away at first opportunity, but no, she decided a military occupation would serve her needs best. She gets fed, has a dark spot under the bed that smells like brimstone, and an indoor litterbox that she delights in missing by just a few inches.
Ive decided that she can be fat if she wants to be. At least it slows her down so the rest of us have a chance to run.
That’s the same deal in our house - one skinny cat and one pudgy cat. The skinny cat pretty much gets fed on demand (they get three regular meals per day), but she’s a grazer, and the pudgy one is a binger - she ain’t done till the food’s gone. Trying to get one cat to lose a little weight in this situation is damned near impossible.
They get dry food once a day and wet food once a day. I took them down to just wet food for a while but the hungry one was not accepting of that and started literally breaking my things when he was still hungry afterwards. Like, jumping onto counters or working his way into cabinets and destroying cups, glasses, toilet paper, and anything else he was able to find until he got fed again. I know that technically he “trained” me to feed him when he was destructive but damn it, sometimes you just know when you’ve lost and you need to give in before you no longer own anything that isn’t broken or torn to shreds.
I didn’t mention protein in my post. Most cat kibble has around the same amount of protein, except those designed for cats with kidney or urinary tract problems.
I maintain that across the board, ‘diet’ cat food is lower in fat (and calories) and therefore higher in carbohydrate than regular cat foods. Which are already astronomically high in carbohydrates for an animal which can easily (optimally, IMO) live on a diet containing zero g of daily carbohydrate.
