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Adopted a Fat as fuck cat
Dachshund
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
This is Bruce, formerly known as Bowtie:
He is fat as fuck.
I adopted him a few months ago. He is ~6 years old. He weighed 19 lbs at the humane society. He weighed 18 and change at the vet 2 weeks later. I was feeding him 1 cup of dry daily. Vet told me 1/2 cup dry. Tried it. Dude's normal behavior changed too much. All he thought about was KITCHEN ARE YOU GOING TO THE KITCHEN FOLLOW ME TO THE KITCHEN. Kept it up for a week but he didn't adjust. So he is eating 3/4ish to a cup again. Dude is not losing weight. I give him small pieces of lunch meat occasionally because I am a terrible person.
I am willing to buy different food. He is currently eating some store brand, meat as first ingredient but still full of corn, shit food.
I have a laser. He runs like a motherfucker after that laser and doesn't get bored ever. I even have a laser that moves itself.
What should I be doing for my fat cat so that he is not a fat cat?
EDIT: I am not the best cat owner apparently, cus I just found him eating from my bowl of tomato soup that I just made for breakfast and stepped away from to post this.
He is fat as fuck.
I adopted him a few months ago. He is ~6 years old. He weighed 19 lbs at the humane society. He weighed 18 and change at the vet 2 weeks later. I was feeding him 1 cup of dry daily. Vet told me 1/2 cup dry. Tried it. Dude's normal behavior changed too much. All he thought about was KITCHEN ARE YOU GOING TO THE KITCHEN FOLLOW ME TO THE KITCHEN. Kept it up for a week but he didn't adjust. So he is eating 3/4ish to a cup again. Dude is not losing weight. I give him small pieces of lunch meat occasionally because I am a terrible person.
I am willing to buy different food. He is currently eating some store brand, meat as first ingredient but still full of corn, shit food.
I have a laser. He runs like a motherfucker after that laser and doesn't get bored ever. I even have a laser that moves itself.
What should I be doing for my fat cat so that he is not a fat cat?
EDIT: I am not the best cat owner apparently, cus I just found him eating from my bowl of tomato soup that I just made for breakfast and stepped away from to post this.
Dachshund on
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They do have weight loss food at vets and pet stores, you could try that.
But really, the vet told you 1/2 a cup and you decided "Eeeeeh.....Nah, I'll do what I think is best. Wait, he's not losing weight! Maybe the folks on PA will know better than a trained expert!"
1/2 a cup, it aint gon' kill him. Also you know you shouldn't give him lunchmeat.
Edit: Oh one other thing, grats on doing a really great thing and adopting a slightly older cat with an obvious health problem. A lot of people wouldn't have.
There's a reason weight loss in humans is difficult is that the hunger pains from your old diet can be incredibly obnoxious and hard to deal with. This is what the cat is responding too. He isn't starving, but it certainly feels like it to him.
I feed my cats BFF Cat Food. It's good stuff (from what the cats tell me). One cat gets raw food nuggets but don't worry about that yet -- transitioning to a non-kibble diet will be a big step for the guy, assuming he likes it. If he remains a kibblehead, there are lots of non-grain kibbles, although wet is generally better for them.
Ignore it like a screaming child who wants Chips Ahoy for breakfast. Screaming children who want to be held, should be held.
I meant crying baby, rather than screaming child. My apologies, that was misleading.
If you can, put his food bowl somewhere he has to work a little bit to get at, like up the stairs or whatever. And get one of those laser pointer things. They love to chase that around, and it's kind of fun to make them run around after it.
Cats are just lazy as fuck. You have to make them work for their food a little bit or they'll pork up like crazy.
Rigorous Scholarship
And like Ceres said, make sure he has access to fresh water constantly.
yes only water no oil who buys tuna in oil gross
edit: oh yes 2 meals 6am 6pm currently. 1/3ish cup a swing (honestly though not a flat 1/3, definitely a bulging mound so prob 1/2).
When Hudson is hungry and comes to one of us to beg for food, we take a single kibble out of a sealed cup (we have these in common areas where he'd usually find someone to beg) and throw it into another room or down a hallway. He chases it every time. This seems to benefit him in multiple ways: he's playing a fun game where he actually gets to eat the "toy", he gets exercise because he sprints for every bite of food, and he stops eating much sooner than he would if the food were just sitting there for him.
Obviously this isn't ideal for everyone and you probably can't do it all the time but it's really worked for us. If you spend a fair amount of time sitting in one place at home (as I suspect most PA forumers do!) just keep a cup of food nearby and it's relatively trivial to just chuck a kibble when the cat cries. Our vet complimented us on our success in reducing his weight and was impressed with the solution. It can be really tough for cats.
This is confusing and entertaining. Mine loves pizza crusts. Like... cats don't eat bread, what the hell. But if I get a pizza, she stares. And tries to paw the crusts away. God forbid I leave them on a plate unattended, I would end up finding them hidden under furniture weeks later.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that you should go back to feeding your cat the 1/2 cup per day the vet recommended, making sure the 1/2 cup is not shit food, and stop giving him extras. It's fun to spoil them, but if he's starting out that much overweight you aren't doing him any favors in the long run.
2. stick to 1/2 cup
3. lose a little sleep
4. more laser time
5. healthy sized cat
So, what is a reasonable amount of time for him to adjust to the new food volume? I took a week last time and couldn't handle it because I am an inferior specimen.
Get a can of compressed air. When he's being ornery, spray it near him (not at him though). Always helps when my kitties are crying under the door at 5am because they've decided they're hungry.
Depends on the cat.
My cat was a 17 pound fattie when we first took him in. We were only feeding him about 1/3 cup of dry food, split between morning and evening. Eventually the vet suggested doing wet food because a good wet food as less junk in it and will keep him fuller.
Now Skitters gets a small can of wet food in the morning, a small can in the evening, and in the evening he gets a tiny scoop of dry food to nibble on as well (maybe 1/4 a cup). He doesn't get dry food the next day if he's still got a fair amount from the day before.
Now he's pretty stable at about 12-13 pounds.
But he will still try every single trick in the book to get extra food! If he hears a noise in the room in the morning he's immediately going to start whining for food. If Quid and I are on somewhat different schedules and the first one up fed him but the second gets up the cat tries to trick the second person into giving more food.
He also whines incessantly about 2 hours before dinner and will jump up and run around you/to the laundry room every single time you move or get up in that time frame.
We've just learned to ignore him.
I really don't recommend any cheap wet food you'd get at a grocery store, but shrug, I understand everyone is on a different budget. I feed two cats w/ wet and dry food monthly for around $40 top shelf stuff. (Orijen dry, EVO turkey and chicken wet; will be changing EVO shortly)
Feeding your cats high quality food will improve their mood, coat and health significantly IME.
We dropped that down to 17 and eventually got her into the 13 lb range, but the damage was already done and she developed diabetes.
We eventually got that into remission and managed it with diet, but it also lead to chronic renal failure so now we're dealing with that.
Does anyone know of a great wet food that can be purchased in bulk online (or advise me that store is cheaper considering shipping costs)? Not looking for super cheap. I just like buying a lot of cat food and not having to worry about it for a long while.
We are feeding her 1/2 a cup of the vet XTREME-diet food a day. She has never been more kitchen focussed
Take it from me, Dachshund, it's damned hard. Most cats on this diet lose the weight in 6 months. Lily is still on 1/2 a cup. We have tried two different foods, and she's still overweight. She's a Burmese, and depending on build, can be heavier but she's still 5.2KG. I think the lowest we got her to is 4.8KG, but we couldn't maintain that (no diet changes, she just spiked!)
It's horrible, and you feel like the lowest type of kitten-abusing scum there is. But you have to persevere.
Good luck.
...or I used to, but now that I look it seems like they're no longer stocking it, although I just bought a case last week. That's a bummer. I used to use it to stack other items on for free shipping, but it looks like I have to find a new vendor now. Well, crap.
Spoilered a link to it
Anyhow the easiest way I've found to help a Fatty McFat Fat cat lose weight is three simple steps:
1) Set up a feeding plan, twice a day at the same times daily
2) Set up a diet and STICK TO IT
3) Supplement the dry food with moist food (canned, which you should do anyways)
Take a trip to petsmart sometime and look at the canned Friskeys and Sophistacat brands as they have "Special Diet Fat Ass Formula" which will help you out with slimming the cat down. Basically if the vet says X amount per day of food just do it 50/50 with canned and dry or if your budget allows just do canned but slowly phase the cat into it (Not that the big cat cares, but its easier on the catbox if you ease them into it).
I've had the trouble of having a Siamoose which was as far as we could tell a Siamese that had mated with a Maine Coon which turned out a ginormous Siamese cat which also got very very very fat (pushing 40lbs at one point). To add to the fun of that as it was a Siamese it was very picky and wouldn't eat the same flavor of catfood twice in the same month which forced me to hit up amazon to order some brands that weren't around here.
Keep the cat interested and active, stick to the diet, and keep your food guarded and your place clean so the cat isn't eating food you've left out on the counters and the cat should drop some weight. Its a slow process but over time you'll bring the weight down.
Yeah, don't do this. Terrible way to help him adjust to his new house. Scaring the shit out of him. Awesome idea. O_o
that was a little hard to keep up, so we moved the 2nd dry meal to a lunch meal 7 hours after breakfast, and added in a 1/3 / 1/2 tin of wet for dinner (which is mostly water so doesnt add a whole lot to diet).
worked like a charm.
possibly not being the owner of the cat allowed me to be more exacting with the meal plan and not cave in to wittle kittie cries
Things in red are things that should not be in quality cat food, and I would be very wary of feeding that to a pet, especially one with existing health problems. Some cats manage to do just fine on a diet of ground-up chicken feet, beef floor scrapings, and wheat hulls, just like some humans stay healthy-looking and slim for years despite eating nothing but ramen and Peanut Butter Crunch. But cats and humans alike are much better off eating quality food.
If the first five ingredients in your pet's food include byproducts, corn, nonspecific "meat," wheat, or soy, switch to a different brand. Look for named meats - chicken, beef, turkey, etc - in whole, deboned, or meal form. Find something good, there are numerous recommendations in this thread, and follow the feeding instructions on the package - high-quality foods often have much smaller serving sizes than low-quality foods, because they're actual meat, not just fillers.
Don't feed that stuff to a cat. Especially one that you're trying to diet.
Just listen to your vet and feed the cat the food and the amount that was recommended. They know best.
I misread his post. Thought he asked how to stop the cat from crying at night for food.
Don't feed your cat this crap if you can help it. It's not food, even to them.
1) Feed your cat quality wet food.
2) Lots of weighing is necessary to make sure your cat isn't gaining and isn't losing too quickly.
3) You need to make sure your cat is eating, and eating enough, and not losing muscle mass.
4) Much like people, they'll need a diet where their caloric intake is less than their output to see results.
Wet food may also decrease the cat's begging for food all day long. It's a lot less calorie dense than kibble, and higher protein/fat contents are healthier for your cat and also take longer to digest. It also doesn't result in a blood sugar boost and crash like kibble can, which may help regulate the cat's feelings of hunger.
That diet kibble food they try to push on people is the most incredible kind of bullshit. Cats are obligate carnivores, subsisting almost entirely on protein and fat. For those weight control kibbles, the manufacturer targets the fat content to be reduced. This means that either the protein or carb content is increased to compensate. Given the choice between expensive protein and cheap carbs, I'm sure you can figure out which one ends up in that food. So fat cats that got fat by eating a shitty high carb diet are fed further large amounts of carbs in order to make them better. It's asinine.
Note: If you're trying to transition from dry to wet food it can be tricky at times. When we first got our cat, it took us about a week of mixing in progressively large amounts of wet food with the garbage purina they gave us at the shelter until he was just eating wet food. Some cats really take to it, some cats are stubborn as hell. It's definitely worth the effort, especially with a male cat. The increased water intake of a wet food diet can head off bladder and urinary tract problems, saving you a lot of money and heartache down the line.
I'm also a big proponent for healthier food. Wellness is a great brand. That's what we feed our dogs.
And stop feeding it scraps. That's the worst thing you can do for a pet, especially one that is supposed to be dieting.
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This is how I'd do it. Probably the healthiest way to change the cat's diet, and a more gradual change might help alleviate the KITCHEN? reflex too.
Since your cat is older, it may be difficult to break him of his bad habits, but you have to do it. Keep a spray bottle handy and squirt him whenever he tries to eat your food. Ideally, he shouldn't even be jumping on surfaces where you eat (or prepare food) as it can be a health hazard.
So I hear everyone say omgomg dryfood is bad! and I read that catinfo website that says the same.
Can anyone post some studies that they know of that agrees with this? I didn't notice any actual studies on the catinfo site, just "but omg, they dont eat dry food in the WILD and I've never seen a fat tiger, have you?!"
This CAN lead to kidney problems, urinary problems, etc. Also it is far more calorie dense because it's all packed in and then it expands in their stomach (also why they eat too much then throw up sometimes).
So if you can, people recommend wet food. In Ceres case, the cat is being a finicky beast and it isn't her fault. She balances that by feeding her cat(s) high quality dry food. She might even get it a little moist before serving it if she wanted to help keep the cats hydrated.
The first of those issues can be addressed by always ensuring that your cat has clean, fresh water to drink. We had used one of those pet fountains for our cat for a while, but it ended up being a pain in the ass because unless we used perfectly distilled water, we'd get those white scale buildups of trace minerals, which clogged up the works and made it kind of gross to look at. Now, we just have a bowl of water for her, rinsed out and refilled every day. Another option to improve fluid intake is to mix dry food with warm water at feeding time - my parents did that for their elderly dog who had trouble chewing kibble, and she just gobbled the glop down.
The second issue has already been solved by the ever-increasing availability of high-quality dry foods with minimal or no grain content. Wellness, Blue Buffalo, Orijen, Innova, and Go! Natural all offer at least one line of thoroughly excellent dry food that meets even the most demanding nutritional requirements: grain-free, no byproducts, animal proteins, fish oils for healthy coats.