How to get kitty to lose weight

proudmomof3cats

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Root our oldest cat is overweight, and we know that. When we got him he was 6 months old and VERY underweight, and immediatly when we brought him home, we noticed he ate food lie he never got to eat. It was ok at first, but he just kept eating and eating. He stayed a good weight for about 5 years with a lot of exercise, but now he is 9 year old, overweight and will not exercise. We have cut back on his food, and tried to get him to play, but he won't. Anyone have any suggestions on how to help him lose weight. He is about 21-22 lbs. Here is a picture.


Manda
 

sakura

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Does he like those feather bird teasers? My Mattie does not like playing but she'll bat that around. In addition to feeding less food you could hide his food around the house so he has to look for it to get it. I don't know if this would work since you have multiple cats.
 

kittymonsters

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It is so hard to successfully get kitties to loose weight. The biggest problems is you MUST go very SLOWLY or the risk of Hepatic Lipidosis is too high. This is highly fatal once it starts and many people are not able to do the aggressive therapy needed to get a kitty to survive.

That being said, one can get an obese kitty to loose weight. Icklemiss here has been very successful with very large kitties. If she doesn't chime in, send her a PM.

I have gotten my tubby kitties to loose weight over the last 9 months. One who was 16 pounds and needs to be about 8 pounds. She is now at 12 pounds and can clean herself again.

1. Please get your vet to supervise. Let them know you are determined to get Root to loose weight and you need help to ensure you don't let him develop HL.

2. If you are free feeding you will need to stop that. Not the easiest thing to do with multiple cats.

3. Determine how many calories he eats to maintain where he is now, then reduce that by 20% to start weight loss.

4. Make sure you have an accurate way to weigh Root every week. You do not want to see weight loss but every two weeks. If you see any loss within a week he is loosing too fast. My vet suggested about 1/4 pound every two weeks, which ends up to be only 1/2 pound a month.

5. food type. there are lots of different opinions on this. What I have found from my personal experience is that dry high carb food does not allow cats to loose weight, even if it is "light" food. Wet food is what I have had success with.

I have been trying to get my fat cats to loose weight for several years. Not until I switched to all wet ( actually vet supervised homemade/raw) have I been able to get them to reduce their poundage. TCS is what got me on the right track!

6. Exercise. This you may have to get creative with. I think one member here actually tied a favorite toy to herself while she walked around the house during the day. this to get kitty to follow and exercise.

Please put in weight loss, or cat diets in the search feature here and read some of the old threads on this. Lots of great informationin the archives. Hope this helps some.
 
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