Weight Loss, Rate OK?

I would like to get some opinions on Kasey's weight loss.

The vet put Kasey on prescribed low cal food, we started at the end of Jan. 2009. She is a shop vac. for food, of any type.

At that time she was 16.3 pounds (a little "Butterball").

She has lost 1 pound in 8 months as registered by an accurate scale; about a 6% weight loos in that time period.

Kasey is still "cobby" but is happy, playful and her fur looks good.

I am assuming this is a reasonable weight loss rate but wanted to hear about some other planned weight loss experiences and stories.

First of all, congratulations! Getting a cat to lose any weight at all is quite an accomplishment.

The most important thing in the weight loss is to make sure it's not too fast to avoid liver damage. About 1% of the body weight lost per week is a good safe number and that would be about 2.5 ounces for Kasey. It's not a race though, so as long as she's healthy and losing weight that's fine. Keep her losing at the rate you're going and she'll weight around 12.5 in a couple of years. If you want her to lose a little faster, cut back on the food just a very small amount at every meal. I've found that just changing the amount I feed my cats by 0.1 ounce per meal makes quite a difference in their rate of weight loss.

As for my personal experiences, I've been really focused on getting Tiny to lose weight since about March. In that time, I've gotten Tiny to lose a little over 4 pounds and my other cat Thufir has lost about 3 pounds. You can read all about it in the "Tiny Weight Loss" thread that I have in my signature.

Thanks for the info., her weight loss is much slower than the maximum figure you quoted; she lost about 1.5 oz per month so that should be fine.

Measuring food is a bit complicated due to the mix of cats we have, I will try to make this a short narative.

Here is the mix, oldest to youngest;

Taz; 11 year old, healthy "Farm cat" ttpe, 19 pounds, (big, not fat) grew up being frre fed.

Kasey: the "butter ball", was underfed for a while pre-rescue, this agravated her already robust appitite.

Morgan; 10 years old with a tendancy to be "light", in good health but we consider ther "fragile", need to make sure she eats, grew up being free fed.


Here is what we do;

Morgan and Taz are used to being in the basement at night, which the actually seem to like, the Royal Canin Mature 27 goes down for them at night.

Kasey stays upstairs, vet low cal food goes down for her.

Daytime, Royal Canin comes up, everyone can access the vet food.

Everyone eats the vet food but at least Morgan gets 8 hours/day access to the Royal Canin.

I do let Kasey have a token volume of Royal Canin.

So far, Morgan is maintaining her bulk and is happy/active, Kasey is slowly loosing some weight.

1lb in 8month is fine, just make sure his poo is normal and drink normal amount of water.

Originally Posted by Goo

just make sure his poo is normal and drink normal amount of water.

Click to expand...

All that stuff runs like clockwork, very predictable and reliable