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vet says 12LB cat needs to lose weight?

post #1 of 8
3/26/11 at 3:39pm
Thread Starter 
Shes not a very picky eater, I give her a natural dry food that i let her free feed from, and wet food twice a day. I've heard its best to get off the dry food completely. My question is if i wanted to get her to lose some weight, should I remove the dry food and stick with canned food? would 3 times a day be enough? should i work into the diet slowly or will she be ok if i start right away? I've cut back on her Temptations that shes in love with, i give her two instead of 10 and she looks at me like, "wheres the rest" lol. any suggestions?
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post #2 of 8
3/26/11 at 3:47pm
Three times a day wet should be enough, or simply stop free feeding the dry, and portion it. So wet morning, wet afternoon, and a 1/4 cup of dry or whatever matches the feeding suggestion before you go to bed for example.

Only young kittens should really be free feeding, not adults, especially indoor only adults. Get fat and then end up riding in on a horse and doing diabeetus commercials.
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post #3 of 8
3/27/11 at 5:26pm
Gee, I figured it was the canned food that put weight on a kitty. Must be the vet I take my fat male to is more lenient - Rolly was about 18 pounds when he went to get treated for his bladder stone and the vet didn't say a word about getting him to lose weight.

It's weird because he doesn't overeat and often the other two don't even let him get a nibble of the canned food I let them share. Yet he looks like a beach ball with legs. But he's in good health otherwise, it seems. Just a tub, I guess.
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post #4 of 8
3/27/11 at 5:36pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by RuneKeeper View Post
Gee, I figured it was the canned food that put weight on a kitty.
Nope, wet food is almost always lower in fat and mostly water, so its not very calorically dense and they feel more full on it (for a short while at least).

Generally speaking, its all about calories in versus calories used. If you had a system where wet food was available to snack on 24x7, most kitties would get tubby on that too.
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post #5 of 8
3/27/11 at 5:41pm
Lose weight at 12 pounds? If your cat is a Singapura or some tiny breed, yeah, but normal poundaladge (I made that word up) is 9-12 pounds.

I free-feed as well, but I feed dry only right now and wet to my one with chronic gingivitis.

As far as the Temptations, you could buy one of those "treat toys" or even make one out of a toilet paper (empty) roll buy putting a few Temptation treats inside and silver-taping the ends (or use the professional ones) and poke holes juuuuuuuust big enough to get the treats out so 1. your cat gets exercise trying to get at those treats; and 2. she feels as if she's eaten more because she spends so much time getting at them. :-D how funnnnnnnn!!!
(I have a bought one and it's fun to watch them attack it.

I can't give advice on switching over completely from dry to wet as I'm not a vet and don't know all of your cat's issues which would play a major factor in such an important decision.

Warmly,

Julie O'


Quote:
Originally Posted by Jessica00 View Post
Shes not a very picky eater, I give her a natural dry food that i let her free feed from, and wet food twice a day. I've heard its best to get off the dry food completely. My question is if i wanted to get her to lose some weight, should I remove the dry food and stick with canned food? would 3 times a day be enough? should i work into the diet slowly or will she be ok if i start right away? I've cut back on her Temptations that shes in love with, i give her two instead of 10 and she looks at me like, "wheres the rest" lol. any suggestions?
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post #6 of 8
3/27/11 at 9:53pm
Thread Starter 
I didn't think 12 pounds was that big either. I like the two wet one dry option so thanks for that idea, i've been trying it. My skinny cat usually steals her food before shes finished so i really dont understand how she got like this but shes beautiful still
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post #7 of 8
3/27/11 at 10:01pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by RuneKeeper View Post
Gee, I figured it was the canned food that put weight on a kitty.
I actually had a veterinarian say something along those lines when I told her that I had gotten Tiny to lose ~ 6 pounds eating wet food. She's probably been a vet for 40+ years though, and I doubt they even gave cat nutrition a second thought when she was in vet school.

Ducman is absolutely right about the calories, though. When I first switched my cats to wet food, I thought that it would be a silver bullet and the pounds would just start dropping off like magic. They didn't. Over 2 months, my two fat cats didn't lose a single ounce. It wasn't until I started restricting their intake that they started losing weight.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Naps With Cats View Post
Lose weight at 12 pounds? If your cat is a Singapura or some tiny breed, yeah, but normal poundaladge (I made that word up) is 9-12 pounds.
It just depends on the cat's build. If Promise weighed 12 pounds, she would be a little fatty. On the other hand, twelve pounds is probably the ideal weight for Thufir with his largish frame. For the average cat, 12 pounds is probably just a bit on the heavy side. It's a lot easier to stop the cat from getting grossly overweight in the first place than to get it to lose weight later, so the vet is probably just trying to be proactive.
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post #8 of 8
3/27/11 at 11:24pm
I always say "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" - in this case, the stress of changing the cat's diet will be much more stressful and he may not even gain anymore weight. If he has, it can just be cut down a bit, no big deal.

"Proactive" about weight gain . . . don't think so.
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