Obese Cat

Okay, so I agreed to foster a cat today from a girl at work who was having to give him up due to an illness. When she brought him here, I was shocked at how big he was! His name is Tiger Boy, he's 6 years old, is roughly 28 inches long, and weighs 38 pounds. The person I got him from said he ballooned up shortly after he got fixed. He doesn't like cat toys and isn't very active. He also only eats about a cup of food a day so I'm not sure what else to do. The vet he was previously at said he was healthy, just overweight. How can I get him to lose weight and be active? He's already been on "diet" cat food and it doesn't help. Any suggestions for how to get a cat who doesn't like to be active... active?

Oh, dear, poor guy! Did he have mats that were cut out (too fat to groom himself), or is he losing hair? First thing is to try to replace most/all of his food intake with canned food. Canned food is less calorie-dense and has higher protein/lower carbs. If you do want to give him some kibble, look for a high-protein, low-carb kibble. Carbs are what make cats fat (and most diet. Foods are really high in carbs). Second is to get him on timed and measured meals. No more free-feeding!

You do need to be super careful, though. If you cut back his intake too drastically, or he loses weight too quickly, he can get fatty liver disease. For a cat that obese it wouldn't take long. It needs to be a very gradual process. If you can possibly contact a cat nutritionist, they would probably be a huge help with him. A general-practice vet usually doesn't get a lot of education in cat nutrition, but might be able to determine how many calories you should start with, and how many to cut out each week.

Oh, no! Poor boy..

My cat was the same way and it took a LOT of work but now he's (almost) a slim cat. It's pretty simple what you need to do, you just have to stick with it. You'll have to learn to be firm and not give in to begging.

First thing is No More dry food. That's the biggest starting factor. We need to get back to basics to maximize his metabolism and feed him a meat ONLY diet. If you have the ability to feed raw, great! The process will go so much faster. There is plenty of info on this forum on how to do that. I'm going to assume that's a step you don't want to take though, so I'll just be talking about canned foods. My vet keeps asking me how I performed this miracle (22lbs to 14lbs in 11 months) and I keep telling him: a protein first, canned food diet. (He thinks I'm using magic as well. )
Diet food is also a no-no. It's a marketing scheme. Diet foods contain more carbs which cats can't digest properly and basically hinder weight loss (and even promote it!) Look for canned foods with a high protein content: Before Grain, Soulistic, Nature's Instinct, Avoderm (Wild by Nature and grain-free varieties), Blue Buffalo (Wilderness), Innova, Wellness (Core or their cubed/sliced/minced) varieties and By Nature are all good choices.
Do keep in mind that if you put down wet and he refuses to eat it, you will need to put down dry. He needs to eat Something every day because otherwise he could lose weight to fast and get sick.

Speaking of which, we get to #2: Buy a baby scale.
This is crucial because without it, you have no way of telling how fast he's losing weight. It'll be impossible to tell if he's losing too fast or too slow because the amount he can lose per week is going to be in *ounces*. Cats can only lose 1-2% of their body weight safely per week. So at 608oz, he can currently lose 6-12oz per week. However, it's progressive, so when he gets down to 35lbs, he can only lose 5-11oz per week. That might not seem like a big deal, but their livers are not meant to handle breaking down very much fat so too much weight loss can kill them, even if the cat is still huge. Weigh once every 3-4 days to help gadge how much you should be feeding him.

#3 Food amounts.
Most cats need only about 1 can per day to satisfy them. When my cat was at his max, I believe I fed around 1 1/2 cans. For Tiger Boy, I would start at probably 2 1/2 just to be safe. (Thats why you need the scale, then you can tell right away if it makes him gain weight and knock it down to 2 1/4 cans a day.) (The can sizes I'm talking about are the 5.5oz ones, not the teeny ones, btw. But you could feed two large ones and one small if you like.) When I first started, I kept a record of how much dry and wet I was feeding (because I was transistioning him), and it greatly helped keep track of his process. (If you can, try to do a full jump to wet so we don't end up with him holding out for dry though. It's a horrible process that you can see so many others going through here that you will be glad you avoided.)

#4 Exercise
Going back to age old question "How do you get a lazy cat to move?", the answer is simple: help the cat lose weight. If you are a 400lb+ man, you aren't going to want to move much. That's his situation. When your joints hurt, when it takes SO much effort to move, you aren't going to want to. Once he Does start to move around, you'll notice that he will get tired Very quickly. He may even lay down and pant like a dog. As he loses weight, he will want to play more and wake you up in the middle of the night and then you'll wish for the days when he didn't move. :lol3: For now, put toys near him, maybe pull a piece of string past his nose. Even if he just swats a paw once or twice, it's progress. In fact, make him work for his food a little. Come up with a word that means food time (if he doesn't already run at the sound of the food bag) and use it to intice him to come to you and follow you around for a few minutes before you feed him.

Good luck and feel free to email me if you have any questions!

Thank you all so much! I am all too familiar with fatty liver disease so I'm extremely cautious about that after our Siamese got it due to a pre-existing liver disease I wasn't made aware of at adoption time. I put down some wet food for Tiger Boy this morning and he was all too happy dig in (he hadn't even touched his dry food the night before).

Also, someone asked the reason why he had bald patches and yes, it was due to matted fur that had to be shaved off. Poor thing. Again, thank you for the help! This makes me feel so much better and more hopeful.

I think someone mentioned it already above but go grain free also! Those are the bad sugars and carbs. I'm glad you already know about fatty liver because I have suffered the loss of my sweet girl because of IBD, fatty liver and pancreatitis. It was horrible and I wouldn't wish that on anyone. Bless you for helping this precious boy. 

BTW, to figure out if the food you're feeding is low carb, you should use a dry matter basis calculator. :nod:

On this site, http://catcentric.org/ there is a downloadable one (excel). They're very simple - you just plug in the guaranteed analysis on the can. :nod: The DMB calculator is in the left-hand column under "Special Features." (I'd provide a link, but it takes you right to the download).

What a love you are for taking in this boy!!!