Need Diet Math Help

Hey all.  I'm looking for some help figuring out what and how much I should be feeding my embarrassingly overweight cat.  She's always been hefty, but at our most recent visit the vet said she's diabetes case waiting to happen.  Damn.

Anyway, the vet's recommendation was to feed her two cans of Purina Rx OM each day.  Two issues: 1) I'd rather feed her a better quality food and 2) this ends up being $50-$60 each month, just for the one cat.  My thinking is that if I can find a better quality, but still affordable alternative wet food, I can work out the caloric equivalent and keep her on the same diet.  I'm just having trouble finding all the info.  

According to the Purina website, the OM comes out to 128 calories per can, so I need to give her 256 calories of whatever other food we select.  Does this sound right?  I know you have to be careful when helping a cat lose weight, and I want to make sure I'm not messing this up.  So what's a good but affordable wet food that we could try instead?  We used to use Innova, but I've heard they've had some quality control issues lately.  I've heard that Felidae is good.  Any thoughts on that?  Or other suggestions?

If we went got the Felidae, it looks like we'd be feeding her about 7.5oz per day to get the same caloric intake.  I will run this all by the vet prior to starting the diet, but wanted to get feedback here first.

i heard natures variety is good for diabetic cats and good for other health problems etc

you can look into the LID wet of natures variety if i had more money i would feed it to all my cats i have 20 mouths to feed

The general guideline is 20 calories per pound of ideal body weight daily for neutered indoor only cats. However, a safe weight loss is no more than 2% of body weight lost per week, so you may need to start the calories closer to current weight and gtadually reduce depending on how overweight the cat is. You do not want to risk fatty liver disease from not enough calories.

Any high animal protein / moderate fat / low to no carb wet food will work. Protein and fat help make a cat feel satiated. Carbs are nutritionally useless for cats while still providing useless calories that lead to excess weight gain.

www.catinfo.org has a very useful chart of common canned cat foods in the US broken down by protein/fat/carbs to help you make some choices. Written by a vet, it also has good general info on feline nutrition and related health issues including diabetes.

My cat only gets 218 calories a day and he is about 10lbs. He isn't very active at all though.  For inactive cats you can give as little as 18 calories per pound (180 calories for a 10 lb cat).

Look at the bag and figure out how many calories your cat is currently getting. After that you want to spend a few weeks reducing that amount. It is dangerous to cut them back too much too soon.  Your goal should be to get down to about 200 calories. 

Thanks for all the help! vball, that was the site I'd been using to work out the caloric equivalents.

My cat is currently 15.9 lbs. I'm not sure what her ideal weight would be. Maybe about 12 (I know, I know). So is my vet right that 256 calories is a good starting point for a diet, or do you all think that's too steep a decrease right off the bat?

Do you know how many calories she has been eating? A too drastic calorie drop is not healthy, so it would be helpful to know/guesstimate her current calories and reduce from there.

It is a good idea to weigh her regularly (once a week) at home, so that you can ensure that she is losing weight safely.

No idea, unfortunately. We used to control her food intake pretty carefully (she was still fat, but not AS fat), but we had a baby several months ago and haven't been as good about making sure she doesn't poach our other cat's food. Also, I think she might convert air to fat.

CatInfo suggests a starting point of 233 calories for a cat with an ideal weight of 12 lbs, so we might start there. I'm looking into scales now.

Thank you!

Back with an update and a question.  We started the new wet food (Merrick) about 1.5 weeks ago.  We offer 4oz twice a day.  At first she was cleaning her plate, but she's been gradually eating less and less.  I don't know if the issue is that she doesn't like this specific food, or that she wants the dry food we give our other cat.  Tonight she barely ate any of her dinner.

She is otherwise active and happy as always, so the problem isn't that she's sick or anything.  She just doesn't want the Merrick.  Which sucks, because it wasn't cheap.

Should we just keep offering it and throwing away the leftovers, or should we be concerned that she's not eating enough and find something else she will eat?

It's important that overweight cats don't lose weight too quickly. It's bad for their liver. If she's refusing the Merrick's try something else. Most stores will let you exchange food for something different.

We bought the food online, unfortunately. Stores that sell high quality food where I live are usually really overpriced. It's frustrating, though, because we did check to make sure she'd eat it before buying so much.

I really don't know if she'd be any better about another food. She's really smart and stubborn, and I think she might just be holding out for the dry food.

I'm considering just buying a low end wet food like Fancy Feast, since I know a lot of cats like it, and it's still better than dry food.

You could try sprinkling a few kibbles on top of the Merricks to get her to eat it. Gradually reduce the amount of kibbles. If that doesn't work, the Fancy feast classics variety (skip the others) are a decent choice, healthier than dry, and can help with weightloss because they are low carb.

The pet stores near me will let me exchange any brand they sell. They don't ask for a receipt. Call around and see if you can try something different.

Good luck with kittie's new diet .

This is a LONG overdue update, but we just had our cats in for their annual check-up, and were pleased to learn that our overweight girl had lost about four pounds over the previous 11 months.  We were very happy! 

We ended up feeding her Merrick Cowboy Cookout, and we measure a precise amount every day. We didn't end up getting a scale, but stuck with a very gradual decrease in her calorie intake.  We actually had no idea she'd lost so much.

Our vet would still like her to lose a little more, but overall was very happy.  So thanks for all the help!