Wet food suggestion

The vet recommended switching Olive from a dry food only diet to wet food only to stabilize her weight. I used to give her both wet and dry but my old roommate had her cat on dry only so we just adjusted.

She's 13 pounds and has been around that weight since she was spayed about a year and a half ago.

Is there a certain wet food that is best if it her only source of nutrition?

Thanks!

HI there,

Ideally, you want to go with a high protein/low carb and preferably grain-free wet canned. Depending on your budget, there are many decent canned wet foods available. It will also be important to have a variety so you will want to select 2-3 different varieties within a brand, or choose from both the premium and economical categories

The following is a list of some of the better ones which will feature different calories per can, so it will be important to know what your cat's 'ideal' weight is, versus how many calories she will need per day :

Premium Canned

Nature's Variety Instinct

Wellness Grain-free canned

Hound & Gatos

Wellness CORE

GO Brand by Petcurean

Economical Canned

Fancy Feast pates

Blue Buffalo

Nature's Variety PRIME Wet

Nutro Natural Wet

Taste of the Wild

If you need help with figuring out calories, just leave a note and one of us will give you a hand with this.

Figuring out calories would be helpful. I'm thinking she should be closer to 9-10 pounds. We've done Blue Buffalo dry before and she loved it.

Coloratura said:

Figuring out calories would be helpful. I'm thinking she should be closer to 9-10 pounds. We've done Blue Buffalo dry before and she loved it.

Click to expand...

To calculate calories for ideal weight, there is a bit of math involved but basically you would take 15-20 calories per pound (depending on how active your cat is, and how fast or slow her metabolism is) and multiply this by her ideal weight of 10 pounds. If she is less active, then calculate 15 calories x 10 pounds = 150 calories. If she is reasonably active, then you calculate 20 calories x 10 pounds = 200 calories.

Now, the above refers to 'ideal weight'. Your cat is not at her ideal weight, yet. So to start, you have to calculate calories based on her current weight, and over time, slowly reduce the amount of calories until she arrives at her ideal weight. So, your kitty is currently 13 pounds, which means she needs 15 calories x 13 pounds = 195 calories, OR, 20 calories x 13 = 260 calories.

As your cat gained the weight over a period of time, it is really important that the weight loss also takes place over a period of time. Too fast can have serious consequences in the form of fatty liver disease. Cats can safely lose 6 ounces or 1-2% of their body weight per week.  As a starting point, you will need to figure out how much you are feeding now for calories as a rough estimate, and take 80% of this as a starting point. So if your kitty is getting 260 calories per day now for instance, 80% of this would be 208 calories.

I hope this can be of some help. If you have any questions, don't be shy   

EDIT: Forgot to mention that all of the foods listed above, are wet canned diets, including the Blue Buffalo.