Overweight cat.

Hi, my Robin is a bit overweight. 14.4 pounds versus 12.8 last year same time. Vet says to cut back 25% of his food.

He free feeds at present, ONE Hairball with a few cans of wet per week. And yep, I spoil him--food both front and back of my apartment.

I've heard changing feeding habits drastically can cause cystitis however being overweight is far more likely to cause this.

Should I free feed him, cutting back, or feed him but twice a day and removing after a few hours?

I work shift work and frankly am OCD something might happen to me and he go without food a day or so, which is why he is fed quite generously.

I'm willing to give him nibbles of dry and feed him a can of wet food for his main meal, but it's embarrassing to admit I'm not sure how to go about this. Free feeding has made ME lazy and unfamiliar with healthy feeding options.

Robin is part snowshoe, part Scottish ragdoll, and is 35 inches nose to tail. What is a good weight for him? 12 pounds? That's a lot of weight to lose.

You should feed him on a schedule, 2 or 3 times a day. My cat is quite overweight but has already lost two pounds from a primarily wet-food diet (wet food is much less caloric than dry food). He gets one 5.8 oz. can a day with a little dry food to make sure he gets his daily calories. If you are worried about him going too long without food, you could look into getting a timed feeder.

The key is to stop the free feeding and get on a schedule. 

PLUS the dry food is so loaded with carbs it will turn many cats into chubbies if they are allowed to eat all they want.

Purina One is high in carbs. Not to mention the ingredients are less than ideal.

First thing I recommend is transitioning to a better but still affordable food, like Natural Balance. It's decent compared to ONE, and with alot less crap in it too.

Gradually swap over a week's time from her old dry to the new dry.

Then be sure you are not leaving food out during the night.

Morning comes, give her as much as she will eat in 20 minutes then pick it up.

When she comes whining for food, give it to her again, picking it up after she eats some.

Do this even if she wants it 8 times a day. Then start holding out from her whines until it's too much, which will cause her to eat a bit more when it is down, and eventually will decrease the amt of times she gets fed, and ultimately will be on a schedule.

I too have a chubby cat. Her vet and I swear she simply has the genetics to be one of those fat cats despite diets, etc, since she is stocky in build and even as a kitten was chunky-ish.

However, I have settled on fancy feast for breakfast and dinner, and 1/4 cup of grain free good quality dry food during the day.

Getting her off of the free fed dry and more wet food with a small amt of dry (she is a dry addict!) has slowly helped her lose a couple pounds.

Fancy Feast should ONLY be the classics, these are grain free but cats still love them! (My cat turns her nose up at the high quality grain free canned)

I am surrounded or was, by bags of better foods. Blue Bffalo, science diet--he touched none of them. He only will eat the ONE. Go figure. And only the Hairball formula, at that.

I love the advice on transitioning from free feeding. Thank you!!

I personally wouldn't call Blue Buffalo or Science Diet very good foods - Blue markets well and makes a point to compare itself to really, really low end brands. Don't get me wrong, they don't make junk food, but I think there's better available if you keep your eyes peeled. 

You can use tools like this to calculate the percentage of carbohydrates that are in the foods that are readily available to you. A lot of bigger commercial brands will have around 30% - aim as low as you can find. The lowest I've found is 13.8%, but I think a food like Orijen has something like 18%?

I agree with the above though, the best thing you can do is cut the free feeding and get him on some structured meals, and getting more wet meals into him than dry. Not only will the wet keep him more hydrated and help flush out any nasties that could lead to urinary problems, it's also less calorie-dense. An ounce of canned food tends to be around 30 calories, whereas an ounce of high quality kibble can be upwards of 110-120 calories. I always compare it to eating a bunch of dry snacks, and then chugging water only to realize how full you are vs having a hearty soup and feeling the fullness nearly immediately.

He might be whiney at first, but they get over it. Make it a gradual transition and he'll get the hang of it, and he won't starve to death while you're gone. Consider how much time he spends sleeping.  

Oh, and if you can get him running and playing until he's panting or has tried to lie down 2 or 3 times, try to do so once or twice a day! Great way to get engaged, bond, and burn some calories. Toys like Da Bird are popularly irresistible.

Here are tips on how to safely help a cat to lose weight: http://catinfo.org/?link=felineobesity

Cutting back on the amount of food won't help. You need to cut back on calories but only very slowly to prevent fatty liver disease. Dry foods are too calorie dense for cats. Purina One Hairball is about 326 calories per cup, way too much for a cat to have per day (dry food chart at http://binkyspage.tripod.com/dryfood.html, a little out of date but still useful) A healthy 10 pound average cat only needs about 250 calories per day.

An all canned food diet fed on a schedule will help. Since your cat already eats some canned food, eliminating the dry food will be easy. Most cats won't miss the dry food but for those few stubborn addicts, you can feed a very small amount of a grain-free dry food. You can find calorie content for many brands of canned foods on this chart: http://catinfo.org/docs/FoodChartPublic9-22-12.pdf

A multi-compartment programmable timed feeder works well to provide meals at set times when you are not home. I recommend the PetSafe 5 compartment feeder. canned food is ok if left out all day. There are ways to keep it from drying out too fast, such as freezing meal sized portions into cubes or small cups and placing the frozen meal into the feeder to slowly defrost until meal time.