Fat Cat Needs Help

Hi..I have a lovely little dark grey fur baby who is about 2 (not really sure as the rescue place wasn't sure either)....she has put on weight from her previous owners and in the year I have had her, I can't get her to lose weight.

She plays a little...but no more than a few minutes at a time....I have toys she likes and play with her as much as I'm home.

I have her on Merrick's weight loss food and she gets no more than half a cup in the day (a quarter in the morning, 1/8 when I come home and the rest before I go to bed) .... I don't know what to do ....she just doesn't seem to be losing weight...I've tried several foods, toys, play time...I'm really worried now...(everyone I know keeps saying she's too fat too fat and will get sick when she gets older) ... the vet says she's big but not overly so....according to charts she is obese...I'm also on a bit of a budget when it comes to her food (not saying I won't buy more expensive if that's what she needs but I can't keep changing her food)

Please help me and my kitty! Help!

Is there any way you can add canned food? I know most people will say to take away the dry and feed only canned but I was able to get 4 cats to lose some weight by adding canned and feeding less dry food. If you can afford to feed canned only that would be great.

I couldn't afford expensive canned food, I just feed Friskies Pate canned food and they are also eating the Merrick Healthy weight dry food. All four were very over weight but they slowly lost weight and they look good now. Stick with Pate style canned food, if you can afford better canned food that great too. Fancy Feast is a good one to use if you only have one cat but I'm feeding 7 so I can't afford that one.

I think your suggestion is right....I have had pate foods suggested to me....I've tried her on chunky stew type foods and she won't touch them .. but she will banana or cheese or butter (until I stop her *LOL*)....so maybe it's the consistency ... will try it..thank you!

I'd take her off all people food and switch her to a pate food as @Snugglecat  suggested.  We also weaned our cats off of dry food altogether.  

Okay...I keep getting advice from everywhere, including the vet....here's the deal.

Fiona was a rescue cat.  She was raised on kibble.  I have her on weight management kibble because she gained a lot of weight over a year.  I don't free feed her, she has portion control (no more than half a cup of food over a whole day).  She is on Merrick healthy weight dry food.  She started to lose on the Merrick but now she seems to have gained. 

She won't eat people food except cheese, corn chips or banana.  (which I avoid giving her too much off, if she gets it at all, it's a couple of tiny tiny pieces)

She won't touch any of the wet foods I have tried; tried chicken/turkey in jelly, in gravy and now pate.  She won't eat any fish flavoured foods at all.

She turns up her nose and walks away.

I have tried a tiny amount of food covered in kibble.  Still nothing.

It's been three days of trying this at dinner time (12 hours after her morning meal).  She ate a couple of pieces of kibble from the top of the wet food on day 2 but now nothing.

I will NOT starve my cat because I have been told this can kill a cat (starving meaning giving her no food except the wet).

She gets only kibble in the morning and then I've been trying the littlest amount of wet covered by dry at dinner time.

I know she's over weight and I need to get her weight down.

I am at my wits end and terribly concerned about her weight.

HELP!  Fiona and I need help!

Welcome to The Cat Site, @FionasOwner! I'm sorry to hear Fiona's weight gain and your difficulties getting her to eat wet food. Cats can be so stubborn!

First off, just in case you haven't seen it, here's a link to some tips on transitioning a cat's food from dry to something else. I've noticed that lots of people seem to tempt their cats to eat new foods by using FortiFlora, though I've never tried it.

I'm especially curious about what wet foods (brands and flavors) you've already tried with Fiona, just so we know what's not working. Perhaps some other members can offer suggestions of foods that helped their cats get off dry food.

That said, here are some of Edwina and Ireland's food recommendations for Fiona:

-Our cats seem to particularly like Nutro Natural Choice, which comes in small cans: chunky chicken seems to be a favorite for lots of cats whose people post on The Cat Site, and ours also like the minced chicken and sliced turkey.

-Weruva's canned Cats in the Kitchen foods are low-carb and relatively low-calorie so might be worth trying, too. (Their pouches are higher carb because of thickened gravy, but our cats love the chicken and pumpkin so I drain a lot of the sauce.)

-Ireland, our pickier cat, loves Tiki's Gourmet Carnivore foods; they're caloric but high-protein and low-carb so they seem to keep the cats sated for a long, long time. The cats especially love the liver flavors, which have big chunks and lots of juice.

-We don't feed them Fancy Feast Classics but they might also be worth a look because they're low carb, easy to find, and generally popular.

-As are Friskies pates; unfortunately, they do have rice but lots of cats love them and they have a strong (=appealing!) smell. (Our cats were sent home from the shelter with a few cans of Friskies and they ate it, even when they were still preferring dry food.)

-In general, to keep the carbs down, I'd avoid (if at all possible) any foods with wheat or corn gluten, and any form of potato or peas.

FWIW, we weaned our cats off dry food in about a month or so. I admit that it helped a lot that they'd been underfed as kittens and had a lot of food anxieties and insecurities so would eat pretty much anything, but they had a big, big preference for dry food when we started. We started by putting out less dry food during the day and offering more wet food meals. Then we only put out dry food at night, gradually reducing the amounts of dry as we increased the wet; initially the cats waited for the dry food. We kept tapering the dry food by using it only as a topper/garnish, until there were only a few kibbles per dish. Then one day everybody forgot about the dry food. And I do mean that literally!

I hope some of this helps. Our previous cat also gained weight on dry diet food and I wish I'd known then what I know now about cat foods and nutrition! I think you're doing the right thing by switching Fiona to wet food and hope you're able to find her some foods she likes soon!

I was also able to transition all my cats from being kibble eaters their entire lives to eating only wet food now.   It CAN be done, but you are correct in that you definitely don't want to starve her. 

It really IS a matter of finding the right food.  I can't tell you how many cans we went through until we found something that worked.  And then they stopped liking that, and we tried something else. Our cats also love the Nutro Natural Choice Chunky Chicken, and some of the Weruva, and and certain Merrick, and Pinnacle and Fancy Feast Classics and even SHeba.  Also Soulistic...that's what we transitions with.

Are you crushing her kibble when you put it on top of some wet food?  That's what you need to do, not just put pieces of kibble on top.  Powder it

BUT, in the meantime, to get her to lose weight while still eating kibble, you need to cut down on her portions if she is gaining .  She will feel more full if you feed her a kibble that is lower in carbs and higher in protein.  Something like Evo.  Maybe this article will help you:  http://www.thecatsite.com/a/how-to-compare-cat-foods-calculate-carbs-dry-matter-basis

Thanks for all the great advice everyone ... I have tried her on Nutro jellied and gravy foods...tried her on Whiskas pate .. I'm going to try her on the wet food that Merrick makes which is the same as her dry food...what seems to turn her off is the smell .. so I"m wondering if the same brand of wet food as her dry will smell similar enough to help her eat it....last nights 4th try at wet food (Whiskas) was a disaster...she wouldn't even go to her bowl until very late in the evening when I had replaced the tiny amount of wet food with kibble with just fresh kibble...I'm sure she thinks I'm starving her...I have cut her portion size in the morning to 1/8 of a cup (she only gets 1/2 a cup over the whole day, usually 1/4 in the morning and then 1/8 when I get home after work and then 1/8 at bedtime to keep her from waking me in the middle of the night) ... I'm hoping the owner of the Global Pet Food store I go to can help me with her food issues ... will keep everyone posted!

Our previous cat loved some of Merrick's canned foods--Cowboy Cookout and Turducken--and I remember someone in a pet food store telling me Merrick's canned foods tend to be very appealing to cats. (Though our new cats would not eat the cans left over from the previous cats!) I pureed the Merrick foods, adding a little extra water, in the miniprocessor for them cat that liked them.

Good to know.....and since she eats their dry food, I'm hoping she will like the wet....

Have you tried pouring tuna water on the wet food?  Sometimes that helps.

Oh this was so helpful for my grey tabby too!!

Have you tried Purebites freeze dried chicken treats? Break it up and crumble on top of canned food. I have had to do this with my cat. This was suggested to some other members and it seems to work for most cats.