Young, very active cat becoming overweight on dry food

We adopted a beautiful 1-year-old calico whom we named Galatea at the beginning of 2016.  She has always been active and neither my husband nor I see her eat much.   When we got her she had a very round belly and initially we thought she was pregnant but it turned out to be tapeworms.    Over the last couple of months she has gained back the rounded belly and we thought she had worms again but the vet did a fecal test and they didn't find any indication of worms, and said that she has to be overeating and not getting enough exercise.

This is where we are confused.  She is a VERY active and playful cat.   We have seven other cats and they are all within normal weight and she doesn't eat more than they do, nor is she less active than they are.  We supervise their feedings because two of the cats have to eat special food, and so they only get fed 2-3 times a day.  She doesn't scarf her food or eat considerably more than the other cats. She has a few mouthfuls over about 5 minutes and maybe comes back for one more bite after a couple minutes if we haven't put the food away.  We occasionally give treats but not daily and we usually give plain freeze-dried chicken if we do give treats.

The only thing I can think is that she maybe needs to eat raw food rather than dry?  We feed her Nature's Variety Instinct Chicken Meal which is grain free and mostly protein.  We are very willing to change her diet if it will help her stay healthy. 

Any advice would be appreciated.

Kibble is high in carbs, meaning that it's very easy for cats to eat very little and get fat. I would encourage you to cut out the kibble and feed raw, canned, or freeze dried. You really don't want to feed kibble as the primary meals, at most a snack.

I agree with M missmimz - a wet or raw diet is by far the easiest way to get a cat to lose weight. Timed meals also help a great deal. [article="22395"][/article][article="29717"][/article][article="31116"][/article][article="32765"][/article][article="29646"][/article][article="31138"][/article][article="31129"][/article]

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I agree with @missmimz  and @Columbine... is it possible to eliminate the dry food and feed wet or raw?  Simply changing the type of food rather than the number of calories / amount of food could help your kitty lose weight without him feeling hungry.  It's great that you have scheduled mealtimes.

This page might be helpful to you as well: http://catinfo.org/?link=felineobesity  (not suggesting  that your kitty was obsese; just a good read for weight loss in general).

Thanks for the information! I read up on raw feeding and have already switched our two youngest cats, who have had chronic diarrhea since we adopted them to a commercial raw diet and things have improved greatly for them. I have switched Galatea to all wet food in preparation for ordering ground meat to make the food at home. Currently it's too expensive to feed all the cats raw food (we have 8) but hopefully we can get everyone switched over eventually.

There's nothing wrong with not being able to afford all raw food. High meat/low carb canned food is a great choice too, and many people successfully feed a combination of wet and raw to help keep costs down....or even simply for convenience's sake. Do what you need to to make things work for your cats AND your wallet

Columbine said:

There's nothing wrong with not being able to afford all raw food. High meat/low carb canned food is a great choice too, and many people successfully feed a combination of wet and raw to help keep costs down....or even simply for convenience's sake. Do what you need to to make things work for your cats AND your wallet

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We feed a combination of canned and raw foods: our cats have some dietary quirks so for us the costs of wet and raw foods are about the same. And the combination is very convenient, both so it's easy for my husband to feed the cats when I travel and because the cats have a tendency to get bored with their food. I don't think we could get away with feeding them only raw or only canned food. Adding in some home-cooked food has helped a lot, too!