How to get a cat to gain weight

When I took two of my cats to vet for annual visit-my vet would like one of my cats to gain some weight. She is 9 yr old silver tabby weigh 5 1/2 lb. The most she has weighed at the vet was back in 1999 when she weighed 7 lbs. She is inside cat but does go outside for an hour or two day. In really good health and eats very well with a dab of moist food in am and dry food always available. A gain of 1/2 to 1 lb would be good. Any high calorie ideas??

Did the vet not have any suggestions for what kind of food to give her? What food do you presently give her? Does she have any underlieing health problems that cause her to be so small?

A friend of mine has an old, very skinny kitty, who has chronic renal failur - so she's limited in what food's she can feed. What she does do, is get a variety of renal diets, in canned form, and feeds Sam as often as Sam would like.

My Charlie has gotten underweight a few times when... but he always seems to have no problem putting the pounds back on once he's healthy - with just free choice of his kibbles (medi-cal mature formulae)

.maggie

Originally Posted by GailC

When I took two of my cats to vet for annual visit-my vet would like one of my cats to gain some weight. She is 9 yr old silver tabby weigh 5 1/2 lb. The most she has weighed at the vet was back in 1999 when she weighed 7 lbs. She is inside cat but does go outside for an hour or two day. In really good health and eats very well with a dab of moist food in am and dry food always available. A gain of 1/2 to 1 lb would be good. Any high calorie ideas??

Click to expand...

Hi Gail,

Since your vet (I would assume!) has ruled out any medical reason for her having lost weight, next question really is what dry food are you feeding her currently, does she have a finicky appetite at all?

Depending on what dry food you are feeding, there may be recomendations I and others can give for a different dry to try, and I would personally begin giving her additional feedings of a good quality wet food twice a day. I'd offer her at least 3 oz. of wet twice a day.

A nine year old cat should be fed a good quality food for mature cats. Free feeding dry and small meals of wet should keep her at a healthy weight. If she has a hard time keeping weight you might want to consider a dewormer that gets tapeworms (Drontal). As well, older cats commonly develop a condition called Hyperthyroidism. This causes the cats metabolism to speed up and you will see a resulting weight loss despite a ravenous appetite. Chronic Renal Failure is also common is older cats and will also result in a decrease in body condition.
To increase the caloric intake of your cat you could put her on a good quality kitten food. Kitten foods have more calories but also have high amounts of protein. Adding more protien to the diet increases the workload of the liver and kidneys so you should be sure that the bloodwork is clear before you do that.
If you decide to do bloodwork to check the liver and kidneys you can check the thyroid levels at the same time. If your cat has never had bloodwork done before this would be the time to do so. Hyperthyroidism and Chronic Renal Failure are both diseases that if caught early can be managed and have a fairly good prognosis.
-Meghan

this is 2013. wow