Cat's diet

hi,
I have a question regarding feeding neutered male cats. Bilbo was neutered at age of 1 year and 4 months, he was already more than 5kg. Now he weights almost 6, and he's supposed to keep this weight. I see him "growing" day by day. And he's even more hungry than he ever was... He eats a can wet food per day (400 gr.) and about 60gr. dry Purina Pro plan for neutered cats. I'm afraid he'll need a diet very soon. how do you feed your neutered cats? And how can I prevent him from becoming really fat one?

Has he been wormed recently? Does he have fleas?

I would also ask about worming ..

If my metric calculations are correct ... your kittie is about 13 and one eighths lbs.. and is eating roughly 14 ounces of canned food and roughly 2 ounces of dry / half a cup ( standard 8 ounce cup full weigh s rougly 4 ounces)... This seems rather high to me... the wet food is about the amount a vet once told me for only feeding wet... Talk to the vet ... Have you given these amount s to the vet??

I'll try to calculate the measurments also... he's about 13 pounds, eating almost 14 ounces (as written on the can - a can per day, he eats a little less than that). Dry food 50-60gr. (I never know for sure because he has dry food all the time, usually he eats 100gr for 2 or 3 days) so this means 2 ounces.
He has no worms or fleas. he takes his pill every three months and however he's an extremely indoor cat. he's in good health. The vet says it's normal to eat more after neutering but he's growing fatter and fatter. I can't leave him without dry food as he'll meaw till he recieves some. Maybe I should give him less wet food. Unfortunatelly there is no dietic wet food in stores here. Any ideas, how do I proceed with cat diet.
By the way, nevermind that he's getting fat he plays, and runs around and jumps just like before.

To me, now that you've made the conversions, it sounds like you're feeding him FAR too much! A 13lb cat would get the amount you're feeding in wet food, if wet food were the only food they were getting, adding a substantial amount of dry on top of that is completley unnecessary, and probably the source of your cat getting bigger

In order to prevent him from gaining too much weight, you need to have calories taken in each day = to calories burned each day. This is the basics of dieting.

So the first question is what is Bilbo's daily calorie requirement?
To answer this you need to do a simple math calculation.
For a neutered adult this is 1.2 x RER (resting energy requirement)
where RER= 30W+70 (W= weight in kgs)
So for Bilbo this would be:
1.2 x (30x6 +70).
This equals 300 kcal.

Now the next step is you have to find out the kcal of the food.
This is a bit harder as most companies don't openly publish this often. I have tried looking for the past hour, but only can only find the data for the veterinary diets publish (after logging into their site), they don't have this on the pro plan site. The only way that I think you can get this information is to contact Purina and ask for the information.

Based from the infor on the veterinary diets page, the numbers ranged from 150-234 kcal/5.5 oz can (the lowest number being the weight loss kind), the dry foods were from 340-592 kcal/8 oz cup (same here with the lower number being the weight loss one).

Now I am just using these numbers as a comparsion, the aren't going to be totally accurate because you are feeding just regular food.

You claim to feed 60 g of dry. On the purina site they say 8 oz = 112 g, so you are feeding about half this so to make the math simple we will say 4 ozs.
As for the wet food, I am assuming the cans are 5.5 ozs as it seems like that is all that they come in.

So if we take to the two smallest numbers of the veterinary diet. That is the weight loss one we get 150 kcal/5.5 oz can and 340 kcal/8 oz cup. Now since you only feed 60 g of dry, we will half the dry to 170 kcal. So both those equal 320 kcal (150 + 170). If we look back at step one you will see that Bilbo is only suppose to receive 300 kcal a day.

Now I know this isn't totally accurate, but I pretty bet that the caloric concentration in the Pro Plan food is more than the Purina Weight loss formula. And since this even works out to more than he should get, I can safely say that he is receiving too much food.

If you can find out the specific caloric number of the dry and canned food that you are giving we can then work out to see what the proper amount for him would be.

Originally Posted by Gamina

I'll try to calculate the measurments also... he's about 13 pounds, eating almost 14 ounces (as written on the can - a can per day, he eats a little less than that). Dry food 50-60gr. (I never know for sure because he has dry food all the time, usually he eats 100gr for 2 or 3 days) so this means 2 ounces.
He has no worms or fleas. he takes his pill every three months and however he's an extremely indoor cat. he's in good health. The vet says it's normal to eat more after neutering but he's growing fatter and fatter. I can't leave him without dry food as he'll meaw till he recieves some. Maybe I should give him less wet food. Unfortunatelly there is no dietic wet food in stores here. Any ideas, how do I proceed with cat diet.
By the way, nevermind that he's getting fat he plays, and runs around and jumps just like before.

Click to expand...

Try gradually reducin the dry to get him down to either just canned or half a can and the current dry ... I realize you arent in the states and am not sure how vets are in your country but most here will revisit the diet issue... I dont want you to just go off and reduce his food without a qualified pro helping..

i have seen that many people on this site feed their cats wet food. my vet however told me no wet food, it has lots more calories than dry food and doesn't clean their teeth like dry food. and my vet seems to think 1/4 c. of food twice a day is plenty for my 15 lb cat.. so thats just something to think about.

Originally Posted by mlckeysue

i have seen that many people on this site feed their cats wet food. my vet however told me no wet food, it has lots more calories than dry food and doesn't clean their teeth like dry food. and my vet seems to think 1/4 c. of food twice a day is plenty for my 15 lb cat.. so thats just something to think about.

Click to expand...

I'm afraid you will find most people here will disagree with your vet. Vets often do not know much about nutrition as it isn't taught to them when they are in vet school. Dry food has many more calories than wet food (and the reason why I suspect your cat is 15 lbs).

It is also not correct that dry food cleans their teeth.

I really trust my vet for medical problems, but as far as food and nutrition goes I would rather get the information from people with more knowledge and experience. A lot of vets will just recommend what the sales folks give them for free without really knowing much about the food.

well, for now I'm going to hide his dry food during the day and leave it for the night only (so he won't wake us at 3am because he's hungry).
Here's what i found out about our food:
Wet food: Purina Friskies 400 gr. chicken can contains appr. 280 calories, fish mix can contains appr. 300. as written on the can.
Dry food: if I feed him only dry he'll need 85-100 g per day (I saw this on Pro plan site) actually he's having less caloric After care dry food for neutered cats. But I'm a bit reserved about feeding male cats with dry food only.
So i guess we have to stop the dry food... this will take a while and a lot of sleepless nights for us .
I also trust my vet for medical problems, but i'm not so sure about the food, he's an orthopedist actually. On the food queston he offered me Royal Canine dry food for neutered cats, but Bilbo never tried it, so we got proplan and he liked it.
anyway, thanks to all of you and i'll tell you in a few days how it's going here.