My Cats Are Overweight - Help

[meowpav]

Hi there. My family has two cats, ages 10(ish) and 8(ish). They are both female and, unfortunately, are both overweight. The older of the two is not much of a concern. Although she has a little extra baggage, she is still very active. The younger cat is the one that worries me. She is significantly larger, very sentient, and is now facing health issues, which I think could be largely due to her weight/diet. Because of all of this, I've been wondering if we could make any changes to their diet.

They currently eat both wet and dry food. My family owns an automatic feeder that refills their dry food (Fancy Feast) a couple times a day. As for the wet food, each cat eats 1/2 of a Fancy Feast Petites serving twice a day (1/2 serving for breakfast and 1/2 serving for dinner). I've seen a couple sources on the internet telling me that dry food should be avoided altogether, as it's pretty much the feline equivalent of junk food. I've mentioned the idea of quitting the dry food to my parents in hopes of helping our cats' health, but they're hesitant because they're unsure about weaning the cats off the food.

I'm in sort of a tough situation because a few months ago, we were told that our younger cat has kidney problems (I don't know what exactly and I am waiting for my parents to find vet visit summary) that most likely will not get better. Her butt/stomach is often covered in urine and we frequently have to clean her with wipes. My heart breaks for her because when we found her, she was a young, agile, healthy cat. Now she is extremely sentient, overweight, and is facing health problems. I want to help her as much as I can because she's the sweetest baby and I don't want her quality of life to continue on a bad route.

Any help or advice is appreciated <3

 

[maggie101]

You are correct about the dry food. More dry=more health problems. There are better brands of dry like dr elseys. Wet is expensive but so is taking your cat to the vet. Most people feed their cats on a schedule like 2-3x a day. Skip the free feeding. Wish I could help more but other members will help

 

[maggie101]

 

[meowpav]

I still appreciate this a lot! I'm glad I could at least get some confirmation about the dry food so that I can do more to help them

 

[Kieka]

My cats are similar food habit of wet meal with dry free feed. We also had some concerns over weight. The step we recently took was very simple. We took up the dry food at night. Simply removing night time munchies has reduced the weight of my two who were getting overweight. It hasn't been dramatic change or anything. Just a little off over the last month. And we haven't had a kitty revolt or anything over that simple change.

Maybe if you convince your family to start small by just putting up the dry food at night (or preventing the dry from refilling from 5pm to 5am). That small change could improve their weight without a dramatic impact on their habits. If it goes over well, maybe look at options to further reduce kibble by maybe reducing the refills during g the day too. But start with small changes and work towards the big.

Another thing you can look st is changing to a lower carb dry food. They are out there and mean your kitties can keep the dry but maybe get better nutrition from it.

 

[meowpav]

This is super helpful, thank you! I'll talk with my parents and try to start with no food at night and see how that goes.