My cat is overweight and I need feline-experienced or veterinary help on regulating its diet.?
My cat is 10 and as a result of being old she stopped being active and hunting. When that happened, she became overweight. Sometimes its Diet is wet, canned food (9lives) and sometimes dry food (Olives, Friskies.) What’s the suggested amount of food and how often should I fill its bowl?
I have a younger cat too that needs to eat but it’s a healthy weight.
What to do?
The reason your cat is getting fat, apart from the lack of exercise, are excessive carbohydrates from the food.
All the brands you mention are lower grade quality foods and are loaded with grain (carbohydrate), which is the main cause of obesity and diabetes in cats. So simply by eliminating the grain, you can get very good results. You will need to switch to a better Quality food, but your cat will eat less of it since it will have less fillers and more nutrition, so in the end you will be at about the same amount financially.
Read this article on feline obesity: http://www.catnutrition.org/obesity.php
I wouldn‘t recommend feeding any dry food. Cats are designed to get their water from food. That’s the way nature designed them, they have low thirst drive. When fed dry, they won’t drink enough to compensate for the lack of moisture. They will only consume about 50% of the water they should be having. This can lead to kidney disease, UTI, crystals, blockage, renal failure and more. Especially if you have a tom, this is crucial. Male cats have a narrower urethra than female cats and are more prone to blockage from the crystals.
Free feeding also contributes to obesity. And the fact that dry food is over-processed means, that most of it’s little nutrition has been already destroyed, leaving almost no nutrients for your cat. It needs to eat more to meet it’s needs, and in the process consumes more calories from the fillers.
Btw wetting the dry food will not help. There’s bacteria on the kibble and the water would just allow it to grow.
The only way to give the cat it’s natural hydration is to feed it wet food only.
But some wet foods are not of a very high quality, either. That goes for most commercial foods. Just like the dry, they are often made with cheap fillers such as corn, wheat, soy, rice etc. These are not a part of cat’s natural diet (it’s an obligate carnivore – it eats meat) and they are not designed to digest it. Grain is carbohydrate which the cats can’t process and it turns into blood sugar and fat, causing diabetes and obesity. In the wild, where cats only hunt for meat, diabetes and obesity are unheard of. It’s us who cause these by feeding a species inappropriate food.
We usually read labels on our food, but rarely on the food for our cats. Learn to read the label and understand the ingredients. The healthiest food to feed apart from raw feeding is grain-free wet food with no by-product. Some good brands are Wellness CORE, EVO, Merrick, Nature’s Variety, Blue Buffalo Wilderness and more. These will give your cat the proper hydration and nutrition it’s designed to get and it will be strong and healthy.
If you switch it’s diet, do it gradually, by mixing the current food with the new one over couple of weeks until there’s only the new. This will prevent diarrhea and upset stomach.
You will probably get a lot of different answers, so google feline nutrition or look at the links below, and do the research for yourself. I personally wasn’t able to find one reliable source (besides the pet food industry) that would say grain is beneficial for cats or that dry is beneficial for them.
More on cat nutrition below,
Good luck!
August 21st, 2010 at 4:38 pm
Try giving the two cats food in separate rooms. give the healthy weight one what you usually give it and give the fat one a bit less and leave it there for only a little while. You can buy special weight loss cat biscuits if it is fat, but I reccomend giving it wet food and leave it there approx 15 mins and then for the rest of the day biscuits.
Good luck!
References :
August 21st, 2010 at 4:58 pm
Hi Michael. There is a vet who has a great site with a lot of information on feline nutrition. Read the main article and the page on obesity.
http://catinfo.org/
It’s a lot of reading but very informative and it includes info about how to figure out how much to feed, and also the amount of weight an overweight cat should lose per week. you need to make her diet very gradual since it is actually very dangerous for their liver if they lose too much too fast.
As far as what to feed, avoid grains since cats are not made to have to deal with that. It is best to feed a high protein , very low carb, grain free food. wet if possible but not the kind of canned food with "chunks" "shreds" or "in gravy" — those usually are higher carb because they have stuff like wheat gluten to form the little pieces of fake meat or to thicken the gravy,.
A very good kind is Merrick Cowboy Cookout if she is OK with eating Beef. If you dont have an independent pet supply store that carries it, you can order it from petfooddirect.com. This is low carb, high protein, moderate fat — cats need more fat than we do but some of the low carb foods put more fat and thus more calories than is really ideal. The Merrick has lower fat and lower calories than many of the other premium canned food. It is high quality and close to the nutrient percentages in a cat’s natural diet
Not premium quality but also with decent nutrient percentages are the "classic" varieties of Fancy Feast.
References :
August 21st, 2010 at 5:48 pm
Your cats age and inactivity is one of the reasons that she’s overweight, the other is her food. What you’re feeding is the equivalent to McDonald’s day after day. Friskies and similar brands are among the worst you can possibly feed your cat, and if her only problem is that she’s over weight then you’re pretty lucky.
Switch her to a senior food if she isn’t already. A senior weight management would be best. A senior food has less calories than an adult formula and a senior weight management will have even less. You also want a food that is completely grain free. Friskies is about 60% filler, with no nutritional value what so ever. The only thing it does is increase the chances of having an over weight kitty. It also has by-products, pet food companies are legally allowed to use euthanized animals, road kill, still born animals etc in by-products because their super cheap and they can get away with it. Bee pulp is also a no no in a food. Its a stool firmer that counter acts all of the grain, other wise your cat would have a ton of diarrhea.
You should feed her twice a day in small portions, usually a little less th at what the feeding guidelines on the bag are because those are always high. If you leave a bowl of food out all the time, even if its a weight loss food it won’t do any good because she’ll just over eat.
some great brands would be the NOW! senior weight management, Acana, Natural Balance, Taste of the Wild, Solid Gold, First Mate, the grain free Merrick.
ps. you should also cut out treats, its just added calories. If she won’t hunt anymore try using a laser pointer to get her to run around. Its really amusing for you as well as getting her to exercise
brands to avoid like the plague are: friskies, fancy feast, purina, whiska’s, science diet, Iams, anything you can buy in a grocery store…..
Good luck!
References :
cat owner/work in a holistic pet food store
August 21st, 2010 at 6:15 pm
Two things.. first I would recommend switching to a quality all-life-stages food so both can eat the same food. Felidae and Blue Wilderness and Taste of the Wild are a couple I know of offhand. If you read the ingredients you’ll note there’s no corn, wheat, or by-products. These are closer to a natural diet. If these are outside of your budget, I would recommend switching your older girl to a senior food.
Second I would start doing measured meals for them. Look at the bag and see how much they should be eating for their weight. For the heavy cat, cut a little off that amount. Then for both cats, divide into two or three meals every day and separate them for about 15 minutes. Let them eat what they want and then put the food away until later. It might take a few days to get used to but most cats will adjust to meal times. Good luck!
References :
Owner of a cat that weighed 18 pounds, down to 12 now..
August 21st, 2010 at 6:27 pm
The reason your cat is getting fat, apart from the lack of exercise, are excessive carbohydrates from the food.
All the brands you mention are lower grade quality foods and are loaded with grain (carbohydrate), which is the main cause of obesity and diabetes in cats. So simply by eliminating the grain, you can get very good results. You will need to switch to a better Quality food, but your cat will eat less of it since it will have less fillers and more nutrition, so in the end you will be at about the same amount financially.
Read this article on feline obesity: http://www.catnutrition.org/obesity.php
I wouldn‘t recommend feeding any dry food. Cats are designed to get their water from food. That’s the way nature designed them, they have low thirst drive. When fed dry, they won’t drink enough to compensate for the lack of moisture. They will only consume about 50% of the water they should be having. This can lead to kidney disease, UTI, crystals, blockage, renal failure and more. Especially if you have a tom, this is crucial. Male cats have a narrower urethra than female cats and are more prone to blockage from the crystals.
Free feeding also contributes to obesity. And the fact that dry food is over-processed means, that most of it’s little nutrition has been already destroyed, leaving almost no nutrients for your cat. It needs to eat more to meet it’s needs, and in the process consumes more calories from the fillers.
Btw wetting the dry food will not help. There’s bacteria on the kibble and the water would just allow it to grow.
The only way to give the cat it’s natural hydration is to feed it wet food only.
But some wet foods are not of a very high quality, either. That goes for most commercial foods. Just like the dry, they are often made with cheap fillers such as corn, wheat, soy, rice etc. These are not a part of cat’s natural diet (it’s an obligate carnivore – it eats meat) and they are not designed to digest it. Grain is carbohydrate which the cats can’t process and it turns into blood sugar and fat, causing diabetes and obesity. In the wild, where cats only hunt for meat, diabetes and obesity are unheard of. It’s us who cause these by feeding a species inappropriate food.
We usually read labels on our food, but rarely on the food for our cats. Learn to read the label and understand the ingredients. The healthiest food to feed apart from raw feeding is grain-free wet food with no by-product. Some good brands are Wellness CORE, EVO, Merrick, Nature’s Variety, Blue Buffalo Wilderness and more. These will give your cat the proper hydration and nutrition it’s designed to get and it will be strong and healthy.
If you switch it’s diet, do it gradually, by mixing the current food with the new one over couple of weeks until there’s only the new. This will prevent diarrhea and upset stomach.
You will probably get a lot of different answers, so google feline nutrition or look at the links below, and do the research for yourself. I personally wasn’t able to find one reliable source (besides the pet food industry) that would say grain is beneficial for cats or that dry is beneficial for them.
More on cat nutrition below,
Good luck!
References :
http://www.catinfo.org/
http://www.blakkatz.com/dryfood.html
http://www.bornfreeusa.org/facts.php?more=1&p=359
http://cats.about.com/cs/catfood/a/canned_food.htm
http://feline-nutrition.org/index.php