Who lets their cat get this fat?

[pstokely]

Is this cat a GOP donor?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLkjA8Waz-E

[begin_within]

1. That breaks my heart - the cat should be taken away from that owner, who is harming its health

[pstokely]

2. Even stray cats get fat

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eLIMc4khe0&mode=related&search=

[bbernardini]

4. This is very true...

One of my cats was abandoned by its family, and it figured out that if it went from house to house, everybody would feed him. When we adopted him, he was quite overweight, and had to be put on weight management food.

[AlCzervik]

9. i hope someone adopted him.

[mduffy31]

3. Okay but this cat is funny

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPSBWkIDJL0&mode=related&search=

[hyphenate]

5. You can't always blame the owner--

trust me on this one. My Garibaldi is about 20 lbs. He is a Maine Coon lookalike, which means he's big to begin with. However, he eats the same as the other cats in the household--dry food only, water, hardly ever any canned food at all. And I don't think he eats significantly more than the others in the house, who weigh in at 16 (Jean-Luc), 9-10 (Delenn) and 8 (Oliver).

Cats, like people, weigh in at various amounts, some just naturally heavier than others. Garlbaldi is a long haired cat as well, and that does make him look even larger--Oliver, the youngest, is also a long hair, but he's actually more active and it keeps him leaner. Garibaldi is going on 12 now, so like all the seniors in the household, he's resting on his laurels now (and the couch, the bed, the footrest, the floor, and wherever he can catch a good snooze. :))

[Maine-ah]

6. lol, here's my fat cat.

I have never met a skinny male orange cat.

[AlCzervik]

7. my neighbor's cat weighs 22 pounds, he's gotten so big i didn't realize

it was the same cat i had seen when they first got him, i thought this was a new cat that ate the old one.

[Blue_In_AK]

8. I don't think it's necessarily a matter of "letting" the cat

get obese. We have a fat cat in this house, too. She eats exactly the same food as her brother. He's skinny as a rail, she's fat. Not quite as fat as this cat, but still...

Maybe it's just something in their genes.

[Alexander]

10. Obviously you've never been owned by a cat.

I have four, two of whom were maybe 10 pounds, a third came out to about 20, and his brother weighed in at 30. They were all fed the same food every day, and sparingly (once a day).

Certain things like metabolism and the cat's choice to be active also come in to play. The lightest one still jumps up on top of the refrigerator, and she just turned 17. She's like the Jack LeLanne of cats.

The 30-pound one wasn't really very active, which probably had something to do with his eventual weight (ironically, his brother was originally bigger than him).

Plus in some breeds of cats, males grow to be much larger than females, just naturally.

[MN ChimpH8R]

11. A good friend of mine has a Maine Coon

that weighs 26 pounds. He's kind of tubby, but mainly he's just a big cat. My cat is about half that size, and he's a decent sized cat. :shrug:

[GoneOffShore]

12. Here's a big restaurant cat

She can barely make it onto the banquette to beg for food.

[flamingyouth]

13. I found an obese stray cat a few years ago.

He was covered with fleas and had lost a great deal of his fur because he'd pulled it out due to the itching. He was a mess - some jackass had him declawed (:grr:) and just threw him out. Once we got the flea thing under control and he got comfortable in the house, he put on even more weight. The vet used to get testy with me over it, but I didn't really know what to do (hire a personal trainer?). Chester was the sweetest cat in the world; he was a volunteer with the Delta Society and visited nursing homes. Everyone loved that big lug. He was about 26 pounds at his largest. I did get him down to about 21 or so. He passed away in early 2004 and I still miss him.