Ever put your cat on a diet?

[LynzM]

How long before he stops being a whiny, pestering, plastic-dinosaur-chewing beast!?

:banghead:



:rofl:

[TZ]

1. Neither of my cats are on a diet...

But they are both whiny, pestering paper eating beasts..:rofl:

[LynzM]

3. LOL

Well, we have two girls who weigh in at something like 7 and 8 lbs. Then we have the Beast, the fat boy, who weighs in at 18!! :wow:

So Z built the girls a cat-box... narrow enough for them to get into, where we can leave the food out, but the big cat can't get in there and snack all day. So he's kinda nuts from the 'rationing' that he's not used to...

Your cats eat paper? :crazy:

[TZ]

14. Yep..

They have a special love for Toilet Paper and Paper towels....
Oh and for somereason hardcover book covers..:crazy:

[Guava Jelly]

2. I've been trying

I don't think it's working (21 lbs)

[LynzM]

4. Eep!

Our big cat is currently around 18, hence the need for the diet!

[foxfeet]

5. It never stops.

We've had better luck with Iams Multi-cat food. Our fat boy has actually lost some weight.

[LynzM]

8. Oh goody....

:P It's only the first "real" day of his diet, so we'll have to give it a bit and see if it helps, but I can't imagine it not. He's the "snacker" and we've just taken away the snacks.

[LeftyMom]

6. My mother is trying with her fat cat, Joe.

So far he just eats the kitten's food after he's done with his. As far as I can tell he's going to be seriously pear shaped until she grows up and kicks his ass.

[LynzM]

9. Ooh, good luck.

That's why we were stumped for such a long time... but now we have a box for the girls to eat in, with an opening to small for the fat cat to get into... *fingers crossed*!

[LeftyMom]

11. Joe's evil. He'd probably eat the box. Or Molly. Or my mother.

:scared:

[LynzM]

16. LOL

Well, the box is made of plywood, so he might run out of teeth first... but your mother, yikes. :scared:

[charlie and algernon]

7. trying

Esther weighs in at 14 pounds, so cut her off the regular Adult food and am giving her "light" adult food instead and cutting back how much I give her, following the vet's instructions. She doesn't seem to like the new food all that much, and will stare at it for a second, but she's eating it.

[LynzM]

10. Hrm...

Yeah, we haven't tried that route yet, just feeding fixed portions of "indoor adult" for now... Good luck to you!

[charlie and algernon]

12. I left out an "and"

I'm giving her small portions and giving her light adult food.

[LynzM]

17. Ah, gotcha.

:)

[DS1]

13. Never, but I do help him bulk up for winter

It's quite the process going from two packets of food and a nibble at the dry plate a day, to 4 or 5 packets and the entire plate of dry food. It starts early November, and goes till about Dec 15. He's an outdoor cat, still has some wild in him yadda yadda yadda


it's all lost in spring, and he's back to his slinky self. the bastard.

[LynzM]

18. Wow.

That's a totally different kind of cat-existance than our (lazy) indoor ones have! Makes sense, though. :)

[Bertha Venation]

15. Never have.

:rofl: plastic-dinosaur-chewing beast

[LynzM]

19. I'd suggest avoiding it...

If at all possible.

Think of the dinosaurs! :rofl:

[Bertha Venation]

21. We have enough problems right now with Cabin Fever

No one wants to spend much time outside in the cold and/or rain. We have a house fulla mad cats. And they're all picking on poor little Rat Face. :(

[LynzM]

24. Awwww!

Too adorable, Bertha! :D Good luck with all the cats!

[Sultana]

33. Pretty cat

:)

[Zomby Woof]

20. We have one that needs one

But it seems very hard to do without risking starving the other, since he is in normal shape (physically anyway - because they're both nuts). :hi:

[Kashka-Kat]

22. Try an all-meat Atkins diet - seriously, its becoming more well known that cats being

obligate carnivores do best on all meat- unlike dogs they evolved to eat almost all meat (except for grains in the stomach of their prey). The skyrocketing diabetes & obesity in cats is a result of the dry-food diet containing large amts of grain, which is basically dog food made smaller for cats.

I put my 2 rotund former shelter cats on it and they've become quite svelte & muscular with a lot of energy (too much in fact!) and don't whine.... except for those times I've had no wet food in the house and ended up feeding dry. Then they started up again with the begging and food cravings. Can't blame em, I guess, I respond the same way to tortilla chips!

The meat/fat satisfies them in a way the other stuff just doesn't - you can't apply your human tastes to what they need in their diet.

You don't have to spend a lot of money, in fact some of the fancier cat foods with rice & fruits and vegtables in it are no good, too many carbs. You do have to read labels and not get anything with corn, rice, gluten,or any other grains in it. 9 lives has the 4 packs in turkey, tuna, chicken and some others without grain that are about 25c a can.

Go to felinediabetes.com for further info, and/or google Dr. Elizabeth Hodgkins - this has become a passion of mine, I lost a fabulous cat to diabetes a few yrs back. Still miss him...

[Lyric]

25. It's also important to feed more than just meat.

Bone meal, skin, connective tissue, organ meats, etc. Cats need more than just meat. Too much meat and too little bone meal can cause serious problems all by itself, not to mention the problems that can arise from a lack of other types of tissue.

:hi:

[Kashka-Kat]

35. yes, maybe I meant to say carb free - or defining meat to include all those things

Which sounds totally gross and unappetizing to me but that's the point - kitty would prefer canned mousie I'm sure (with skin and tail etc. included) Yummy!

Dr. Hodgkins book points out that the canned foods with byproducts are better for cats because they do include all of those things - whereas the more expensive brands with pure meat, vegies & potatoes and brown rice etc. while very appetizing to us aren't so good for the cats.

[elocs]

23. Year ago I put my cat on a diet and since then I have disabused them of the concept

of the food bowl that is always somehow magically full. Since that time my cats clearly understand that I am the source of their sustenance and so they know they had better not cop an attitude. That pretty much ended the sassy cat attitude. My current cat does have the habit of slapping me in the face with her paw when she wants to eat, but I ignore that and don't allow her to train me.

[charlie and algernon]

29. yup, I refill the bowl before I leave for work

and again in the evening after I get home, if it empties before that she's learned to wait. though occasionally she'll wake me up early in the morning. She's also started pacing herself, where before she'd gobble it up right away and then have to wait 8 hours to get fed again. now she eats a little bit at a time and so there's always at least a little food in her bowl.

[whistler162]

26. Yes, and after I got out of the hospital...

I didn't try again.

[Mike 03]

27. I constantly try, but he meows whenever his food even gets low, so it has been futile.

I give him "healthy weight" dry food plus moist once a week.

I really have tried to bring his weight down, but I can't stand the meowing, so I always give in.

[applegrove]

28. When I tried to put my big male cat on a diet he would just get angry and sometimes attack.

[Chemical Bill]

30. I did.

She had all the dry food she wanted, but tasty wet stuff first thing in the morning, that's it. She kept waking me earlier and earlier, but she lost weight. Since I could get back to sleep easily, and ignore her antics the rest of the time, it worked out fine.

Bill

[libodem]

31. nope, too much work

plus Mooner Mow is a dainty, petite, little thing. She always has food out and just picks at it. Once in a while she will especially like a particular can of wet food and eat all of it in a 24 hour time frame. Usually she leaves about 1/2 which goes to Bob and Ralph. Bob is a p-i-g pig. But he's such an ass would never deprive him because he would make all of our lives miserable.

[jobycom]

32. How long depends on how much you feed him? You can cut the whining short

by not feeding him anything for a few weeks. After that, he won't whine. Otherwise, he doesn't stop.

I've had two bouts of success with dieting cats, and the rest it never worked. The first time was my daughter's idea. Rather than only limiting food intake, she put their food on a counter-high table and made them leap for it. They quickly became smooth, svelt panthers again. Two theories on why: either because the cats knew the food was available, thus not feeling as though they were going to starve, but still had the food out of sight, so there was less boredom eating (that's my theory), or because the extra work getting to the food made it more like hunting, so they regulated their food intake more naturally. A friend of mine used to hide her cat's food in different places, and she said it worked, so maybe the second reason is more valid. Anyway, not only did it work, but my oldest cat, who was fourteen and fat as a pig, couldn't make the leap at first, and in about two weeks she was thin and strong enough to do so easily. She's sixteen now, and in better shape than she had been in years. (for clarity, we didn't starve her the two weeks, we put a chair near the table so she could make a two-stage ascent. At first she even needed help with that).

The second diet method that worked was getting a second cat. I lost an older pet late last year, and my younger cat, who was already getting round, got even more round, and increasingly neurotic. Used to stare at her own reflection in shiny surfaces. Yes, cats grieve, and feel lonely. So at Christmas we got a baby kitten, and the older cat, after initial hissing fits, has become the kitten's protector and guardian. (She even scolded Jr for failing to use the litter box, and pushed her towards said litter box!). The interaction improved her spirits greatly, and she eats much less now, and has become a more healthy size.

Every other attempt to put my cats on a diet has failed. So good luck! Put your valuables in locked drawers at night, too. They know.

[DarkTirade]

34. It shouldn't last too long.

Only until they figure out where the human jugular is. :P

[Resuscitated Ethics]

36. I did and it backfired $$$ hepatic lipidosis urge caution

Never again. A vet we stopped seeing after this episode put her on the science diet lo carb diet. After a month the cat stopped eating entirely and went into a funk. Our emergency referral vet was so worried that she did a feeding tube-feed regimen for a month. Hepatic Lipidosis: once it shows symptoms the choice is tube feed or hand feed. But if you find hand-feeding is not working than it is generally too late to go back to the tube feed. This was two surgeries and a month of tube-feeding (had to come home from work at lunch during the first week of four times a day). After the lipidosis cleared, for good measure, her insulin went out of whack so we entered the "spontaneous diabetes" stage of this dietary fiasco. We did insulin and blood testing for six months before she self-regulated. We have been warned not to mess with any cats diet too much.

We feed this cat lo or no-carb food now-- this stuff is the cats meow if you are looking for a dry no-grain food-- http://www.naturesvariety.com/instinct_cat_kibble is about the lowest carb kibble you can find. Innova EVO is the other brand.

Bottom line: don't "self-feed" if you can at all help it. Most cats will eat themselves fat if given half a chance.