We have two cats, one a perfectly ordinary moggy, the other is different. Found near death as a kitten, he's had one back leg and most of his tail amputated. He can't jump any height; he clambers onto the furniture. He has a rattly, chesty cough sometimes, and wheezes from time to time. (This has been vet-checked, it's not an infection.) One eye has a cataract, and the pupil of the other is the wrong shape, but he seems to see well enough. We had him neutered at six months.
We don't let him out because he's too stupid to find his way home again; he's dashed out a couple of times (not recently) and we had to form search parties to get him back, days later. (Live on a farm.)
He's also enormously fat. Huge. Back-breaking. Has his own gravitational pull. And this is obviously not good for him. I worry particularly about athritis in his remaining hip as he ages - he's five and a half-ish.
We have tried restricting his access to food to certain times of the day, but obviously he's still eating too much for his activity-levels, and he constantly begs for food. We have tried buying all sorts of toys, but he's not really interested in playing for more than a couple of minutes at a time. I even tried one of those balls that the animal has to push around to get kibble out, but unfortunately the dog figured out that one faster than he did.
Both cats are fed mainly dried food, and they share one sachet of wet stuff in the evening. No other cat I've ever had has been over-weight; what can I do with this one? Is there low-calorie catfood available?