Advise please on how to get my cat to loose weight

[Sunflower6]

Hi, my neutered Tom had his booster vaccinations yesterday and vet told me he needs to loose weight. The vet said cut his food down by 20%. My cat is always asking for food as it is. He has two pouches of wet food a day and some dry food. I bought my cat some James well beloved light complete dry food last night but he's not impressed so far. Would cutting out his dry food and just giving him 2 wet pouches a day start him off loosing weight. I really don't want him to be miserable we've just taken on a rescue kitten so he is already a bit put out but he does need to loose weight. I looked at the weight loss wet food at pets at home but it is v v expensive.

A safe rate of weight loss is 1-2% of their current bodyweight per week so if 6kg they can safely lose 60g-120g per week then as thy lose weight the amount they lose per week also drops.

ThornyBird - at your cat 'not being shaped like a draught excluder'!

Thank you jonsnowsghost so if he 'should' weigh say 3.8kg max weight loss to get from 6.8kg should take about 22 weeks?! So around six months at 138g loss per week. He is (or was) only a very small cat. So does mean overfeeding for sometime rather than going straight back to what I used to feed him before which is what I have been doing !! Gah!

Sorry just read that again and of course no it wouldnt be that amount each week as loss amount decreases as weight falls. Just worried he'salready lost weight too fast. Sorry about posting this hear op but your post promptes my reply but say if you wan me to start a separate thread

Yes that's right...so if you wanted the cat to go from 6.8kg to 3.8kg you can use the 2% bw per week but it is easier to go by month.

The first month at 6.8kg you would want him to lose 544g, which would make 6.256kg the next month, so then he'd need to lose 500g to make 5.755kg, then 460g to make 5.295kg, 423g to make 4.871kg etc etc taking about 7 months to get to 3.8kg.

For food a 6.8kg cat needs 303kcal per day to maintain its weight and a 3.8kg cat needs 200kcal. If you go by the 7 months of losing weight that's a reduction of 14cal per month. If you were feeding 2 pouches of wet at around 80kcal per 100g that's 160kcal. Adding dry food at around 300kcal per 100g you would need 48g of this to reach the 303 calories. So you would then reduce the dry by around 10g per month until you get the weight loss.

Hope that helps and isn't too confusing!

Omg thats soo helpful! Thank you for all that. Ive clearly slimmed my boy far to fast. Trying to get him on some scales now to see first months loss!

No problem you'd probably need to end up with say 2 pouches and about 15g dry for 3.8kg so you could actually reduce dry by 5g a month for a better rate of weight loss over the 7 months. Hope it works out for your cat!

Not sure what you mean about feeding to his ideal weight would that be feeding him as if he was his ideal weight? Which is kind of what ive done, in error it seems from whats been said?

Feeding to ideal weight is to do with body condition score - how that cat looks and feels. It is a lot simpler to feed to ideal weight/body condition score as you don't have to do a load of calculations! Again you have to be careful with losing too much too quickly. Have a look at this score chart, 4/5 is ideal, and the weight the cat is when it is a 5 would be it's ideal bodyweight

You can't really read it well but if you google Royal canin cat body condition chart you'll get a better version!

Thanks for the [readable] chart. He is, or was, definitely a 9 wiyh absolutely no distinguishable shape from a ball! He's falling into the 7 category a month on. But his ideal weight im sure will be on the much smaller side as 6.5 that you said poultercat as ideal sounds like a much much bigger cat than mine.

This is how ive always fed, just never knew it had its own technical term

He looks lovely! And certainly has a clearly visible outline which is missing from mine, or just starting to gradually emerge. I am interested to see the final. Ive never bothered to weigh before. But then hes never been so obese!