Helping puss lose weight

[cuteglasses]

We brought Salem home a month ago. He's 11, neutered, a lovely boy, but a bit on the chunky side - the rescue said he was overweight when they got him. They were giving him 2 pouches of Sheba in the morning and 2 pouches in the evening. I thought I'd do the same but space them out through the day. We took him to the vets last week for a general health check and he weighs 7 kg - vet said he needs to be around 5.
He's fairly obsessed with food.
How can I adjust his diet to help him get some weight off?
Any advice extremely welcome

Hi, I had similar problem with my neutered boy , his weight had crept to almost 7 kgs(he was 4.8 when we got him) I only realised it had got so bad when I noticed him squeeeeezing himself through the cat flap. I felt really bad. He’s also always been quite food obsessed since we got him.

In our case I read up about it and found found out it’s dangerous for obese cats to lose weight too rapidly, so whatever you do has to be really gradual. I basically just gradually reduced the amount of food he gets over the course of the day. He has 3-4 weighed out meals a day, currently has around 180g of wet food per day, although it’s taken several months to get to this amount, I think I started by cutting 10g a day and took it from there. You need quite accurate scales to monitor how much weight he’s losing. I feed high meat content, grain free stuff. I think the less carbs the better. Oh and also had to watch treats, these get knocked of his daily food allowance!

He was 6.8 kg in October, he’s 5.5kg now and much happier, able to
Climb properly etc.

I am in no way a vet or cat dietician though so prob worth talking to your vet first and foremost. I assume they’ll try to sell you the special vet diet food though. This didn’t work for us. High meat wet food keeps him full and is better for him without being full of carbs.

Good luck!

Extra playtime is meant to redirect the urge to nag for food. It engages their prey drive.

Sheba’s quite low in protein too for the amount it costs.

Yeah actually forgot to mention we also got a kitten... he is way more active now chasing her around. We could never get him to play with toys for very long but he loves playing with her!

Good luck OP, especially with weighing out food with a cat waiting to be fed!!!

To get my cat from 7Kgs when she arrived (from Cats Protection, she came with a leaflet about cat obesity...), I changed to James Wellbeloved adult grain free turkey / lamb pouches and light turkey dry food. The packets have details of how much you should feed to reduce weight, and what the maximum recommended loss per week is. It took nearly 2 years, but she’s now 4.5Kgs and so much happier. I still weigh her food - she gets 2 pouches and 16g of dry food a day, and no treats. I invested in an automatic feeder, which is filled once a day.

The hardest part is not giving in to the whinging. There will be much of it. Mine doesn’t go out so no chance of anyone else feeding her, which made it easier. Good luck!

I’m struggling with this exact issue, made even harder as we have other cats.

We’ve been trying to cut him down but in 1 month he lost just 0.1kg. Going to 5.5kg. Meanwhile the others lost 0.2kg and 0.5kg within the first 2 weeks (going to 4.2kg and 4.7kg)

The one that lost 0.2kg can’t really afford to lose any. The 0.5kg could afford to lose that in total, but not that rapidly. And neither of these 2 will go near the automatic feeder, so I can’t use that to give them more food.

It’s a real struggle. I’m trying to feed the others extra and him less. We are now having to watch every cat eat, to ensure he doesn’t steal their food.