The vet says our cat needs fat camp

[WildFlowerBees]

He's overweight apparently which I was a bit shocked about because he doesn't seem to eat much and he's a 'big' cat but there we are I'm a terrible cat slave.

He eats both wet and dry he won't just stick to one. Is there a formula to help them slowly lose weight healthily?

We have a largish breed cat, the current one is going to get heavier I think he is so strong and muscly and believes he has never been fed 🤦🏼‍♀️

Here he is, my very lovely poppet! Is he huge?!

@powershowerforanhour I wouldn't be an animal lover if I put my wants before his needs. If he needs to lose weight then so be it, I was so embarrassed I hadn't even noticed myself.

@OrlandointheWilderness

Definitely! 😂
I've also put up posters around the village and a shaming the cat post on FB.

He doesn't look that big to me. Mine is more chunky! Have put her on indoor formula food, plus half a pouch of wet. She gets 10g of dry 3x per day. The get said the guides on the food packet are way more than the cat actually needs.
Shes the laziest cat that ever lived - doesn't really like playing and only moves periodically to chase her sister!

He doesn’t look huge to me either. Ours was slimmer on Arden grange light biscuits but I put her on full fat for winter as we don’t have the heating on 24/7. Her next bag will be light biscuits.

He doesn't look that big. But that should hopefully mean he'll get to a healthier weight sooner.

You can't really tell much about body condition from those photos as he's doing what contented cats do and curling up happily! The chub in cats is mostly on the lower belly so you often don't notice it till you're sitting across from them and see them walking at ete level along the back of the sofa, beer belly swinging gently...
He's very handsome :-)

Oh he's not fat, he's fine! Lol

I've found lots of b&w cats tend to be 'big boned' with naturally solid builds.

It won't do him any harm to lose a few oz but I wouldn't stress about it op.

I've sent some owners split their pets food so they have to walk between bowls to eat, or put their bowl at the top the stairs, so they can get exercise in that way.

If he likes dry food too you can stick some in a toy and make him work to get to it.

Ours has put on lots of lockdown weight due to begging while we're working from home. He has been on the royal canin satiety diet for two months and has lost 220g, another 600g ish to go!

We manage to stick to the recommended amount because it's so expensive, we don't want it to be pointless! We split it into five small meals a day so we don't have to listen to him whining for too long and then if he starts in the evening when he's had all his rations we just put him to bed (he sleeps downstairs as he is a pain at night and wakes us up).

The vet nurse calculated all the amounts, weighs him for free every so often and makes sure he's not losing too fast.

Y cat was told she was obese. I'm
Still skeptical as she was only 4.5kg and Persians have a different shaped body. She's lost 500g unintentionally, and the vets are pleased but I'm concerned. I'm under instruction not to out it back on her. She's unimpressed.

Our boy has a pot belly. He hunts most of the time, he steals food from the neighbours, he bullies our poor dog out of her food and begs for more of his own. We give him measured portions.

He has a huge territory (several fields) and gets lots of exercise. We are at a loss how to get him to lose weight, apart from keeping him in. If we do that, his only exercise would be hunting and killing us and the dog.

@Baldrickhasaplan that sounds like "Fat Sid" when he got older he just couldn't be arsed anymore we think!

hes bloody gorgeous , but sadly i have no advice for you as my tabby is just as big as your cat lol . hes always getting fat shamed by my mum when she visits us and my dd is always going on about him as well , hes been a bad boy for hunting in the past so he hasnt endeared himself to her !!

i do demand led feeding which is when hes in the kitchen in front of his bowl staring i feed him as i assume hes hungry , hes always been this same size as well

My FatCat didn't look fat when viewed from above or behind - he carried it all underneath. He was ridiculously long so hid it well.

We use royal Canin satiety cat food, wet and dry. The vet nurse tells us how much he is allowed, we take him to get weighed every month. The hardest part was stopping my husband from giving him treats!

Big Rose is adorable!

My FatCat is going to kitty fat club once a month for weighing and also eats the royal canin satiety food which has helped. But he's a proper unit of a cat and we've come to the conclusion (me and the vet) that's he's never going to be much under 7kg. He's just a Big Cat. He has been up as high as 8kg but now sits comfortably at 7kg ish and we go to kitty fat club to make sure we maintain that. Its tough though as he is SO food orientated.

He is gorgeous isn't he! The large deep cut in my finger from the vet visit says otherwise. We got him the Royal Canin satiety so we're adding it to his very meagre James well beloved until we can switch him over completely. I've weighed everything and put them in little pots so we're all prepared. So far he's unimpressed and his sister less so because she IS a fatty and has been stealing his food. Microchip feeders have put a stop to that from this evening.

I just know she will wake me up at 2am instead of 4am to let me know what a bitch I am for rationing her!

Perhaps now is also the time to introduce them being shut away overnight!!!

Is it true that male cats who have been entire for longer, are likely to develop a larger physique than cats who’ve been done at 6 months, or whenever is normal?

I just ask, because our vet has made noises about not letting our boy carry on the same trajectory, weight-wise, as he may become porky. He didn’t get neutered till we got him at the age of 2, so I think he’s just fulfilling his physical potential, and is genuinely big-boned and muscular!

Is s/he getting fed elsewhere? Mine was - leftovers from next door’s many dinner parties - choice fish and chicken! - not to mention a saucer of milk every morning. It was ages before I twigged. Despite his portliness , he had evidently mastered the starving-orphan-kitten act - that pathetic little mew, with one paw raised…..

Vet tried to flog me expensive diet cat food but since I find the very idea of diet cat food obscene, I said so and declined. Because he’d already told me, I knew he was under pressure from the chain to flog as many extras as poss to each ‘unit’ that came through the door, so didn’t really blame him for trying, and he did admit that it was virtually impossible to keep a cat on a diet unless it’s an indoor one - which I’d never have anyway.

In any case mine was very fussy so he’d probably have turned his nose up anyway.

I did get the neighbours to stop feeding him, but he was still a somewhat portly boy until he died at over 14.

"Is it true that male cats who have been entire for longer, are likely to develop a larger physique than cats who’ve been done at 6 months, or whenever is normal?"

No. Neutering before puberty delays growth plate closure, so cats (and dogs and bullocks and geldings) done young end up taller than entire males or ones done after the growth plates have closed. Adult entire male cats have bigger cheeks but this effect tends to fade a bit after they have been neutered. The beneficial effect of testosterone on muscling also fades - I haven't really noticed any difference in muscle cover in cats done late after another couple of years have passed.

There are some beneficial effects in allowing skeletal maturity before neutering (or as close as possible in cats ie do it just before you think they're likely to start spraying inside the house or fighting outside it) but these are mostly to do with ligament strength and joint development rather than "big bones" (a fallacy) or lasting effects on muscle cover really. I like to delay neutering a bit so as not to give the owners an uphill struggle against weight gain at exactly the time when growth is slowing and calorie requirements are reducing but that's more or less it. It's quite uncommon for me to see really well muscled cats and the owners who protest "it's all muscle!" are denial-talking at least 98% of the time. (That's not quite as deluded as the dog owners who launch a desperate pre emptive strike with "He's due to be clipped!" when I put their fat pooch on the scales. Yeah no the groomer is not going to shave 3kg of fur off a Bichon).

Our girl is a fatty. I can’t remember the numbers but the vet was pleased with her weight loss last month at her boosters, and has asked us to bring her in in six months to be weighed again. We were offered to bring her for a weekly weigh in but she gets so stressed going that it would just be too much.

We give her half a portion of wet food morning and night, and her dry food split into three small portions. Previously she had that for grazing whenever she wanted. She definitely put on weight with us both WFH over lockdown. (Same.)

Oh god I feel your pain. I too have a large cat. We’ll call him fat Colin though I maintain he’s big boned. He’s almost 8kg. I have done the whole weighing his food thing and he’s already on a small amount. He’s just big. And supplements his diet with mice. Doesn’t seem to be much that works. He bites me if he’s hungry and I don’t feed him immediately.

Is there an enabler in your household? Because my DH is 100% the feeder in ours 😂 - my fat boy lost weight when I started WFH and didn't feed him every time he squeaked at me