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A veterinary blog for pet lovers, vet voyeurs and the medically curious...
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A couple of years ago my boyfriend and Dolittler consultant extraordinaire, Dr. Marc Wosar decided to experiment with his own cats when one of the two, sweet-faced Desdamona, began looking heftier by the month.
Something had to be done to stem the tide of fat that graced Desie’s ample mid-section. More so because she’d begun to favor her elbows in subtle ways, slowing down in her leaps and bounds and spending her only active hours of the day begging for food.
Now Desie is a submissive cat—when it comes to everything but tasty morsels in any guise. She looooves her food bowl like most Miamians love their cell phones: They’re seldom parted.
Whenever there’s activity in the kitchen, she’s always on hand to observe the goings-on and covet the plates of whatever meal is being served. It’s only with the rare bout of beer-making that Desie turns her nose up. (Like her pseudo-step-mom, she’s not a hops and malt kind of girl.)
To make matters worse, Desie had taken to screaming her desire for food in the early morning hours long before the chime of the bedside alarm clock. Something had to be done!
The experiment referred to in paragraph one of this post involved the implementation of an automatic cat feeder. Perhaps it would displace her anxiety onto a mechanism timed to provide her with just the right amount of kibble at her twice-daily mealtimes.
The pet feeder worked for a couple of weeks. Desie was calmer and resigned herself to her fate, surrendering her beloved food to the whims of the too-small maw of an inanimate object.
The trouble came with the ingenious arrival of a synaptic connection: The thing must be attacked and forced to surrender its goods.
To be fair, this was her brother Tybalt’s doing. Desie’s notoriously known as “shiny, but not too bright,” unable to make mental leaps, even when it involves her beloved kibble.
All that progress…down the gullet. Piles of vomit graced the floors for days after that escapade.
OK so it didn’t work for Dr. Wosar. Since then, he’s resorted to the tried-and-true smaller portions and somehow managed to tune out Desie’s anxious pleas for food. In fact, the less he feeds, the more energy she expends in begging for more—which provides her more exercise in the form of pacing and bed-jumping than any other daily activity. In fact, Desie’s lost much of her belly fat and might even be down to 11 pounds by the look of her.
Despite Dr. Wosar’s failed attempt, automatic feeders have worked well for many of my clients. One client showed off her newly-slim kitty yesterday, offering me all the credit for having suggested a model one step more secure than the one Dr. W tried out.
Hmmm…sometimes even failed experiments have a way of working out.
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"The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated."
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- Mohandas Gandhi
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As to the quantities listed on the side of the bag of food: I don't get it. I've never had anyone convincingly explain why the quantities are so drastically overblown relative to our pets' actual needs.
On diet foods: Some pets actally do worse on some of these. I have most success with R/D (Hill's) though I also find feeding less of a higher quality, higher protein food has almost equivalent benefits--if not better--in most cases. It's about calories and I prefer the higher quality kind. they seem to fill up more with these, in my experience.
Truism: Exercise/activity, even five extra minutes a day for a cat can make all the difference.
We have a long way to go before we know exactl what works best, but rest assured, weight loss is absolutely achievable.
Christy Keith write an awesome article on feline weight loss. I'll look for it and post it here soon.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2...
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15023591?dopt=A...
"Consumption of diets with low carbohydrate, high protein, and moderate fat content may be advantageous for prevention and management of obesity, impaired glucose tolerance, and diabetes in cats and dogs."
http://jn.nutrition.org/cgi/content/full/134/8/207...
"Feeding diabetic cats a very low-carbohydrate, high-protein diet improved hyperglycemia, reduced insulin dosage, and increased the rate of diabetic remission."
https://vmacs.vmth.ucdavis.edu/userpages/NUT/broch...
I have 6 cats, one of which has acromegaly (a pituitary tumor that causes diabetes), another has diabetes insipidus, one with chronic renal failure. Besides the carbs, dry food also robs the cat (a creature with a low thirst drive to begin with) of necessary moisture. All my cats eat an all-wet diet and are THRIVING!
And you can leave wet food out, it won't go bad. It can also be placed in a timed feeder, which works out well for grazers. On an all-wet diet, most every cat will reach it's ideal weight, lose the excess fat and gain muscle. (another positive is they shed less and they leave fewer deposits in the litter box!)
She is a pretty cute and lovable-looking cat though--I can see why you gave in!!
I know I must be feeding them too much, because they aren't losing weight (but at least they've stopped gaining). And I do hold back some of the dry in case we have a major meowfest for more food.
Back to the drawing board!
But she did supply the helpful 15 cal per pound per day. So if I want my cat to weigh 12 lbs I should feed no more than 180 calories. But in another section she says an average cat needs 200-250 calories a day.
Let's see each cat get 1 can per day (and never more than 1/2 can of Wellness at a time) for a range of 140 to 185 cals/day. 1/8th cup of EVO runs (gulp) 612 per cup (up from 542/cup on the old charts) - that's about another 80 calories. So I should be OK - since I'm working with a 15 lb cat.
I do see that given the very high calories in the EVO - I have to be very careful about overfeeding. And no more than a can of Wellness a week.
Anyone see any errors in my calculations? And I apologize for making this post 2CatMom's fat cat calculation exercise. I really do want to reduce my fat cats weight and my vet is not very helpful in this regard except to tell me to feed less.
I agree with Carolynn and Fletcher, Catmom, and Mary -- and am very heartened to see so many pet parents so knowledgable about cat nutrition. Dr. Lisa Pierson of http://www.catinfo.org rocks. So does Dr. Elizabeth Hodgkins.
All kitty parents should read catinfo.org.
I'm not trying to be all holier than thou -- I fed my cats a combo of wet and dry until my most beloved got diabetes. And then I did some research and the light bulb went on in my head. I couldn't believe I'd been so stupid when its pretty intuitive, if you just THINK about it, that kibble is just not a NATURAL diet for a cat. I felt really guilty about my cat developing diabetes. And sure enough, both the foster cats that came to me from the shelter diabetic had been on a diet of dry food when they developed the disease. After 3 and 7 weeks (respectively) of tight glycemic control and a diet of low-carb canned food, both of them went into remission.
I keep trying to tell this to my good friend who is a physician, and whose cat is GI-NORMOUS, and who actually seems to think her cats obesity is cute, and who feeds them dry. I'm sure she'd tell her human patients to lose weight if they were similarly overweight, but in her cat, she seems to find it cute. Sigh.
On the topic of feeders though -- there actually ARE automatic feeders for WET food. They come with little ice packs that go on the bottom of a round machine that has a timer. I've got one of the 5-meal ones -- you can set the timer to rotate to the next section of the container and reveal the next meal (up to 5 times). I didn't believe it would work . . . and they are really expensive . . . but I had to try it out and it worked fabulously!!!!
So, you actually CAN have both a timed feeder AND use canned food.
:)
Here's a link with an example of this type of feeder. It's not the exact same model I have, but very similar.
http://www.mightypets.com/product.asp?3=1082
http://www.catinfo.org/feline_obesity.htm
Until the programming went haywire.
Damn thing started adding another feeding in the middle of the day.
It would have been bad enough if the cats had been getting it.
But my smallish, crafty, evil, "easy-keeper" SAR dog figured it out.
She'd beat the cats to it. I was just about never home that time of day. She was home about 2/3 of the time.
This apparently went on for about two months. Pip started getting softish, then roundish. We kept cutting back her food -- she already maintains on nearly nothing, so this seemed quite draconian. And she kept getting bigger and bigger. Her breath stank. I had her thyroid checked. We cranked up the daily exercise. We were mystified. Pip was happily on her way to assuming a spherical dog.
I like to have strangled her the day I was home at midday, working in my office, when the machine beeped and she shot bolt upright and ran to the laundry room for her afternoon tea.
It took at least eight weeks to get her back down to fighting weight, and she was happy to inform us that we sucked every day of it.
One thing though, all that premium cat food sure made her coat glossy.
Hahahaha - oh, I'll bet you can guess, Dr. Patty!! The quantities are huge because the companies want to sell MORE FOOD!! :-) It doesn't matter if it's a prescription diet, or an ultra premium or some cheapo grocery store food... bottom line is that they all are in it for the profit and that means getting more product out the door, more frequently.
http://www.dolittler.com/index.cfm/2008/3/31/pet.v...
Since the pet food recall, I won't feed my cat's anything with mbp. Is there a decent RX food for cats with UTI? Or am I going to have a conflict with my vet the next time this happens?
Cats with urinary issues need water, water, water!
http://felineoutreach.org/EducationDetail.asp?cat=...
And today....oh boy. Its day three of the new stricter diet. There has been much complaining from Mr. Kitty Fat Butt. I come home today and he has managed to knock the hard plastic container that has the dry cat food in it (Innova EVO the one that has 1 gazillion calories per cup) on the floor and pry the top off. I think he ate about 2 cups of the food. I'm sure his sister helped some. He was so serene when I walked in. Not the usual crying for dinner (which he did even before the new diet). So now I'll find someother method of storing the food (he can also open cabinets) and let's just say that EVO is having a rather fragrent effect on Mr Kitty.
Anyone want a nice Tabby and White cat, hardly any trouble at all.....