It's no secret that Mr. Boots is a fat cat. His size was one of the reasons we picked him out in the first place, there was so much more of him to love. He weighed in at 18 lbs when we brought him home last August, which seems like a lot but he does have a large frame. Most people are amazed at how tall he is when they first meet him - if you hold him upright with his back paws on the ground he's almost 3 feet tall. He's our free range tiger.
When he came home from the Humane Society he was given a package of Iams dry food, Chicken Flavour and he seemed to really like it so we kept him on it - I assumed it was good food because it was sold in the pet store and the Humane Society wouldn't give me bad advice, would they?
I noticed after a few months that he was gaining weight so I put him on the dry Iams weight control formula. The recommended amount for Mr. B was 1 1/2C a day but my friend Kathy told me that many pet food labels exaggerate the amount of food the animals need in order to sell your more product. At first I fed him around 1C throughout the day but it wasn't making any difference. I lowered the amount to 3/4 C, which wasn't making any difference either. Finally I quit free feeding him and started feeding him 1/4 C three times a day. No difference, or so I thought, and that was half the recommended amount.
For months Randy had been telling me that the cat was getting fatter, but I'm with Mr. Boots all day almost every day so I hadn't noticed anything. What I had noticed was that he was sleeping more than he had when we first got him, often snoring so loudly that I could hear him across the apartment. He was wheezing after jumping up on the bed or window ledge too. But the kicker was his chin.
I had noticed a little smudge under his chin for the past month or so but just thought it was some dirt, I had even wiped it off a couple times. The other night though he rolled on his back and I noticed his chin was red, and there was a little bald spot. Horrors! Sure enough there was a little pimple and lots of black smudges. Turns out that cats can get blackheads and acne. Who knew? I've been washing his chin every morning and putting hydrogen peroxide on it twice a day. It looks cleaner already.
This scared me enough to realize that Mr. B is not healthy, not happy and needs a change. We found out that he weighs a whopping 10 kg or 22 lbs. I honestly had no idea that he had gained that much weight, but looking back at pictures now I can see it. I did some research online about obese cat diets and found a story about a fat cat named Tucker that sounds just like Mr. B. Motivated, I headed out to my local PetValu to get some more advice and pick out some new food.
We're on day two of the transition to wet food and so far so good. Mr. Boots is a champion eater so I had no problem getting him to try the new Wellness food. We started with one tablespoon of Chicken and Herring (me: ew B: yum) mashed into his bowl to teach him how to eat slowly.
Success! He loved it and ate it all up in one sitting. I gave him two tablespoons this morning and one small scoop of dry food. Hopefully there will be no adverse side effects from the other end and we will keep up the transition until he's totally off the dry crap.
Goal Weight: 8 kg / 17.5 lbs
1st Weigh in October 29th 2009: 10 kg / 22.05 lbs
9 comments:
Your cat almost weighs as much as my 10 month old chubby baby, haha.
I love fat kitties <3 But if hes not healthy, then booooo. Good for you for taking care of it though, and making sure your kitty is in the best health possible. Some people just let their cats get fatter and fatter. You're a good cat Mama.
It's true, dry cat/dog food is very bad for our pets. If we ever adopt a new kitty then we will be more proactive about feeding him/her a more balanced and healthy diet - mixed offerings from store-bought food and some 'human-like' food.
Go Mr. Boots!
So glad you are a good kitty mommy and sought the help Mr. Boots needed! Here's to healthy happy cats! <3
It's just like humans: dry food is like straight up carbs! Even if it does say "protein" or is a meat variety. Keep him on the wet! It should do the trick, but he shouldn't lose more than a pound every 6 months I think.
aw, poor mr. boots. here's to better health!
I'm sending this IMMEDIATELY to my friend who is having a similar problem...
Erin let her know she can email me if she wants (ohsoretro @ gmail) - I need to do an update but Mr B is doing great on his diet, he's lost over half a lb and is more active and vocal again, he seems so much happier.
I've never commented before but I'm glad you switched from Iams, Peta did an undercover investigation on them and they do horrible testing on animals and very mean, bad things to them. I fed my dog Iams, and when I found out I switched her immediately. Hope your kitty does better on his diet than I'm doing on mine :)
http://thebusiestbee.blogspot.com/
What a lovely blog and great comments!
I had to switch my cats to Wysong food because two of them were getting urinary tract infections from Iams. Then one of them was getting actual urinary tract blockages - extremely scary and a $1000+ vet price with an overnight stay.
Now they're fine, and it seems even though they're all (4 of them) indoor only cats, none of them are overweight.
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