Our poor buddy is super overweight. I’ve been reading countless blogs, research articles, and other weight loss threads on this site. I benefited so much from reading some amazing weight loss journeys here and I thought I’d add ours in case it helps someone else. It’s really painful to realize you’ve let your kitty get obese and can be frustrating to figure out how to do all the steps, like calculating calories in cat food, figuring out the maximum weight loss per week to prevent fatty liver disease, etc.
We are two weeks into this process. We weigh him every Sunday around the same time. The first week he lost .6 lbs. Wowza! That was over the 2% recommended weight loss. We decided to see how he did this week before changing his feeding. This week he lost literally zero pounds. Waiting another week before we make any further adjustment. I also have a plan forming for what to do if his weight loss stalls. I may start weighing more regularly. Rn we are using our bathroom scale, we just weigh with him in our arms and by ourselves and subtract the difference.
I’ve included some background on Cosmo and details of our plan, including the calculations of his daily required calories, as well as a link to his weight loss spreadsheet.
I don't have the best before pics, but if people find this thread helpful I'll get some better ones. His fur is about 2/3 length rn. We get him a lion cut a couple times a year.
Anyhow, wish us luck!!!
About Cosmo:
Background:
Cosmo is almost 4 yrs old; we’ve had him since he was about 8 weeks. He was the runt of his litter and his foster parents had difficulty getting him to eat. Cosmo eventually became an indoor/outdoor cat. We free-fed him (rooky mistake). He had lots of free space to run, climb trees and fences, and hunt mice and birds (uh boy). Then one day he had an accident that prompted my husband and I to transition him into a 100% indoor cat. He reached 13 lbs (up from probably 11) and the vet said he needed to lose weight. We were shocked, lol. We stopped free-feeding and did a mix of dry and wet. We moved two years ago and got an automatic feeder. We thought this would be a great way to help him lose weight since we could monitor his feeding and give him the regularity of scheduled feeding times that did not waiver according to our schedules. But the feeder was SUPER CONFUSING and my husband accidentally WAY OVER FED HIM. He’s a long-haired cat so we didn’t realize the pounds were packing on. We kept trying to lower the food amount, but he was getting bigger. In addition to making mistakes with the auto-feeder, my husband COULD NOT SEE THE WEIGHT and I was having trouble convincing him our buddy was in trouble. Hubby was kitty-blind. We came back from a trip in January and weighed him at 22.2 lbs and we nearly died. Now, the Healthy Happy Cosmo plan has begun!
Activity and Ability
Cosmo is SUPER sweet, cuddly, and playful. Before we figured out the problem with our feeder, we were using physical activity to help him lose weight. He didn’t lose weight, but the extra and intentional playtime was helping him grow stronger and more nimble. Adding just 15 minutes here and there of chasing a feather wand got him jumping onto our tall bed and dining room table much more easily!
Health History
Just the accident when we was an outdoor cat (facial injury, all healed) and urinary crystals that got resolved ASAP. We are in the process of changing pet insurance and vets so we’ll take him in soon for a check-up and some blood work. Rn, healthy litter habits with plenty o'urine.
Food
- If we do need to reduce his food more, I'm concerned about making sure he still has adequate nutrition. Anyone have any advice on that?
Activity
We add ¼ cup of water to his bowl as we think of it.
Treats: we have a bag of Temptations my mother-in-law got him for Christmas (so sweet!). We don’t really do treats, but we randomly ended up giving him a few this second week of weight loss. I record those in his feeding log. Each treat is < 2kcals.
Food and Feeding
Feeder:
Current Feeding:
2ps in AM + 1p at NOON + 2ps in PM = 4.249 oz
Total Calories Per Day: 201.5 kcals
Previous Calories Per Day: 280.78 kcals
= Decrease of 79.28 kcals
Decreased daily calories by 28.24%
Food: Crave Dry Cat Food, Chicken Flavor
1 cup = 401 kcals
Crave Guaranteed Analysis:
Crude Protein (min.) 40.00%
Crude Fat (min.) 18.00%
Crude Fiber (max.) 4.0%
Moisture (max.) 10.00%
Taurine (min.) 0.16%
Omega-6* (min.) 3%
2/17/19
Cosmo Weight in Lbs: 21.6
Weight in kg: 9.81
(9.81 x 30) + 70 = 364.3
363.3 x .8 = 290.64
We are two weeks into this process. We weigh him every Sunday around the same time. The first week he lost .6 lbs. Wowza! That was over the 2% recommended weight loss. We decided to see how he did this week before changing his feeding. This week he lost literally zero pounds. Waiting another week before we make any further adjustment. I also have a plan forming for what to do if his weight loss stalls. I may start weighing more regularly. Rn we are using our bathroom scale, we just weigh with him in our arms and by ourselves and subtract the difference.
I’ve included some background on Cosmo and details of our plan, including the calculations of his daily required calories, as well as a link to his weight loss spreadsheet.
I don't have the best before pics, but if people find this thread helpful I'll get some better ones. His fur is about 2/3 length rn. We get him a lion cut a couple times a year.
Anyhow, wish us luck!!!
About Cosmo:
Background:
Cosmo is almost 4 yrs old; we’ve had him since he was about 8 weeks. He was the runt of his litter and his foster parents had difficulty getting him to eat. Cosmo eventually became an indoor/outdoor cat. We free-fed him (rooky mistake). He had lots of free space to run, climb trees and fences, and hunt mice and birds (uh boy). Then one day he had an accident that prompted my husband and I to transition him into a 100% indoor cat. He reached 13 lbs (up from probably 11) and the vet said he needed to lose weight. We were shocked, lol. We stopped free-feeding and did a mix of dry and wet. We moved two years ago and got an automatic feeder. We thought this would be a great way to help him lose weight since we could monitor his feeding and give him the regularity of scheduled feeding times that did not waiver according to our schedules. But the feeder was SUPER CONFUSING and my husband accidentally WAY OVER FED HIM. He’s a long-haired cat so we didn’t realize the pounds were packing on. We kept trying to lower the food amount, but he was getting bigger. In addition to making mistakes with the auto-feeder, my husband COULD NOT SEE THE WEIGHT and I was having trouble convincing him our buddy was in trouble. Hubby was kitty-blind. We came back from a trip in January and weighed him at 22.2 lbs and we nearly died. Now, the Healthy Happy Cosmo plan has begun!
Activity and Ability
Cosmo is SUPER sweet, cuddly, and playful. Before we figured out the problem with our feeder, we were using physical activity to help him lose weight. He didn’t lose weight, but the extra and intentional playtime was helping him grow stronger and more nimble. Adding just 15 minutes here and there of chasing a feather wand got him jumping onto our tall bed and dining room table much more easily!
Health History
Just the accident when we was an outdoor cat (facial injury, all healed) and urinary crystals that got resolved ASAP. We are in the process of changing pet insurance and vets so we’ll take him in soon for a check-up and some blood work. Rn, healthy litter habits with plenty o'urine.
The Plan
Food
- Determined how many calories he needs to eat to maintain his weight
- Determined how many calories he had been eating
- (figured out how to use our auto-feeder, see below)
- Adjusted feeding
- Weekly weigh-ins with adjustments as necessary, making sure he’s losing but not exceeding the recommended 2% max loss of total body weight per week
- Logging his feeding and weight in a spreadsheet
- As he loses weight, I recalculate his total caloric intake requirement to see how far below that we are.
- If we do need to reduce his food more, I'm concerned about making sure he still has adequate nutrition. Anyone have any advice on that?
Activity
- We try to play with him before his feed times. He gets anxious anticipating the food from the feeder, so I try to capitalize on that prey drive. It works!
- We bring him to the far side of the house before the feeder goes off. He runs TOP speed to the kitchen when it comes out.
- I got two laser toys that are powered with regular batteries so they don’t die off and need to be replaced. I looped them around door knobs on different sides of the house so we can play with them as we think of it.
- We have a very long feather wand toy with excellent flight capacity lol. It really seems like a bird. It’s important to have a long reach in a feather wand so that he will get up and run for it instead of just laying on his back while I dangle it over his head.
- Rn we don’t have cat tree. We’re in the market and I’ll let you know if it helps.
- We take him out for walks in a harness a few times a month. It’s not exactly “exercise;” he mostly saunters and sniffs and rolls around and eats grass. But it’s good for him and the neighbors like to say hi
We add ¼ cup of water to his bowl as we think of it.
Treats: we have a bag of Temptations my mother-in-law got him for Christmas (so sweet!). We don’t really do treats, but we randomly ended up giving him a few this second week of weight loss. I record those in his feeding log. Each treat is < 2kcals.
The Numbers
Food and Feeding
Feeder:
- Arf Pets Auto-feeder
- Uses “portions”
- 1p (1 portion) = 0.425 oz
- 1p = 40.1 kcals
Current Feeding:
2ps in AM + 1p at NOON + 2ps in PM = 4.249 oz
Total Calories Per Day: 201.5 kcals
Previous Calories Per Day: 280.78 kcals
= Decrease of 79.28 kcals
Decreased daily calories by 28.24%
Food: Crave Dry Cat Food, Chicken Flavor
1 cup = 401 kcals
Crave Guaranteed Analysis:
Crude Protein (min.) 40.00%
Crude Fat (min.) 18.00%
Crude Fiber (max.) 4.0%
Moisture (max.) 10.00%
Taurine (min.) 0.16%
Omega-6* (min.) 3%
Calorie Guide (copied from CatInfo)
- Figure your kitty’s weight in kilograms by dividing his weight in pounds by 2.2.
- Multiply your cat’s weight in kilograms by 30 and then add 70 to that result: 6.82 kilos x 30 = 205 + 70 = 275.
- Now multiply that result by 0.8: 275 x 0.8 = 220.
2/17/19
Cosmo Weight in Lbs: 21.6
Weight in kg: 9.81
(9.81 x 30) + 70 = 364.3
363.3 x .8 = 290.64
- Cosmo needs 290.64 kcals to maintain current weight
- Currently getting 89.13 kcals less than needed to maintain current weight