Hi everyone,
I am currently helping a friend who has an obese cat. The cat's name is Vitamine, she is 7 years old, spayed, indoor, just got a blood chemistry panel done and she is in perfect health. Except for her weight! She weighted 14 pounds and we believe (but we are not professional!) she should weight about 10 pounds.
The first obstacle transitioning Vitamine to a good quality canned food. She got fat from eating crappy low cost kibbles (and a lack of exercise that's for sure). So we agreed on the importance of changing her food.
She doesn't really like canned food. We've tried many different brands ans flavors, and the only one she doesn't completely HATE is Fromm chicken and salmon paté. Which seems to be a very good quality protein, low carb food.
Our "bible" has been Dr. Lisa's article on how to transition dry food addicts to canned food.
Dr. Lisa says :
Vitamine is losing fat because she doesn't like her food very much (she doesn't eat as much as she used to), and her weights lost is actually healthy (Dr. Lisa says that a cat should never lose more than 10% of its weight per week).
Here's Vitamine's weight lost evolution :
Week 1 : lost 0.15 pounds
Week 2 : lost 0.6 pounds
As you can see her weight lost is not drastic at all! If I didn't know how much food she ate I would say that everything seems to be going smoothly and she should keep going the exact same way!
But the problem is that Vitamine, even though she looses weight exactly as we hoped, is not eating enough!
One can (5.5oz) of Fromm is only 125 calories, and Vitamine eats only half a can a day! Sometimes 3/4, but never more than that! And according to Dr. Lisa's article, Vitamine should eat atleast 150calories a day to avoid hepatic lipidosis. Vitamine only gets 60 to 90 calories a day!
If we feed her more to keep her healthy she is not going to lose weight, if we keep on feeding her like this, it's not healthy.
What are we supposed to do?
I am currently helping a friend who has an obese cat. The cat's name is Vitamine, she is 7 years old, spayed, indoor, just got a blood chemistry panel done and she is in perfect health. Except for her weight! She weighted 14 pounds and we believe (but we are not professional!) she should weight about 10 pounds.
The first obstacle transitioning Vitamine to a good quality canned food. She got fat from eating crappy low cost kibbles (and a lack of exercise that's for sure). So we agreed on the importance of changing her food.
She doesn't really like canned food. We've tried many different brands ans flavors, and the only one she doesn't completely HATE is Fromm chicken and salmon paté. Which seems to be a very good quality protein, low carb food.
Our "bible" has been Dr. Lisa's article on how to transition dry food addicts to canned food.
Dr. Lisa says :
Vitamine is losing fat because she doesn't like her food very much (she doesn't eat as much as she used to), and her weights lost is actually healthy (Dr. Lisa says that a cat should never lose more than 10% of its weight per week).
Here's Vitamine's weight lost evolution :
Week 1 : lost 0.15 pounds
Week 2 : lost 0.6 pounds
As you can see her weight lost is not drastic at all! If I didn't know how much food she ate I would say that everything seems to be going smoothly and she should keep going the exact same way!
But the problem is that Vitamine, even though she looses weight exactly as we hoped, is not eating enough!
One can (5.5oz) of Fromm is only 125 calories, and Vitamine eats only half a can a day! Sometimes 3/4, but never more than that! And according to Dr. Lisa's article, Vitamine should eat atleast 150calories a day to avoid hepatic lipidosis. Vitamine only gets 60 to 90 calories a day!
If we feed her more to keep her healthy she is not going to lose weight, if we keep on feeding her like this, it's not healthy.
What are we supposed to do?