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Besides Nicole Richie, I mean.
Sarah: Lift with your legs.
Vet assistant: Heh heh. …Oo-fah, my back.
Sarah: Like I said.
Dr. Dan: I thought you were going to put him on a diet.
Sarah: I did put him on a diet.
Dr. Dan: [not laughing]
Sarah: [not joking]
So, that’s how “Little” Joe’s weight-“loss” regime is going. Thanks for asking.
I’ve (re-)discovered a few things over the course of the recent Days Of Rage. Some of them are great!
I found it while researching a murder (…this is a sentence I have more frequent use for than most), the true story of a neighborhood legend from my childhood. I grew up in a leafy, …
I can relate…my dog put on about 8 pounds in a month. A MONTH! I’m starting to see a waistline on him again, but it ain’t easy getting them to lose weight.
I feel your pain…your BACK PAIN! George is my baby, but he’s got some bad habits – like jumping up on the counter to eat any butter I might have left out, or anything else that is remotely edible! He is a big cat to begin with (my two year old tries to sit on him like he’s a horse) but he broke 20 lbs there for a while, but I’ve got him back down to around 17. That’s like his fighting weight. I doubt I’ll ever get him under 17. His sister isn’t much smaller – she’s about 15 lbs.
One of my cats is close to 20 lbs now, so I feel your pain. I’ve had him on Wellness Healthy Weight for over a year, but no dice. I’ve tried playing, but to him, “playing” is synonymous with “lay on the floor and wave a paw when the toy comes by.”
My cats are exactly the same way — they eat weight control indoor cat food and they still are fat as houses.
My cat has got to be near 20 pounds as well, so you’re not alone! I buy him the reduced calorie cat food, but it doesn’t seem to help. Plus, he’s strictly an indoor cat, so I know he doesn’t get as much exercise as he should. I call him my lowrider! He’s got the male gut action going on, and you can see the gut wobbling to and fro when he’s running. Other than that, he is quite spry, and has been known to jump up on top of the refrigerator and tall bookshelves. He’s about 12 years old, and my vet didn’t say anything about his weight during our last visit.
You’re singing my song. My biggest cat is 17 pounds, and despite (usually) strict portion control for the past few months, has not lost a pound. Her idea of “playing” is about the same as Stephanie’s cat — just waving a paw at the toy.
(Heh.) Yeah, I’m going to need to see a picture.
I want pictures.
Lord, everyone, I feel your pain. Both of my little fatty fatty two-by-fours eat only indoor weight control dry food and they are tipping the scales at 18 and 17 pounds despite their joy at chasing each other all over and beating the living shit out of each other at any chance. I CANNOT get the weight off them! Argh.
After two female cats, Princess and Misty, topping out at around 10 pounds (both are outdoor kitties and picky about food) we have a boy kitty, Ninja, less than a year old who’s 12 pounds already and headed for Little Joe territory. This is because Ninja is a Maine Coon. An all black Maine Coon. We didn’t know this when we got him, and when I told my mom I looked up the breed and he’d be getting close to 3 feet long and between 15 and 20 pounds she swore viciously. Yay for chubby lovings!
By far, the best way to get cats to lose weight is to feed them a high protein low carb wet food. Cats are carnivores; dry food isn’t a natural diet for them. Diet dry food just contains more fiber, which is even more unnatural and makes them more susceptible to diabetes.
I had an overweight cat (28+ pound Maine Coon) who trimmed down to a healthy (for that breed) 17 pounds just from switching from diet dry food to high quality canned food. Two moderately chubby cats also trimmed down and the underweight cat gained some weight.
I had a diabetic cat and it was truly horrible. Very stressful and expensive and unfun for cat and person alike. Feeding high protein wet food only is the best way to avoid ending up with a diabetic cat (well, and avoiding steroids if at all possible).
I’m sure there are plenty of people who completely disagree with this and I know there are lots of vets who’ve been bought off by evil Hill’s etc. who recommend that crap prescription food and say dry food is better for teeth whatever. Fair enough. This is just my opinion, based on lots of reading of veterinary journal articles and discussions with vets who specialize in cat nutrition. I realize I probably sound like a crazy person, but it is just frustrating to me to have discovered how many health problems and vet bills I could’ve avoided by feeding different food.
Best of luck to everyone with your chubby kitties! Give wet food a try!
Wait till Little Joe hits 24.6lbs. The vet almost hit the floor after reading the scale, after putting her arms back in her sockets from putting my up there. But somehow it’s not a kitty glandular problem…. And he eats less than the 8lber!
I like to think of my cat Batman as being big boned…..
hee hee! awwww…. sorry to hear the “diet” is not going so well. But I love Little Joe so so much anyway. I have his snoogling with Tomato Tubey picture on my desk at work, it never fails to amuse me. (I love a stripedy cat!)
and to remind me how “Little” he is, since the Tubey is there for scale. HA!
“Yeah, I’m going to need to see a picture.”
And *I’m* going to need to borrow a wide-angle lens.
[rimshot]
Part of the problem is that his fatness makes him perfectly delightfully round, so he’s extra-cute, and whenever people come over, they’re like, “DAMN that cat is fa– awwww.”
I should take a picture of him looking his most spherical and then have a photo contest — like, he’s the “before” picture of Jared in the Subway ads, or Mo Vaughn’s body with Little Joe’s head pasted onto it.
Wowzers. While my cat Tiger only hit 15 lbs(domestic mixed breed), I was apartment hunting in Brooklyn recently and there was a 29 lb boy who really looked like he was a domestic mixed breed too. He was lying on an ottoman, and when he got up to say hello he revealed a VERY impressive indentation. Too adorable for words.
I have to agree with Amy above… a high-quality (and high protein, not a lot of filler) wet food, like Wellness or Natural Balance, served twice daily will help control the kitty weight better than free-feeding dry food. My beasties get a combo of wet and dry: wet twice a day and kibble for treats before bed. If I didn’t do that, the bigger kitty would eat all the food and the smaller kitty would starve.
That said, Little Joe is adorable and hilarious… I love reading about him. If he’s active and healthy and hasn’t gotten so big that he can’t wash himself properly, then… eh. Maybe it’s not such a big deal. Another thing to try, if you don’t want to give up the kibble, is to take away the food bowl at night… at least then he has a few hours when he can’t overeat, and his little digestive system can play catch-up on what he’s been eating all day.
As everyone else said, It’s The Dry Food. Cats seem to inflate like balloons when you feed them too much of the stuff. I think that the issue with dry food is that it’s harder to portion-control; an appropriate amount just doesn’t look like enough food. Wet food comes in nice little individual units, so it’s easier to dole out a set amount.
And yes, I feed my cats dry food (3/4-cup in the morning shared between them, and they share a small can in the evening). And my big guy Hercules is pretty porky. I’m going to have to cut back, but I expect that policy will get a lot of meows.
Maybe I need to get an Exercise Tortoise!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ul0gfCyeiyM
When my mother got her puppy last year, our vet of 30 years gave her both “ideal weight” (12 pounds) and “ideal weight, given she’ll be living at YOUR house” (14 pounds) estimates. Our reputation precedes us, apparently…
“I should take a picture of him looking his most spherical and then have a photo contest — like, he’s the “before” picture of Jared in the Subway ads, or Mo Vaughn’s body with Little Joe’s head pasted onto it.”
HEE! also, you do have “before” pictures of Little Joe. we could compare Spherical Joe to the Little Joe from the “And then there were two” entry.
I love Mo Vaughn. That guy is a TANK. He hit a hot dog vendor in the leg with a home run once. My personal favorite baseball moment.
What works for me is just not to free feed. I grew up with cats who ate whenever out of their dishes, but they were indoor/outdoor and got a ton of exercise. Now, with indoor babies, I take away the food. They get fed once in the morning and once in the evening. When they walk away from the dishes, the dishes go away, empty or no. They learned very quickly to eat while the food is in front of them and generally don’t beg during the day ( . . . for food, anyway. Attention is another matter).
Mind you, we have to do seperate feedings, because one is on a UR formula, which adds a whole other level of fun, what with them wanting to eat the *other* cats food and not their own, leading to locking one in a room with food, and then the howling because he’s locked up, so we have to sit with him while he eats, and you see where this is going.
Feeding two cats different diets = my impossible dream. Last night the big one (currently: 25 pounds, goal weight: 16 pounds. He looks like a basketball) found the latest hiding place for the little one’s food. We tried just feeding them both the canned food, but the wrong cat lost weight. We’ve gotten the big one tantalizingly close to 20 pounds a couple of times, but then he found the little one’s food again and… basically, my cat is yo-yo dieting.
Wow! I took my girl to the vet recently and he said she was overweight at 14 lbs. So I started calling her Fatty McSausagePants. It’s hard to do portion control with two cats because generally she muscles her way to the front of the feeding line. Her weight really wasn’t that noticeable until she stood on my stomach the other day. Of course, we also have a fat pug and compared to that the cat looks absolutely svelte.
The kibble is clearly the problem, although honestly, the reason I haven’t just cut their kibs entirely before now is that it’s Hobey who mostly eats it. Hobey, who has two teeth. And will squall and squall until I put some more down. And has that part-Abyssinian Siamese-y yowl that GAH, OKAY, I WILL GET YOU SOME FOOD.
The Hobe is not exactly a scrawn either at 14+ pounds but at least he’s “tall.” Joe is just a bowling ball.
I had never heard the wet food diet advice before; my vet told me wet food should just be an occasional treat, not for every day eating. Give them dry food every day, he said. (Mine eat Purina Urinary Tract Health formula.) Maybe I’ll try the wet food diet and see if that helps.
My first cat ended up with only one or two teeth at the end of her life, and also loved kibble just as much as Hobey. I never got that — doesn’t it hurt to try and gum it? Apparently it was worth it for her.
My Huckleberry is a manx, which is supposedly a small breed (my girl manx is full grown at six pounds). Huck is not only 17 pounds at two years old, he also rests his paws on my HIPS when he stands on his back paws and reaches up to me. He’s massive, he has a waddle of fat on his stomach that swings when he walks, and when I put him on diet food he eats so much of it to compensate that he gets diarrhea. It’s awful, and made worse by the fact that he has a tiny, tiny head. I don’t really want to play around with feeding each cat seperately, but unless I leash-train Huck and start taking him out for jogs I’m going to have to think of something. Seriously, he’s bigger than many of the dogs I know.
I’ve got two, Fatty and Benny. They both weigh about the same actually (btwn 15 and 16 lbs), but when we adopted Fatty, his name was Jason. Then later we adopted Benny, and he looks even bigger!
I asked our vet about Benny’s, ah, change purse, because it does really hang down and swing when he runs. She said it’s not a big deal and is just naturally more pronounced in some cats than others.
We do separate, controlled feedings for them. They both eat Science Diet kibbles, but Fatty gets the senior formula since he is almost ten years old. They eat twice a day, Benny in the kitchen, Fatty in the bedroom. We just close the door until they are both done about fifteen minutes later. Then when we open it, they usually run out and lick each other’s plates! Even though they are both big big boys, their weight has been basically maintaining once they put on a few post-shelter pounds, and that seems to work for all of us. I love my chubbles!
This is Chester, otherwise known as “the fat.” He isn’t actually mine, he belongs to the absentee landlord. At one point he weighed 24 pounds — now he’s around 20. The landlord was letting the cats eat straight out of the bag, lazy bastard.
Why are fat cats cute? Is it their little tiny heads? Is it the way they spread out to cover an entire couch arm like a loaf of bread dough left to rise too long? Is it because you can play with their belly fat and they can’t reach you with your claws? Who knows.
As far as cat food goes, I’ve found Innova EVO to be good stuff — no grains or fillers at all, so the food’s very nutrient-rich and the cat doesn’t have to eat as much. It cuts down on shedding, and best of all, it reduces poo odors — after the first ten minutes of deadly stinkwaves, it just goes away. Another tip we’re using on the landlord’s cats is to put the kibble on a flat plate instead of in a dish, which makes it impossible for the cat to stick its face in the food and gorge itself. Watching the fat cat chase the last bit of kibble around on a blue willow dinner plate is priceless fun.
Hee hee! My two are half siamese and my god that meow is annoying! I just noticed George is looking a wee more svelte and I’m wondering if it’s because I’m giving him more wet food this week! I usually don’t give them any, but he has a throat infection that makes him sound like a diseased crow, and the easiest way to give him antibiotics is to put it in wet food. Both my kitties have hairball issues and the Natural Balance stuff seems to work for both of them. They really like the venison and green pea formula. I mean they REALLY like it – I’ve had to put a childproof lock on the cabinet where I keep the bag because George figured out how to open the doors, get in and chew through the bag until the food spilled out. *sigh* It’s like having four children instead of two.
I’ve got a fat cat as well. He was upto 19 but lost around 2 pounds. We’ve always used dry cat food, w/ controlled feedings. He was on IAMS Indoor/Weight control and was not losing any weight. The vet was not suprised, apparently IAMS is very high in calories, no matter what type of food. We switched to Purina Indoor (less calories and MUCH cheaper) and there went the weight. Just my two cents. Love that we can leave comments!
When my old cat Ginger came down with diabetes (at around 16 pounds), we switched to Purina’s DM kibble, which the vet called the “mouse-diet.” Ginger and his little siblings (both around 10 pounds) do great on it and Ginger has come down and maintained at about 12 pounds. Some of that is from the diabetes but now that he’s in remission, he’s been able to stay at that weight…
My Henry is 17 pounds, but he is “large framed” — that’s “big-boned” in Cat. He’s okay for now, but a little bit more and he’ll be too big. I call him Fatty.
I am commenting, however, to say that “Heavy Duty” is probably my favorite piece of yours so far, and possibly the best essay about a cat ever. It cracks me up every time.
I would love to know how many of the beefcake kitties who’ve been outed as such in this thread are orange. I have owned or otherwise loved way more cats than I’m willing to confess to in mixed company, and long ago came to the conclusion that fatness is often correlated to orangeness.
Although not always, god knows. I have a tiger-striped butterball who is “tall” too so he carries the weight fairly well… but also a more squat calico whose very long fur makes her look even fatter. My husband keeps insisting she’s not fat, just fluffy, but I’m sorry: she’s a total pork chop.
On the plus side, so to speak, there is nothing softer than a wobbly plump free-hanging cat belly. Nothing.
We’ve got three cats, one of whom is simply prone to putting on weight. She hit over 15 pounds, and after that it was diet time. Free feeding is simply not doable for her. We had to switch them to two meals a day, with smaller rations for Fatty Bobatty. And yeah, you’ve never heard such whining. It was just a tough love kinda thing. We want her to live longer, preferably without diabetes.
We had all three cats on Iams Weight Control for a while, but after a while we switched back to regular ol’ Purina for financial reasons…and with adjustment of portions, the weight stayed off. Our previously Blimptacular cat has slimmed down to around 11-12 pounds. She’s a massive cat to begin with…some sort of Siamese cross, but we think the “cross” was with a Sherman tank or maybe a Brink’s truck. So even after slimming down, she’s shaped like a brick. All three cats still get two meals a day, measured fairly accurately (we just keep the measuring cup in the bag o kibble).
As other posters have noticed, portion control is tougher with multiple cats…the other two will eat a little, go have some water, eat a little more, etc. and meanwhile Miss Big Rig has muscled in on their food. One of us finds something that needs doing in the kitchen area, and makes sure that Big Eater exits right after finishing off her bowl.
And yeah, they still whine sometimes. I tell them that if they evolve opposable thumbs and can open the closet door where we keep the food, they can then help themselves. Of course, at that point they’ll need to get jobs and drive themselves to the store, too.
Ahhh, the feline change purse. My boy kitty has it, and he’s not even overweight. Actually, most indoor male cats I’ve known lately have had it. I have a theory about early neutering (10 weeks for two of them I know). My little girl doesn’t have one.
BTW, the Purina Indoor formula does rock quite a bit. Both of mine were on it and maintaining fantastic weights. Since the diet change, my girl is still on it and she’s a tiny thing.
Michelle: Yes, I’ve got a tubby buddy, and he is indeed orange…
I feed about half-and-half dry and wet. Based on my own experience and others’, it does seem to be true that dry food makes cats inflate like balloons. But I’ve also heard that wet-only causes tooth problems, because the crunchy hard stuff acts to keep the teeth clean. So I split it up, hoping for the best of both worlds…
…although I did recently cut back the kibble ration. This policy has received many meows.
My apologies if I double post.
I have been a life-long cat owner, but I about died when I saw my friend’s cat back when we were in high school together– he weighed somewhere between 35 and 40 lbs, much like this cat: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1013028449198268721
No cat has seemed large to me since then.
My chunk of a cat has major separation anxiety-fueled weight gain. She gets ultra nervous anytime she sees a suitcase. The most recent weight gain happened while I was in the hospital to have a baby. Porker must have just gorged herself the entire time I was away because she’d visibly gained several pounds in those three days. Three months later, the little guy’s only just barely up to her weight class. Jury’s still out as to who requires more attention.
When my former fatty developed tooth problems, he dropped a ton of pounds and we had to coax him into eating anything at all. His two sisters were very excited by the novelty of wet food and usually managed to nab 80-90% of every can. Their little “I’ve been spayed” stomach fat pouches blossomed into huge swinging balloons. The supposed weight loss benefits of wet food did not manifest themselves in my household!
At the first opportunity though, we weaned the big guy (and everyone else) back onto dry food — and both the girls have visibly lost some weight. And more importantly, the dry food helps keep the big guy’s few remaining teeth in better condition. I suppose if your cats like the hard tarter treats (mine don’t), or if they’ll eat kibble as a treat (mine are used to wet as a treat and aren’t actually excited by kibble unless it’s Meow Mix), you could feed them an all-wet diet…but definitely stay abreast of their dental health! It’s damn scary to only realize there’s a problem after the cat has lost 30% of his body weight.
Sars: I feel your pain, as I have TWO Siamese – one full-blood, one half-breed, both yowling experts. We did free feeding the first few months, and their weight increased exponentially. After the more aggressive one developed some kidney issues, I put ’em both on prescription cat food…and I got an automatic feeder. Digital, programmable, timed. As I tell them when they yowl, I don’t feed them – the machine feeds them. Of course, the aggressive one gets more, but I figure if the meeker one is hungry enough, she’ll muscle her way in (and she does). They have found that they can pull down extra kibble through the feeding slot, but I figure that at least requires some expenditure of calories. Their weights have stablized at reasonably healthy levels. Lots of yowling, but I just talk back to them – we have very entertaining conversations…
To Amy and other wet food advocates:
Dry food doesn’t actually cause more weight gain than wet, it just tends to be less calorie dense so you can feed more (same with all the weight control formulas, just like with us it’s ultimately the number of calories that count not how we get them). It is true that the wet increases tooth problems and also that dental problems in cats and dogs are a major (and potentially life threatening) issue. As to fiber causing diabetes and vets being bought off by pet food companies, well I disagree, most vets don’t work for the pet food companies and really have the best interest of their patients in mind. It is not a particularly well paid profession (especially as it becomes more female dominated) and they carry huge loan burdens, but they love their work.
Michelle, we’ve got an orange fatty here, too. He’s about 17 lbs, an orange tiger-ish Stripe. We call him The Beast. :)
Might look into this wet food thing…
17.8 pounds, up more than two pounds, yep, on a diet. She was on a mix of Hill’s R/D (which I took away after I read about the recall of their other food) and Purina. Now she’s only getting what is, to her, the good stuff: Purina’s Weight Control. And because it is the good stuff, she wants more of it. And she does crowd the other-much, much smaller- cat out. What I’ve been trying to do is to take the cat a separate bowl and basically shove it into her until she eats. I have a better chance of getting her to do this if she’s been sleeping. Not quite 3/4 of a cup in two days. Next week, we get bloodwork. At this point, I’m more worried about the smaller cat than I am about the larger one, though I’ve been trying to “exercise” with her, which the vet suggested. She has a very short attention span though.
Huh…I have funny weight issues with our cats, Sars -our girl kitty, Edie, is SO SMALL, but she eats like a pig. She *might* weigh 7 or 8 pounds. My orange guy, Fynn is pleasingly sleek but small-framed and my husband swears he’s getting fat. I say he’s just growing into his skin.
So I have them on a new wet food: Tiki Cat! It actually smells really….foodlike, is made from all high-quality meats, and my guys love it. The lady at the pet supply place I get it from says that she’s never had a food that at least some people didn’t return b/c their cat(s) didn’t like it….but this one is selling like gangbusters.
Love the new blog, Sars!
Gawd, I know. My fatty mcfatass is 15.5, which was a complete and total joy when she pulled out a claw last week, and I got freaked out because I came home and there was blood all over and I just grabbed the cat that was bleeding and put her in the car and Speed Racer-ed it over to the emergency vet, and then I had to wrangle 15.5 pounds of shedding, bleeding cat on my shoulder while filling out vet paperwork and avoiding the barfing dog sharing the emergency room.
And of course Midge is on a diet too. I’m like, what am I supposed to do here? I’m feeding her the diet food, according to the directions on the thing, and I am NOT giving her less than that because I don’t want to be all Janice Dickinson at her all, “ONE PIECE OF DRY TOAST FOR YOU ALL DAY.” The vet was like, “Get her to exercise more,” and I was like, “…” I swear, I pull string and toys and the other cat goes crazy, and the fat one is like, “Yawn. *Zzzzzzz*”
Man, a year ago I was feeling your pain! My fatty weighed in at 15 lbs, and got the ‘wow, that’s a FAT cat!’ comments from everyone! My vet set ideal weight goals, and set a calorie intake/day for her (200 cal/day) and recommended a mix of wet and dry food. We had been doing dry only, but with the dry food I use (California Natural) she was always hungry because it didn’t take much volume to hit the calorie cut-off.
So we switched to 1/2 the calories from dry food and 1/2 the calories from wet food (Innova lite). I portion out the food each cat gets for the entire day into a container marked with their name, and then it gets doled out over the day. They get fed in separate rooms, but my skinny cat is pretty good about chasing off the fatty. We also made a really concerted effort to make the fatty cat play more, which got easier as the weight started to come off. So, a year later and she’s down at her ideal weight of 10 lbs and looking great! She still has the ‘change purse’ though…
I’ve recently begun feeding my cats homemade food, from recipes in a book called “Dr. Pitcairn’s Guide to Natural Health for Cats and Dogs.” It’s more work, but I feel better that they’re getting real food. They don’t have major weight problems, but I’m hopeful that their slight chunkiness (developed when they were eating prescription kibble) will decrease as time goes on. The basic recipe is cooked grain + raw meat + eggs + supplements. The best thing was when the pet food scare happened and I could blissfully ignore it.
I did have one cat (sadly no longer with us) who clocked in at 21 pounds of love. I think he was half mountain-lion. He was HUGE, but not all that fat. If there were a kitty NFL, he would have been drafted in the first round.
Other than switching Little Joe’s diet (perhaps again), have you tried a laser pointer? My parents’ cat lost 2 lbs (!) playing with that thing! Mine loves it too.
I will also join the chorus of high protein, low carb food though. Our cat eats only Wellness canned, and is a slim, trim 9 lbs. OK, maybe she has a teensy belly. ;) Cats really do not need carbs at all, and I would really try to get them off the dry food.
Ok… about the yowling thing. Anybody have any advice about getting a cat to shut the hell up? Our Maine Coon walks the house YOWLING at the top of his lungs at all hours. It’s not because there are other cats outside, it’s not because he’s got nobody to play with, it might be because he’s on a diet too (but we’re not giving him more food). Most mornings we end up locking him in the bathroom across the house. How do you convince a cat to be FREAKING quiet for a little bit?
I second the request for pictures, and would totally go for that photo contest.
Little Joe *sounds* adorable. I think I cemented my future as a Crazy Cat Lady when I read your description of him curling up in a loaf and immediately thought how adorable that sounded.
We have two cats. One eats Indoor Cat dry food (even though she goes both inside and outside, the Indoor formula makes her poo smell less godawful, and she likes it, and tends to use her litterbox anyway) and the other eats diet dry food. He lives entirely outside. The indoor cat is sleek and svelte (and disgustingly pretty, but spectacularly stupid), outdoor kitty is built like a rugby ball with legs. Diet Iams has helped him lose weight, but he’s still tubby, I just no longer strain important muscles picking him up. He peaked at about 24 pounds, but he’s also muscular as hell.
Maybe you could build Joe a little kitty treadmill or something.