How to get my cat to lose weight?

Hi! My oldest cat Mitz is 13 now, shes been putting on weight steadily for a year, I took her to the vet to check for other problems and he said shes just eating to much. I want her to get rid of this weight asap, its not healthy for a cat of her age to be overweight.

To start with I just reduced her food, she was the only cat out of my 5 who always ate dry food (the others had always refused dry food) so no problems reducing her food without effecting the others, then 2 weeks into doing this the other 4 cats for the first time in 10 odd years all decided they wanted to eat dry food too so its impossible to say how much Mitz is eating.

Has anyone else put there cat on a diet? I especially need tips for putting one cat out of a multicat household on a diet. How long does it take for a cat to lose weight?

 

Hi,
Youll have to isolate them, keep the one on the diet seperate from the others so you can monitor how much food the overweight kitty is eating. It means you wont be able to free feed, what might work is if for example yu are gone to work 8 hours, keep the kitty on the diet in a seperate room from the others, when you come home pick up the food so they can be together again, or do it at night.

Good luck, Ive gone through this before, it took a little adjusting but they all settled into a routine with it after a week or so.

 

dry food can pack on the weight too. Look at the ingredients and make sure there is no corn.
How about her level of exercise?
I have a foster who has lost 3 pounds just be increasing her activity level. She hasn't been able to eat the "light" foods cause she is allergic to them. But she loves playing wand and just playing in general.

 

well in my opinion you just have to put the food where the cats have to work to get it. we have 6 cats 2 are over weight we put the cat food on top of a cabnet thing and our cats have to work for it. the reason our one cat is over weight is because when she was little she broke her hip so she cant excersise as much as the others but they all have to work for the food so the two over weight cats have been steadily loosing weight. in jan. Neko our one over weght cat was around 20 pounds now hes abou 12 pounds. and we free feed our cats dry food. we also give them wet food every once in a while so they can eat when ever they want. they also get let outside whenever they want also so they also get alot more excersise then they used to. what i suggest is try different things and see what works best for both you and your cats.

 

none of my cats go outside and there's not a fatty in the bunch.
I free feed dry and they share 3 cans of Fancy Feast per day. They are all relatively active, have tons of toys, a cat tree and a condo (ebay has them really cheap).
I walk around the house with a wand toy so they can chase it (and I get exercise this way too).
The foster, Dixie, would was really overweight when she got here is now down to less than 10 lbs. from 13 in April. I even still give her treats of deli meat (which she loves). But her activity level has increased.
Like people...you can diet to lose weight but in order to loose it effectively you need to increase the metabolism by moving around. Letting cats outside doesn't necessarily do it - most cats I know that go outside still lay around they just do it outside. I have a coworker who has a really fat cat that is outside all day - she sleeps in the shade then goes inside eats and sleeps in a chair.
Get them moving and decrease the level of food, get rid of the snacks, maybe switch to a light dry food (again checking the ingredients - get rid of any dry food with corn in it).

 

my cats get excersise when they go outside because they like to hunt. so almost every day we find dead bodies in our front yard. we only have 2 cats that eat what they catch but they are still catching the mice so they get excersise and it helps keep our other animals healthy because there wont be mice trying to eat their food. so we know our cats get excersise. especially when the neigbor dog chases them although she rarly does any more. they still get excersie but every one has different opinions and all cats have different opinions.

 

Thanks for your replies, I stopped feeding the dry food altogether to see if it was that bulking on the weight and a week later Mitz looked smaller! I think it may have been blocking her system up, now its 2 weeks later and shes definatly losing it no problem, we have been excercising her too because I had noticed she was spending all day everyday laying in the sun!
:y_the_best: Thanks for all the replies

 

good job...soon she's be ready to join my Dixie on the Victoria Secret catwalk LOL