Cat Chat Feline Forum

Hi all,
My 14 year old cat Portia has been steadily gaining weight over the last 4 years, coinciding with becoming less active (she has joint problems). She currently weighs 5 1/2 kg.
After seeking vetinary advice, we has put her on a dry food based diet of 60g per day. This has been going on for approx 6 months. She is still big and I am starting to worry that she is actually gaining weight.

We don't feed her anything else and her ability to play is limited now she has joint problems. Do you have any advice?

Although a lot younger my Pip steadily put weight on after she was spayed, I cut her down to two pouches of wet food a day and treats once a week and over a a year she lost 800gms and is now back within the healthy weight range. Personally I would ditch the dry if she'll eat wet switch to that.

I completely agree with that - dry food is much more calorific than wet. I would gradually switch to mainly wet.

I agree as well... wet food will be much better than dry food. Esp if it's a higher protein / good quality wet food so she won't need as much but get maximum benefit from it absorb what she needs.

Just make sure whatever wet food you give is labelled complete so it has all the necessary nutrients and minerals your cat needs.

As for the joint issues ask your vet about a glucosamine supplement like Seraquin; that may help your girl a bit as well

Hi

As many have said, wet food would be better. However if your cat doesn't like wet or doesn't take to it well, may I suggest cutting it down to 50g? It sounds less then it actually is. My Shelly gained weight after se developed weak hind legs so we needed to act in order to get her weight down and over a period of 8months we got it down to a good weight for her.

Try 25g in morning and 25g in evening and see how that goes.

Thanks to all who responded!
I had no idea that wet food was lower in calories! We will try to reduce to 50g dry until the bag is empty as she seems to love it, but if that doesn't work or she appears hungry, we will try her on wet food. I'm sure she'll adapt

Rather than change suddenly when the bag of dry food runs out, change over gradually, giving her some dry and some wet each day - such as one meal of wet and one of dry, gradually reducing the dry and increasing the wet, assuming she takes to it. It may well take some trial and error till you find the brand(s) of wet food she likes, avoiding the cheapest, poor quality supermarket own brands. A sudden change, or most cheapo wet foods, is likely to cause tummy upsets.

Thanks Alice. We use Yarrah http://www.yarrah.com/assortment/cat-food-dry" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; which is a great brand for her as she's had digestive problems in the past and should we decide to try wet food, it will be a mix as I don't want to cause too much upset. She's a little lovely and we just hope she can lose some weight so she can be with us for a long time.

There's a good variety of decent quality wet foods available for sensitive tums these days

Thanks GreenKitty!