Advice/Help/Recommedations - for weight gain

[Kaaskat]

Hello Everyone

I am after a wee bit of advice. I adopted my senior boy in May of this year from a shelter (13 year old white DSH, Deaf), he was very thin, to begin with, as he had a lot of dental problems and had to have numerous teeth extracted. He has put on a very very very small amount of weight since he has been with me, and I want to know what would be good to feed him to build him up. He has recently had a vet check, and the vet is happy with his teeth, and blood work, and my boy has been wormed recently with broadline, so I am at a loss.

My boy currently gets 2 pouches a day of Gourmet perle, but this tends to leave him a quite "runny" and he has unlimited access to hills science plan kibble, and Whiskas senior kibble

Any suggestions - should I up his wet food to 3 or 4 times a day and what wet food would be good to build him up.

Any help/advice or recommendations would be really appreciated

Nose bops and purrs

Kaaskat & Elmo

[Kay]

my 16 year old Tiffany has lost a lot of weight recently although all her tests are fine - her food seemed to be going straight through her, judging by the amounts of poo she was producing

I experimented with her food to try to sort it, and have found after much trial and error that restricting her to wet food which is grain and additive free works best - she now eats Bozita, Integra and Animonda Carne, and Porta 21 supplementary, bought from Zooplus https://www.zooplus.co.uk/shop/cats

you will find lots more good quality food on that site too, and although most of it costs more than dry biscuits and supermarket wet food, because it contains much less cheap fillers it fills them up more

[Ruth B]

I have to agree that wet food is better than dry, but in my opinion there is no point spending a fortune on special food if they won't eat it, go with what he likes. Try and keep to the grain free options if possible as some grains, wheat in particular, seem to cause stomach problems, and assuming he hasn't got any type of kidney problems go for ones that have a high protein content (12 to 15% in wet food)

Mine seem to do very well on Gourmet Gold, Pate, Doubly Delicious and the newer Melting Hearts range, as well as Felix As Good as it Looks.

A meal of cooked or raw meat two or three times a week might also help, if it is cooked make sure there are no bones in it, with raw it doesn't matter as much but if he's short on teeth he might have problems eating them. Chicken, beef and lamb are good options, you don't need to buy the expensive cuts cheap minced beef is, in a way, better as it contains less lean meat and cats benefit from having everything else as well. Chicken thighs, cooked and boned but left with the skin on can also be a good option.

Older cats can go thin but still be healthy, what you have to watch is that he isn't constantly losing weight. When our old Ragdoll was about 13 he fairly quickly went from about 5kg to 3.5kg, like yours he need a lot of dental work, but he never put the weight back on, he just stabilised at 3.5kg for the next 3 years before succumbing to old age. On the other hand I adopted my Mothers elderly cat earlier this year and by the Summer it was obvious that something was wrong and she was losing weight at a drastic rate (15 -20% of her body weight in a month) with no obvious reason and a ravenous appetite. She was 17 so rather than subject her to a load of stressful tests and to not let her die of starvation, we called it an end.

Be careful with some of the senior cat foods, while some have the trace elements adjusted to an older cats needs other are low calorie options as a lot of older cats have a tendency to be rather sedentary and overweight (rather like some of us middle age humans).

As long as yours is a stable weight or is even putting a little on, isn't constantly hungry and still losing weight then he should be fine, it is better to be a little on the thin side than overweight, it put less stress on the organs and joints.

[Kay]

I don't think any of the foods you mention are grain free, though, Ruth - they all have cereal listed among the ingredients

it's the cereal that keeps the price down, of course

[Ruth B]

Interesting, we must be looking at different ingredient lists. Gormet Gold double Delicacies does mention cereals, the Pate, the Melting Hearts and the Felix AGAIL don't in the ingredient lists I can find on line. A lot of cat foods do seem to be moving away from it, I know Sheba used to list cereals and don't anymore either.

[Kay]

I wonder - in my many efforts to work out what was affecting Tiffany, I ruled out foods which mentioned 'derivatives' and 'by-products' and 'vegetable proteins, as I just don't understand what any of them is - I also don't like the fact that there is sugar in many popular foods as I do wonder if that is behind the increase in pet diabetes

I'm no expert though in cat food - and I think Tiffany's problems might be dry food even though I always fed the more expensive brands

if I had a young cat again I think I would be tempted to go for raw, as it's the only food you can be sure what it is