We love eating, you know. But since you’ve taken responsibility for us, you may be letting us eat too much. And much less your own food, which, even though is yummy, doesn’t set well with us at all and can get us overweight. You shouldn’t overlook the fact that we cats will always be happier and much healthier if we keep our ideal weight.
Another aspect to bear in mind so as to avoid giving in to the temptation of letting your kitties get fat is the fact that, if we don’t weigh what we should, we won’t live as long, and the length of time that we do live will be much lower quality. We’ll go from being healthy and playful with you to having disorders typically associated with being overweight: arthritis, diabetes and kidney disorders.
It’s not always easy to know if we cats are fatter than normal (especially if we’re long-haired). You can always take us to your trusted veterinarian to make certain, but if you’re really curious to know, you can weigh us at home.
If you pick us up in your arms and step onto the scale, make a note of the weight on the scale and then weigh yourself alone, the difference between the two weights will be our weight. Depending on your cat’s breed, age and conditions, its weight must fall within a certain range. You can view the weight tables by breeds and conditions on myriad internet sites.
So, once you’ve found that your cat is overweight and that it’s not due to its having any illness, you should get to work to get your cat back into shape.
Help your cat lose weight.
The first thing you have to do is convince the entire family as to the importance of your cat being at its ideal weight. Give yourselves a couple of weeks to get the diet going and follow these steps:
- No treats, no cheating.
- Divide your cat’s complete daily food ration into small portions and give them to your cat divided up over the course of the day. That way, you’ll keep your kitty from getting hungry.
- Heed your veterinarian’s advice concerning the right amount of food you should be giving your cat daily.
- Take one of these portions of food and put it inside a special toy so that your cat will play with it in order to eat.
- Play with us as much as you can so that we’ll move around a lot.
- Encourage your cat to get some exercise with the aid of climbing towers or scratching posts. You can also leave our favourite toys lying around on the floor.
Two weeks into the diet, weigh again. If we haven’t yet managed to get back down to our perfect weight, continue the diet and exercise until we do so. And once we’ve gotten back to being perfect, please continue being careful about how much food you give us and the amount of exercise we get.
