25% Just Right

Well, it’s offi­cial; Dolly is approx­i­mate­ly 25% over­weight, with a mass of 12.6 pounds. The gut-pok­ing and bel­ly-teas­ing has­n’t been based on noth­ing. Sometimes I wish she could talk so that I could know whether she would rather live a life of glut­tony and go out like Chris Farley sans the cocaine, or whether she would rather live health­ily and restrain her eat­ing. I always leave a dish of food out and it’s obvi­ous that she does­n’t know how to con­trol her eat­ing habits. My deci­sion will prob­a­bly be to make sure that she’s a healthy weight, instead of spoil­ing her and let­ting her eat as much as she wants. That way there’s less chance of dia­betes, heart dis­ease, or oth­er health com­pli­ca­tions down the road. I could start cut­ting back on the amount of food I give her, or start buy­ing diet food, but for now I’ll just mon­i­tor her weight. 25% I can live with, but any more and I’ll have to take action. After all, I like hav­ing a kit­ty that has a bit of a paunch. I’ve come to iden­ti­fy the bel­ly sway­ing walk with her now. And as Aaron says, “A fat cat is a hap­py cat.”

8 comments

  1. Actually, a fat cat is an unhap­py cat — one extra pound on a cat is the equiv­a­lent to about 10 extra pounds on us, pos­si­bly more.

    As you said, it runs the risk of dia­betes and such, but also heart dis­ease, arthri­tis, and many many oth­er ail­ments.

    A fat cat is a less play­ful one, if noth­ing else.

    Finally, it’s quite easy to adjust Dolly’s weight, espe­cial­ly as she is the only cat in the house. For one, if she’s over a year old, you can switch her to adult “less active” for­mu­la foods, or you can sim­ply mon­i­tor her food and ensure she does­n’t get more than the rec­om­mend­ed dosage (which tend to be gen­er­ous to begin with) per day. Put her food for the day in a mea­sur­ing cup, and don’t exceed it, or just use a mea­sur­ing cup to dole out how much she gets.

    Feeding cats at reg­u­lar­ly sched­uled meal­times is bet­ter for them than leav­ing food out all day (although many cats won’t eat all of their food in one sit­ting any­how).

    Forgive the lec­ture, but it’s left over from work­ing at the ani­mal hos­pi­tal where diets were a large con­cern, as well as see­ing the change in my cats when their weights went up and down.

  2. She isn’t the only cat though, and its fun­ny because you say a fat cat is less play­ful because Dolly is much more play­ful than Nala, who is the cor­rect weight.

  3. Not the men­tion the fact that Dolly is the hap­pi­est cat that I know.

  4. That’s as much per­son­al­i­ty as weight, though.

    Sorry, I thought there was only one cat in the house­hold.

  5. There was, but we just moved in togeth­er so our feline sat­u­ra­tion has been dou­bled :)

  6. I think my demon beast needs com­pa­ny, or at least some­one to keep her in line. Too bad my place is so small. :P

  7. My point was the fact that I’m hap­py as long as my cat is hap­py.

  8. Hi I saw you were talk­ing about your cat ;-)
    I’m a black labrador called Sam, and im chair­man of http://www.sempo-tahoe.com
    (a search engine club for ani­mals)

    We have a major inequal­i­ty prob­lem with our species dis­tri­b­u­tion and we would real­ly like some cats to join.
    We’re hav­ing soooo much fun and we’d love it if your pets would join too!

    Regards

    Sam ~ Woof Woof!

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