Let's talk about my cat for a second. You guys know we got Winny 3 years ago and I've been obsessed ever since. Well, to say my cat has a strong relationship with food is the under statement of the year! My husband and I like to say that because she is from the streets, she knows what it's like to go without food. This isn't exactly true, she was rescued as a kitten when she was still nursing from her mother, lived in a foster home, and then we took her home so she hasn't actually gone more than a day without food.
Well, in the last year and a half Win put on some weight, like up to 18lbs worth of weight. Pause for gasps & judgement... OK, now that we have that out of the way I wanted to share how we are getting the weight off and keeping it off! Obviously, what we're doing isn't going to work for every cat so I highly suggest taking your cat into their vet to get a full physical and a true weigh loss plan that will be healthy for your cat.
I had been acutely aware for a while that Winny was overweight, everyone's reaction when they would see her is "oh my gosh she's so huge". In the Spring she was showing symptoms of a feline UTI and I knew it was time to take her in and have a tough conversation with my vet about her current weight and how that was affecting the rest of her health. Truth be told, the vet had me in tears about how big she'd gotten! It broke my heart to hear that I was over feeding my cat and putting her at risk for bigger health issues but she cried all the time for food! What were we supposed to do! Growing up we always just left food out for our cats but it became clear that Win had some self control issues.
Our vet recommended a prescription weight loss food, strict feeding schedule, and a lot more playtime for Winny. She prescribed Hill's Prescription Diet r/d Weight Reduction dry food, which we order from Chewy, I highly recommend signing up for autoship because you save 5% on your purchase. We feed Win the amount of food recommended on the bag based on her current goal weight, so we're taking a stair step approach. Currently she is getting 1/3 cup of food twice daily with a snack at 4pm which is just this toy filled with her weight loss food. One toy she will play with no matter the time of day is the Cat Dancer, which is basically just a wire with cardboard sticks on it but she'll chase that thing all over. If she cries for food during non feeding times, we give her an ice cube! She chases that thing all over, she also drops it by our feet to throw for her kind of like a dog. So we're making sure she is getting a lot of cardio, she probably gets more than me at this point.
About 3 weeks into her diet she'd lost 2lbs, which is approximately 30lbs for a human!! I felt like the proudest mom in the world! We don't have a scale at home and she hasn't been back to the vet in a while but I can tell she has lost even more weight, so we'll have to make an appointment to go back and have her weighed. I am nervous about stepping her food down again because she is still so aggressive about food so feeding her even less will be a nightmare but we'll see! I will keep you posted on her progress!
Image by Nicollette
xx
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