Fat cats! What’s not to love? How about diabetes, arthritis, heart, skin and urinary problems all resulting in an increased risk of early death! All of these are can be attributed to obesity. In the past, weight loss has been a struggle for cats that are fat. Last year, Hill’s released a new weight loss diet cat food called Metabolic. When fed appropriately, we have seen this diet cat food provide amazing weight loss for fat cats. Metabolic works by using the science of epigenetics. To simplify epigenetics, genes have little switches on them that turn the expression of that gene on or off. Hill’s has developed Metabolic to help turn on the metabolic activity of these fat cats so they become little calorie-burning machines.  

Feeding Cats Diet Food

To help fat cats lose weight, it is best to feed them canned food. It is a common misconception that canned food makes cats fat. Canned food by itself will not make them overweight, but rather it is the amount of canned food that makes the difference.  Metabolic is available only through your veterinarian, who can give you individual advice on the proportion of food your cat needs to stay healthy, yet lose weight.

Beware Of The Labels On Certain Cat Diets

“Lite” or “low calorie” cat foods are often misleading. These terms do not necessarily mean a diet cat food as they are not specifically defined, and often “lite” foods will contain more calories than another brand’s “maintenance” food. To be sold in pet retailers and grocery stores, the food companies have to prove that the cat does not lose weight when fed according to label directions! In order to get a cat to lose weight on these foods, you need to feed him or her less than what is recommended on the label. This decreases the amount of vitamins and minerals your cat will get, and over time, your cat will not lose weight and will become deficient in important vitamins and minerals.

If you think it’s time to get those extra pounds off your fat cat, find out how we can help with ourAnimal Nutrition & Dietpage and make an appointmenttoday.

Yours in health,

Dr. Kent Morley