A little over a year ago I posted that my 7 year old cat had been diagnosed with arthritis, and that I felt incredibly guilty about not taking her weight issues seriously before that.
At that time she weighed 5.8 kg. She was prescribed daily pain killers (meloxidyl), which I mixed into her food every day. But I didn't want to just settle on having to give her pain killers every day for the rest of her life, and knowing that the pain was probably largely due to her weight, I started planning her diet pretty much the moment we got back from the vet. Copied from my previous post, this is what I came up with:
The vet recommended to feed more wet than dried, because this contains more water and is more filling with fewer calories, so I have adjusted the ratio there compared to before. The amounts are based on her target weight of 4kg and her level of activity (which is fairly low). I feed her 1.5 packs (approx. 120g) of Royal Canin Ultra Light wet food, split into 3 meals (one in the morning, one when I get home from work, one right before bed), and 20g of Royal Canin Sterilized dried food in her food ball before bed.
Shortly after starting her diet I switched her to Royal Canin Calm (to help with the adjustment to the new kitten I adopted... see my other post from today). I also started gradually reducing the dosage of her pain meds. I couldn't really weigh her precisely at home, and wasn't about to bring her into the vet just to get her weighed, because the vet is extremely stressful for her. But I basically reduced the dosage a little bit each month, and kept a close look at her behavior. After a few months, once I could clearly see that she had lost a good chunk, I switched her wet food to Royal Canin Instinctive 7+, and I halved her pain killer dosage (I was basically giving her the dosage for a 2kg cat, but I knew she weighed more than that). A few months later (when things with the kitten had somewhat settled), I switched her dry food to Royal Canin Sterilized Appetite Control 7+, stopped the pain killers altogether and that is where we are now.
I still feed her 1.5 bags of wet food a day, separated into 3 meals, but have upped the dry food to 25g because she has become much more active after shedding all the weight. At her last vet visit she weighed 4.2kg, meaning she lost 1.6kg over the course of the year! I have some of the pain killers at home still, so I can start administering them again if she starts showing signs of pain. But she is super active and is jumping to high places she couldn't reach before, so it seems that losing the extra weight really did wonders for her! The vet was really impressed when he saw how much weight she lost, saying that people usually really struggle with getting their cats to lose weight. But I basically just started weighing out her dry food in little baggies so I knew every day exactly how much to give her. It's a little bit of effort that went a long way!
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from Pets https://www.reddit.com/r/Pets/comments/czispk/update_on_my_overweight_arthritic_cat_down_to_a/
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