Obesity in Cats
During the summer our short haired cats love to go in and out of the house. In the winter, it’s another story. Our cats gain about five pounds each and it seems like they just sleep all day. As the days get shorter and the nights get longer, these 2 cats rarely meow to go outside. Kenny is the gray fury cat in the pictures below. Sometimes it can be tough to keep an eye on her weight. She would graze all day long if we let her. Buy feeding her smaller amounts once in the morning and once the evening it’s been easier to control her cat health and weight. Indoor cats { like our cats Kenny and Milly} - especially apartment dwellers, tend to have more obesity problems more frequently than outdoor cats, due to less room to move around. If you were an indoor cat that only needed to wait and catch your dinner once it fell into the cat food dish, you’d likely gain weight too.
In or out? She can’t make up her mind….
Kenny entering through the window in the basement.
JUST SAY NO TO FREE FEEDING
If we didn’t our kittens would just get too fat! The main reason for cat obesity (as well as obesity in people) is the consumption of too much food. Deny it all you want but it is a fact. It’s not uncommon for cat owners to fill up the cat food bowl and let the cats have it at for a couple days. Many cats are fed “free choice”, which means there is food available all the time and the cat eats whenever it wants. (Pretty unnatural for a true carnivore that evolved as a hunting machine!) Free choice feeding has probably been the biggest single factor contributing to cat obesity.
If you were wondering how Kenny gets down from on top of the television, she puts her front paws on the screen and slides down the front of the tv. Once she’s about half way down the front she jumps forward and runs smoothly out of the transition from being vertical to horizontal 