# People who have obese pets...



## ahrat

My family is full of animals lovers. I have no doubt that the reason all of my animals are overweight is because my mum just can't say no. She loves them in the wrong way. We have a cat who is so severely overweight that she can no longer clean her "parts". She smells. She has feces crusted on her all the time. Her poop is basically liquid because she eats hotdogs mixed with her cat food all the time.

I finally had the last straw. They were complaining that she smelled so bad, and that she was a horrible and mean cat. I lost it. If you were severely overweight and had running poo, you'd probably be pretty angry too.

We recently had to put our dog down. We lived on a farm over half his life where he was a total outside dog unless it was cold or raining, but when we moved more to a town area, he became a mostly inside dog. He started to get fat. When he was a pup, he got his by a car, as a result, he had a bad hip. So, tell me, how is extra weight going to help? He eventually couldn't walk. Granted, he was also 13-14 years old, but I have no doubt in my mind that if he wasn't overweight, we could have gotten another very healthy year out of him. He wasn't a tiny dog, he was about medium sized. A bit bigger than a standard beagle. 

I just lost it. It's animal abuse, no doubt about it. I wish I lived in a place that allowed cats so I could take her and get her healthy. I hope me yelling at them, and lecturing them about it helped. We'll see. Maybe I'll print out a diet thing that tells them how much and what to feed her everyday. I just can't sit back and let this happen. Every time I come home the cat weighs more.


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## nanashi7

That's not animal love, it's neglect 

Perhaps portion controlled bowls and a newer food could help; there's a point where you've passed loving on your pets and are risking their lives irresponsibly. 

If your cat ever needed surgery, she wouldn't be a candidate for it. 


I just switched my dogs diet because she gained three pounds and starting huffing on our walks. She gets no more treats and seldom bones until she loses her weight. 


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## ahrat

It's so sad because I know my mum would never do anything to harm an animal consciously. We still cry about our dog who was put down a few months ago. I'm going to help her figure this out. She also has never owned a cat, it was my cousin's, who promptly left for college a year later, and didn't take the cat. So my mum took it. Our dog could eat just about anything when he was a farm/guard dog because he was roaming 4-6 acres a day! She still doesn't realize that cats need exercise too. I got her a lasor pointer for the cat, which the cat loves. So we'll see how it goes. I had my mum almost in tears when I was yelling at her, but I've told her a million times and nothing has changed, so I had to for the animal's sake.


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## Awaiting_Abyss

I don't think hotdogs would be the only culprit for an animal being that fat. What kind of food is she eating?Dry food makes cats fat and even the most premium dry food isn't good for cats.I knocked out all dry food from my cats diet and they slimmed down a bit on premium canned food. My bobcat hybrid kitten is in better shape though since he's eating the best diet a cat can ever eat.


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## ahrat

It's definitely the hotdogs... She gets people food WAY too much. She eats hotdogs twice a day. In the morning, and in the evening. She gets it mixed in with wet and dry cat food AND other people food. She's also not exercised at all. The worst part is looking at her poop. I have never seen the poor thing have a solid poop since she was a kitten. I'm about to go with my mum to get new cat food for her soon, so I'm doing some research, wet food definitely seems the way to go.


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## Awaiting_Abyss

RAW is the best. I feed my kitten whole prey. Commercial pet food has so many bad things in it... Its like the list never ends.


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## ahrat

Agreed. I'm a huge "no chemical, all natural" nerd. I'm trying to get my mum to get on board, but she's pretty tight with money right now because the place where she work burnt down :/ At this point, anything is remotely better than what the cat is getting now.


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## Awaiting_Abyss

I'm the same way! My famiy thinks I'm so crazy for it... On Christmas I asked my dad what he did with the organs and neck of the turkey. He asked why and I said, "because I want to feed it to my cats," so he said, "I fed the organs to the cats. I put them out in the woods, but the neck is right there. You can have it." It was cooked though.. so I didn't want it. I told him that I had wanted it for my inside cats and he said, "you don't want to feed that to indoor cats! That's nasty! They'll be pooping everywhere!" So I said, "Actually, it makes their poop less smelly." So my brother, who had been listening in, said, "why don't you just feed them the food from the store? You know, the stuff that's sold in a bad?" Then I said, "Because that food is horrible for them." And my brother said, "they're just animals!"
.. It made me so mad.. And now my new nickname is Hitler...


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## anawelch

My animals get regular store bought food but its portion controlled and they get lots of exercise. My dog started gaining a lot of weight after he got neutered (he was super skinny before even though he always had lots of food) so I outlawed people food and slimmed down his diet. Now hes a healthy weight and a lot slimmer than other 4-year-old dogs his size. Its really easy to control your animals diet and there really isnt any excuse unless the animal is genetically prone to obesity which theres solutions to that too.


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## BlackBirdSeesYou

I'm very picky about what my dog eats. He's a beagle mix and is very prone to getting fat even though he only eats 1/3 a cup of dry kibble twice a day. Even then, my family thinks it's too little to feed him. I agree that 1/3 looks really small in his bowl but he sometimes he won't even eat breakfast. I make sure he gets no more than one treat a day. But my aunt will come over and feed him whatever. I allow her to feed him a tiny piece of leftover chicken (I hate to waste, even only a little) and now she's feeding him pieces of bread and whatever else is on her plate. Although I do hate to waste food, my dog is not a garbage disposal!


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## Minky

Your cat needs a visit to the vet for medication to stop the cycle of diarrhea (which can be fatal in cats), and for a check to see if anything else is wrong. 

Your mother needs some education about feeding cats. Free-feeding dry food causes obesity and dehydration. I recommend high quality canned food with no added grain. And no hot dogs, ever! 

It's good that you're stepping in to help your cat. You are saving her life! Here's a great website which you and your mother should read together: http://www.catinfo.org/?link=felineobesity


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## Voltage

We have two full grown labradors and my dad's parents do as well. All four are from the same litter. Our two are at a very healthy weight even though they eat people food pretty often. We don't take them for walks and we have a very tiny backyard. But we still give them plenty of exercise in the house, we run with them, wrestle with them and they have tons of toys, both pups are very lean. (we don't take them for walks very often because they got parvo when there were pups and they were stuck at home for months til it was no longer contagious, we didn't train them when they v were young so they are absolute nightmares outside if on leash. It's easy one at a time but if you leave one at home they freak out. They can't be apart from each other)
So my dad's parents have a huuuuuuge backyard, lots of space for running and two of their three dogs are very lean and fit. But one of their labs is so unbelievably fat I can't believe she can even walk. I can't figure out why she is so fat and none of her brothers and sisters are.

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## NuclearMuse

We had a cat that was HUGE. Like, I couldn't believe he could walk and I could barely pick him up! But after I moved back in, I convinced my mom to feed portion controlled wet food at night and he's slimmed down unbelieveably! It really does make a huge difference, limiting the amount of food they eat. I even portion control my rats and it helped my slightly chunky girl slim down to a really nice weight. She's still a bit bigger than my other girls but she looks better and it's definitely not enough to be unhealthy. I'd love to do raw but we just can't afford it since we foster cats, so we have 9 cats in the house at any given time. (2 cats are mine, 3 are my mom's, and the other 4 we have rotate as they're fosters). Once I'm back on my own again my cats will probably get raw though! I just need to buy a meat grinder


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## Awaiting_Abyss

Why do you need a meat grinder?


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## saratherussiandog

I don't know if this applies to this thread but since we're talking about diet, my dad has our dog on a raw meat diet. (Only raw meat)  She's not overweight(far from it actually) but it's supposed to make them more lively, feel better or something. Her usual food was cooked grains(like buckwheat) with cooked meat. My dad is kinda crazy about our dog.


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## Jaguar

Awaiting_Abyss said:


> Why do you need a meat grinder?


Couple different reasons I can imagine... cats that won't eat whole prey, people who can't handle the mess, ground raw may store easier, etc.

My cat gets a couple different varieities of canned food... Wellness when I can afford it, PC (Canadian store brand) when I can't. She's not overweight but does have issues with constipation - I add an equal amount of water to her food and 1/8 tsp. of Miralax when it's bad (it seems to come and go).

Please send your mom this page HERE. It has a lot of great information about feline obesity and diet in general... though some of the pictures are graphic, they really help to get the point across. I recommend that site for anyone with a cat


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## NuclearMuse

I'd just like to use a meat grinder because everything would store easier in the freezer, and it would make the raw food more similar to the canned food they're used to so switching them over would be easier. Especially since once I tried to give one of my kittens a chicken wing to chew on for her teeth... she turned her nose up at it  We use catinfo a lot--that's how I convinced her to do a wet diet! lol. I mean, she wasn't feeding them anything super unhealthy like extra treats or people food before, they were just on a not too great dry food and the one cat would stuff himself so he got super overweight! Catinfo also got us to switch to Dr. Elsey's litter--seriously, I could build a house out of pee clumps that stuff works so well.


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## Crezzard

Sorry to but in but a wet diet isn't the best for a cats health. They need a cereal food aswell. Either cereal diet all the time, so dry cat food but a good brand. In the UK we feed 'whiskas' I don't know if you have it there. So dry food in the morning only a handful and then a pouch of wet food at night. It's better to buy in pouches because there's enough for one meal. If you buy tins it's very easy to over feed. 


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## Crezzard

They need to dry food to look after their teeth if they don't have this then by the time it's 10 - 13 it's teeth will be so wobbly they'll all drop out 


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## Awaiting_Abyss

Erm..are you serious? That is an extreme myth.


Not meaning that to be rude, sorry. Dry food is a fairly recent thing that we humans came up with as a cheap way to feed cats. Before, cats ate meat, bones, fur and organs; not grains... Canned food is slightly close to their natural meat diet except if you don't get a good brand it could include: plastic, euthanized dogs and cats, spoiled food from the grocery store, dyes, preservatives, etc.

Cats do not need dry food. They can live off of dry food, but then again we can live off of cookies, but that doesn't mean its healthy.

Whiskas, Meow Mix and the like are some of the absolute worst brands.


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## NuclearMuse

To add on to what Awaiting_Abyss said, the pouched food tends to have more carbs in it since it's usually chunks in gravy, and a cat's natural diet is really low in carbs so they don't use most of the nutrients they get out of them since they're obligate carnivores.


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## nanashi7

I'm not a pro, since I've never owened cats, but was very interested. I would like to own cats one day, so I looked it up.

Finding neutral sources, it looks like high quality dry diets can be found. I don't know what these diets would be called, but nonetheless it is not all-or-nothing as you guys are making it seem.

The idea of all-wet or all-raw really was making me never want to adopt a cat, when I was thinking of getting two from the humane society once my rats pass.


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## nanashi7

http://pets.webmd.com/cats/guide/cat-food-101-what-you-need-to-know-about-feeding-your-cat

"talk to your vet about best options"


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## Daniel

nanashi7 said:


> Finding neutral sources, it looks like high quality dry diets can be found. I don't know what these diets would be called, but nonetheless it is not all-or-nothing as you guys are making it seem.


I've noticed this at all pet forums. It's all or nothing, black and white, no either or. Hence my low activity at many of them.



> The idea of all-wet or all-raw really was making me never want to adopt a cat, when I was thinking of getting two from the humane society once my rats pass.


Don't think you'd have rats again after your current set?


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## Voltage

Wow, I never knew that about cats. One of my exs had two cats both fed a diet of dry cat food, one of the cats was so ridiculously fat he couldn't even jump onto the couch. The other cat named Doody was very lean. The fat cat was extremely picky, he only would eat his dry food, wouldn't touch human food or wet food. Doody on the other hand would eat human food and wet food along with his dry food. 

I also have a picky rat who isn't fat but she is much heftier than the other girls who are very lean. She does eat more than just her lab blocks but she is incredibly picky. I also have a picky boy who is really fat. He really only eats his lab blocks. I feed them in the morning and at night. About a cup of food for the boy's (there are five boys) and 3/4 s cup for the girl's (four girls) the girl's always have food in their cage because they stash their food. The boy's on the other hand devour everything in one sitting and act like they are starving all day. All the boy's are pretty fat. Except for Hound and Coffee who are pretty lean.
Am I over feeding them? They also get treats occasionally, consisting of kaytee apple bunches frozen Greek yogurt drops, apple sauce, baby food and sometimes stuff off my dinner plate. They also get veggies and noodles sometimes.

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## Daniel

But to the point of the OP - my mother's cats (she always has about 2-4 since the mid 80s) have always had obesity problems. This isn't abuse on my mother's part - she tends to have at least one brooding cat who hangs out in the basement all of the time and is scared of people. So this cat tends to have food all the time, and just eats, and the other cats join in. 

I think back of all the cats she has had, 1 was healthy all the time, 1 was only a little rotund, but the rest have been obese (she has a girl kitten whom is still thinish, but we'll see). She has tried all different manner to change this, with no luck. I am hoping she might try one of those timed feeders for all of the cats, but it would hard to have her keep up with it with her schedule. Her cats are outdoor/indoor cats because my parents own a large farm where they have alot of room to run around safely in, but they have to come in at night. So lack of exersize is not the problem.

I think my mother overfeeds them with the wet food; with this new kitten, I am going to try to get her to change things up so she doesn't end up being a fatty.


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## nanashi7

Daniel said:


> I've noticed this at all pet forums. It's all or nothing, black and white, no either or. Hence my low activity at many of them.


I'm glad you are still around though. It's nice for people to be passionate about pets and their proper care, but definitely not making someone with an alternate (and no less valid) view feel like an abuser.



Daniel said:


> Don't think you'd have rats again after your current set?


I think I'll take a break from them for a while, get a better system for time at least. There are other pets I'd like to try (gerbils, mice, lizards, ferrets, cats, a larger parrot) and I know I'll always compare them to the joy I got from my rats, but rats just don't seem to work in other-pet households. I only have budgies and a dog right now, but I have to divide time between rats and my dog and birds and my rats, and worry about someone killing someone else -- locking rats in this room, birds in this room, and my dog in the other room as I run around making sure everyone is safe. I figure I'll adopt older cats from the humane society, around the age of my dog (who is eight and hopefully has seven more years to go) and once they pass can look to having smaller pets (that won't be so violent towards one another hopefully).


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## Awaiting_Abyss

Yes, there are okay-quality premium dry. I'm not sure what you mean by "all or nothing."Cats don't drink enough. In the wild, they obtain much of their fluid through their prey. Canned and raw diets ensure that your cat is getting the fluid it needs. Feed your pet what you can live with. I personally felt horrible feeding my cats dry food, so I cut it out... And now I feel horribe that my premium canned food (EVO and Merricks) both contain carrageenan. And sadly I've had no luck getting my two adult cats eating whole prey yet.I'm just obsessed with all diets being healthy.


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## Daniel

nanashi7 said:


> I think I'll take a break from them for a while, get a better system for time at least. There are other pets I'd like to try (gerbils, mice, lizards, ferrets, cats, a larger parrot) and I know I'll always compare them to the joy I got from my rats, but rats just don't seem to work in other-pet households. I only have budgies and a dog right now, but I have to divide time between rats and my dog and birds and my rats, and worry about someone killing someone else -- locking rats in this room, birds in this room, and my dog in the other room as I run around making sure everyone is safe. I figure I'll adopt older cats from the humane society, around the age of my dog (who is eight and hopefully has seven more years to go) and once they pass can look to having smaller pets (that won't be so violent towards one another hopefully).


I always thought you just had too many. I am much better off with just 3, though in the future I will keep just 2; I think if you limited the number to a pair of same sex rats, it could work. I hate to see anyone 'retire' from rats! I am at the point now where I consider them low maintenance. After my poor experience with mice, I now have a pair of gerbils which are also pretty low maintenance and a pleasure to have after dealing with mice for awhile.

I am told that other pet forums are worse for snooty and judgmental owners, this forum is not bad except for maybe some jumping to conclusions (as you saw).


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## Jaguar

It's not a "my way or the highway" thing. Food is arguably the most important aspect of health, and while you can consciously stuff whatever you want in your own mouth, your cats can only eat what you provide for them, so you really should do your best to give them the best diet possible.

Dry kibble can have all of the premium ingredients possible, but it lacks one EXTREMELY important thing - water. In the wild, a cat's prey (think mouse, small bird, etc) is around 80% water. Kibble is 10% at best. Cats don't have a high thirst drive (they descended from desert animals) and they will NOT make up the lack of water at the water bowl. CKD/CRF is one of the highest causes of death in cats and it is usually brought on by a lifetime of chronic dehydration from dry food. Not to mention the majority of cheaper dry foods are extremely high in plant based proteins (soy, wheat, etc.) and are also extremely high in carbohydrates (wheat flour, corn, etc.), neither of which your obligate carnivore cat needs in their diet. I had a cat with diabetes and the blood glucose spikes from the carbohydrates in even a few kibbles of dry food was INSANE and often took days to clear.

I just don't really understand everyone's refusal to feed canned and raw. Why feed kibble when it's so bad for their health? Because it's cheap? It's cheap because it's loaded with filler and crap! It's easier to just top their bowl off and forget about it? Putting convenience to you over your cat's health is pretty silly. Canned and raw can both be left out during the day, put in automatic timed feeders when you're going to be out for a while, and you can even add a bit of water to it if it dries out. It's really a minimal inconvenience, but it could save you a ton of vet bills and heartache in the future while adding years onto your cats' lifespan.

If you really, really must use kibble (for whatever reason) look into Wellness Core, Innova EVO, Nature's Variety Instinct, and there's a few more I can't remember off the top of my head, as they are all very low in carbohydrates, even for kibble. Keep in mind these will be MUCH more expensive than even the most basic canned foods ($30-40 for a 2lb bag). There is also a brand of kibbled freeze-dried raw food out there (Stella and Chewy I think?) that may work for kibble addicts.

On another note, kibble does not clean a cat's teeth any more than crunchy cookies clean a human's teeth. It's a myth.


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## anawelch

My kitten is always drinking water. Shes obsessed with it. She'll take any chance she gets (open toilet bowl, water in the bathtub, sweat on a bottle). She will cry soooo loud if the water bowl is empty (I keep it filled all day but sometimes my dog empties it out). I guess shes just one of those exceptions. I've fed her wet food but she won't eat it. She won't eat eggs or chicken or anything besides kibble. She is the most particular cat in the world.


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## Jaguar

anawelch said:


> My kitten is always drinking water. Shes obsessed with it. She'll take any chance she gets (open toilet bowl, water in the bathtub, sweat on a bottle). She will cry soooo loud if the water bowl is empty (I keep it filled all day but sometimes my dog empties it out). I guess shes just one of those exceptions. I've fed her wet food but she won't eat it. She won't eat eggs or chicken or anything besides kibble. She is the most particular cat in the world.


Some cats are attracted to running water ie. faucets and pet fountains, so that's one way to encourage them to drink more. Maybe you could get her a kitty fountain 

They spray coat dry kibble food with an extremely palatable liquid called animal digest. Cats basically get addicted to the taste of kibble and it can be very, very hard to convert some kibble addicts to raw or canned. It's certainly not impossible though - here is a great guide to converting kibble addicts


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## Ruby&Lola

My grandma has a fixxed Weiner dog who is obesed, but I think once she hurt her back that made my grandma put her on a diet. 

Usually the people around me that hav obese animals is due to them having them Fixxed.

Like my step sister cat (who's fixxed) is like that cat you talked about, so fat she can't clean herself. My step sister trying to get the cat to lose weight, but she still seems fat at least she's really hyper. 

My friend also had an obese Weiner dog(fixxed) but they put him on a diet as well and dang does he look slim! 

Now my dad, we hav some fat dogs, but non top unhealthily fat. And it's the girls who were fixxed that our getting fat aside from the oldest one. 

My mother friend also has a Weiner dog that fixxed and his fat. Obese enough to a have a butt. I think they're trying to diet the dog. His names Lucky.
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