Ellie, our fat cat, sits patiently in the kitchen next to her empty bowl. She demolished four ounces of canned cat food earlier this morning. She wonders why her bowl is empty.
She looks at us, then down at her bowl. She doesn't seem to realize that the empty bowl is a sign of the times. She's on a new diet and has been for well over a week.
Actually, Ellie has been on a diet for four years -- ever since we first picked her up at the shelter in Duluth. Full-figured was how the people at the shelter described her. "Fat," was the term Kim, our veterinarian, used.
According to Kim, fat cats, like their human counterparts, are prone to diabetes. Each visit to the veterinarian's office brought with it the same admonition: Ellie needed to lose weight -- only one-half cup of Science Diet Light nuggets daily. And that's all Ellie ever got. Despite this long-term diet, Ellie failed to lose weight, managing to hold on to the 16 pounds she'd arrived with.
On our last veterinarian visit, Kim admitted that she'd steered us wrong -- the dry nuggets were high in carbohydrates. What Ellie needed was food high in protein, low in carbohydrate. So, along with millions of other similarly misguided Americans who had been avoiding fat and downing carbs, Ellie began a cat's version of the Atkin's diet.
"She'll never eat it," we insisted. We still had some cans in the kitchen cabinet from an earlier attempt. But this time was different. No sooner had we spooned the half-can of Science Diet (veal and chicken mix) into her bowl than she downed the entire lot. We watched amazed as she licked her bowl clean, then waddled off to take a nap.
Dry nuggets, however (as Ellie was to learn a short time later when she returned and found her bowl empty) had a decided advantage over wet food: Nuggets could be saved for snacking. That was over a week ago.
As of today, Ellie still returns hopefully to her bowl, looking for food. Sometimes she sits there for hours. Bill tries to distract her from these futile forays. He initiates games of hide-and-seek.
I listen fondly as she thunders down the stairs and back up again.
Kim tells us that overweight pets are transformed on canned Science Diet. They become svelt and healthy. They frisk and frolic. They gambol and dash. They play on light and nimble feet.
A quiver of nostalgia flies through me as I listen to Ellie's pounding paws
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Comments: 20
It just isn't fair. Cleo seems to live with the hunger of a a concentration camp refugee. Molly lives with the constant sense that if she leaves the lid off Cleo's food jar, her cat might gobble down a lethal dose of food. Cleo did once come very close to eating herself to death.
Molly supplements her efforts to keep Cleo healthy by exercising her. This is more troublesome with a cat than with a dog, especially compared to exercising a ball-obsessed dog. But for what it is worth, Molly has learned that a laser pointer (with a little mouse projected as the signal) can keep Cleo chasing and running. We tend to ascribe intelligence to cats. It doesn't speak well for Cleo's brain that she has been chasing a laser spot mouse for several years and hasn't caught on to the fact it is just a spot of light.
Or maybe--poor thing--she knows but is just that hungry.
Lumpy would wolf her food, it was amazing. After she went to the big litter box in the sky her housemate, Canada, who had always been on the lean side, suddenly plumped up to the unrecognizable. He has since self regulated his eating and even leaves some for the mice. He has never really understood that he is supposed to keep them out of the house and prefers to be the kind host to them instead!
• As your pet sleeps, read intellectually challenging material to them – processing this material will most certainly burn extra calories. Suggest A.N. Whitehead and/or Bertrand Russell – may have the added benefit of helping you with any sleep problems you might have yourself.
• If you have multiple pets, feed them from the same bowl. The tussles that ensue will, yup, burn more calories.
• For cats: call them to you often. The energy they expend in ignoring you will, of course, burn more calories.
• For dogs: offer to take the out for walks say, 2000 times a day. The energy expended in the anticipation and recovering from the disappointment will… well, you know.
• Playing tapes of wailing alley cats or howling wolves will certainly elicit some emotional responses that will have to be played out some how. (Increase your furniture replacement budget if you go this route).
• And, finally, remember that some animals are built for comfort, not speed.
Hope this helps. Got to go chase the family from the feeding trough and then its back to my tapes and Whitehead.
Way to long a rambling . . . I do love our kitties.
Guess I was just to shy,
Several times, I tried.
Had two named Bonnie & Clyde,
But they both died.
Got a dog, and he was fat,
But he got skinny ...chasing the neighbor's cat!
Dock Paws
good article.
I'm late reading this. Lots of fun here! Now to be serious, our fat Tommy at 21 lbs. was recently diagnosed with diabetes. We are still in the finding the right insulin dosage stage with glucose curves done every week or so.
All this, and he's been on diet food for years, plays, goes for walks with us. His love of food allows us to stick him with a needle twice a day....We just wait until he has his head in the bowl....he doesn't even notice. And, oh, how we do love him!