Dan's Papers - June 12, 2009 - The Continuing Saga: The Diet Comes to a Halt

As anyone who's been following the dieting adventures of my two cats Robbie and Roxie knows, it's been a bumpy road. We switched them to a high protein wet food to help them lose weight. We reduced their dry food "snacks" to a minimum and only used very high quality brands. We moved them over to 50/50 (new/old) food within two weeks. They were slowly getting used to half Fancy Feast and half Innova Evo when I noticed something odd. There weren't many trips to the litter box.

I will try to be delicate here, but if you can sense the direction this is going and would rather finish your doughnut and cup of coffee before reading, please do so.

Fewer trips to the litter box means less to clean in the litter box. This is not immediately bad news, but when it's combined with lots of scratching on those few trips to the box and then accompanied by small cries of discomfort, something is wrong. Our cats' bodies were reacting badly to this diet change, no doubt about it.

We doubled up on the Laxatone we use for helping them with hairballs and waited and watched. There was lots of watching - watching, and following. I kept following Robbie (who seemed to be in the worst shape) back and forth to the litter box. It got very old, very fast, for both of us. I could tell he was thinking, "get off my back mom, I'm doing the best I can."

By day two of all this non-productivity, I called the vet. "Bring them in right away" was the verdict. "Them" turned into just "him" when Roxie had a successful trip to the litter box, and then another. She wasn't eating very much by that point but seemed fine once things started moving along, so we spared her the trip.

I will gloss over the next few days, the full day at the vet's office, the indignity of what poor Robbie had to go through, the worry and the mess. It took two visits, three 'treatments' and finally things were moving in the right direction, if you catch my drift. We backed waaay off the Innova Evo and went to a 60/40 combination with the Fancy Feast.

As I write this, it's a week and a half since things got better and we are still at 60/40. In another half a week I'll move them to 50/50 and see how that goes. We are being very cautious, as this is not something to take lightly. Cats' intestines are tricky and you don't want issues, as they can quickly accelerate from an issue to a problem to an emergency.

Every cat is an individual and only you and your vet can determine the best choice if you need to make a change in their diet for health reasons. However, I would strongly advise you to look carefully at what you are feeding your cat. Many cat foods are mostly filler. It's best if the first few ingredients listed are meat or fish.

We are determined to help Robbie and Roxie lose a few pounds each, but first we also need them to be healthy at their current weights. We moved too fast and learned our lesson the hard way. I'm hoping our trials and tribulations will help guide anyone out there dealing with a chubby kitty.