Help me help my senior cat

Choco9

My cat is in overall great health, but he is overweight. 

My vet said at last checkup, about 2 months back, that he is only slightly overweight, but since he is older he has a pooch and is generally looking pretty large.  He is totally happy and we get him as active as possible being a house kitty (he was a rescue and had already been front declawed when I got him) but as he advances in age (they estimate him to be about 12-13) I want to do all I can to help him be a healthy weight.

Currently I feed him dry food (a mix of Avoderm and Wellness Core) and a small can  (Tiki Cat) three times a week.  I went to giving him some wet food due to an episode of urinary blockage about 3 years ago.  I took him in immediately when he acted strange and he actually peed in the vet's sink, haha, and he has been without incident since then.

I am looking to find a way to feed him less without agitating him a lot.  He is a large breed cat and, um, LOVES to eat.  He is the coolest cat in the entire world and my H and I love him more than life.  Any suggestions would be awesome.  TIA

breaness

I was reading up on this just a week or two ago to help my cat Spunky (who lives with my parents). She's 12 and is slightly overweight as well.

There's really no method to it other than just feed them less. Find out what you should be feeding them: approximately 15 calories per pound of bodyweight where they SHOULD be, not the weight that they are, and feed them that much. If it's a lot less than you're currently giving, just scale back bit by bit.

If you're already doing scheduled meal times, then this should be easy. If you free feed, switch to a meal schedule. Our little Sherlock eats 2 times a day, set meals. Spunky lives with another cat and they are both free fed so it's going to be a little harder to control her eating. 

Choco9

Can I ask what times of day you feed?  And do you do wet food?

A friend of mine told me she broke her cat of the habit of eating in the AM becuase he used to meow so loud to wake them for food.  Ours does this sometimes. 

mainerocks

What about increasing the wet and decreasing the dry? 

I like this site... I don't live by it, but it's great food for though and there's a section on feline obesity:

http://catinfo.org/?link=felineobesity 

breaness

Choco9:

Can I ask what times of day you feed?  And do you do wet food?

A friend of mine told me she broke her cat of the habit of eating in the AM becuase he used to meow so loud to wake them for food.  Ours does this sometimes. 

I feed Sherlock when I wake up in the morning for work and also when I get home from work, so approximately 5:45 AM and 5:30 PM. He does meow to get food outside of my bedroom door but I tune him out and he's learned that that's not how he gets fed. Some mornings he'll still do it, but it's always around the time I'm supposed to wake up anyway so it's just an excuse to get my ass out of bed instead of hitting snooze

It's actually helpful when he wakes me up on the weekends since I don't set an early alarm. I get up, feed him, and go back to bed. 

ETA: I do 1/3 cup of dry food in the morning and half a can of wet food at night. Right now my little guy has a urinary infection (or crystals... still waiting on the doc to call with the urinalysis results) so I'm doing 1/4 can of wet in the morning and sneaking his medicine into it with 1/6 cup of dry and doing that again at night so he gets his regular food for the day, but in a different way. He'll be going back to the separate foods once he's through his medication next week. I am also looking to switch him to more wet food (if not entirely to wet food) once we're through this. 

Choco9

breaness:

Choco9:

Can I ask what times of day you feed?  And do you do wet food?

A friend of mine told me she broke her cat of the habit of eating in the AM becuase he used to meow so loud to wake them for food.  Ours does this sometimes. 

I feed Sherlock when I wake up in the morning for work and also when I get home from work, so approximately 5:45 AM and 5:30 PM. He does meow to get food outside of my bedroom door but I tune him out and he's learned that that's not how he gets fed. Some mornings he'll still do it, but it's always around the time I'm supposed to wake up anyway so it's just an excuse to get my ass out of bed instead of hitting snooze

It's actually helpful when he wakes me up on the weekends since I don't set an early alarm. I get up, feed him, and go back to bed. 

ETA: I do 1/3 cup of dry food in the morning and half a can of wet food at night. Right now my little guy has a urinary infection (or crystals... still waiting on the doc to call with the urinalysis results) so I'm doing 1/4 can of wet in the morning and sneaking his medicine into it with 1/6 cup of dry and doing that again at night so he gets his regular food for the day, but in a different way. He'll be going back to the separate foods once he's through his medication next week. I am also looking to switch him to more wet food (if not entirely to wet food) once we're through this. 

Thanks for this!  I just briefly checked out your bio to see Sherlock and he looks like a junior Meowzers (our cat).  Probably what Meowzers looked like many years ago!  I love me some gray kitty.

 I am going to try to decrease the amount and set some specific times and maybe he will get used to it.  Any recs on food or is my current stuff okay (avoderm and wellness core mixed)?

breaness

I don't have any experience with either of those. I know that a decent amount of people on here feed Wellness core and it seems to rate pretty highly.

Check out http://www.petfoodratings.net/cats.html to get an idea of which foods may be better. Avoderm is about mid-grade.