by Amy Shojai
calories. For pets that are more ambulatory, put the food at
the top or bottom of the staircase so the animal always has
to go up and down to get her food.” Even setting the food
bowl at the opposite end of the house far from the cat’s
favorite couch wil get her moving.
Control ing calories is easier than getting the cat to
exercise. “Avoid the tendency to ad lib feeding,” says Dr.
Nelson. “That’s a major factor in causing obesity.” In other
words, instead of just setting out the ful bowl of food for the
cat to nibble al day long, switch to meal feeding of control ed
portions.
Moderately overweight cats may shed pounds simply by
cutting out the treats and increasing play sessions. Senior
diets typical y have fewer calories, and switching the cat to a
more age-specific formula can help. “Lite” formula diet cat
foods are available, but they aren’t magical. In fact, pets
often gain weight on lite diets if they’re fed ad lib, or if the
brand of food is different from the cat’s former diet. That’s
because the lite designation only means the food is lower in
calories than the same brand “regular” food—it’s a
comparison within the same family of foods.
Divide the food into four or even five smal meals a day to
help keep her from feeling deprived. Multiple smal meals
also tend to increase the body's metabolic rate, so she burns
more calories faster and consequently loses the excess
weight. Once she’s reached the target weight, serving meals
twice-daily wil maintain her health.
When cats are obese, medical supervision by the
veterinarian, and often a special therapeutic weight-loss diet,
is necessary. Several are available from different pet food
manufacturers, and each offers innovative formulations that
help the cat safely lose weight.
Comfort Zone
Treat Balls: When put on a diet, cats often pester
owners endlessly, meowing for more food. “If the cat is
interested in playing at al , you can put food inside
these little bal s,” says Dr. LaFlamme. Most cats must
be taught how to use commercial treat bal s. Once the
cat realizes there’s food inside, and play makes it
come out, you’ve solved portion control, exercise, and
the pester factor al in one. “You can put a good portion
of al their food in there, make them work for it, and it
slows down their food intake. I think that is a great little
trick.” There are several treat-dispensing bal s for cats
available in pet products stores, including the Talk to
Me Treatbal that records your voice message to
entice your cat to play.
Kitty Café: This is a handy trick for dealing with multi-
cat households where a fat cat and skinny cat need to
be fed separately. Basical y, a box is fit with a tiny door
that only the thin cat can get through. The thin cat is fed
inside the box, and the fat cat can’t get inside to swipe
anything and must be satisfied with the diet food
available on the outside of the box. “Until the fat cat
gets skinny enough to fit in there, he can’t have any,”
says Dr. LaFlamme. Make your own box from a plastic
sweater container. This also works wel to keep dogs
out of the cat’s food.
Golden Moments: Pooh Shapes Up
Pooh Bear, a blue spotted tabby domestic shorthair, was
diagnosed with diabetes when he was 9 ½ years old. “I
found some sticky stuff on the side of the tub where the cats
go to the bathroom,” says Michel e West of Toronto. Pooh
was in the hospital for four days, and came home perfectly
regulated on 4 units of Humulin U insulin once a day. “Then I
had to diet him down—he weighed 26 pounds.”
He had always been a big boy, says Michel e, but she
hadn’t real y noticed how bad he’d gotten. “Then one day I
looked at him, and was horrified that I’d let that happen to
him. I'm sure that if he hadn't gained so much weight, he
never would have become diabetic. I could just kick myself
for letting it happen.”
She decided to put him on a strict but careful diet, hoping
to gradual y slim him down and also help with his diabetes.
She knew that trying to force weight loss too quickly could
create fatal liver problems.
She tried some of the commercial “lite” reducing diets, but
the high fiber caused serious constipation problems. “There
were a couple times I thought poor Pooh was going to have
a heart attack just trying to go to the bathroom,” says
Michel e. High fiber foods counteract diarrhea and
constipation by normalizing the bowel movement, but fiber
works a bit differently in individual cats.
Michel e settled on a combination of three different
brands: 50 percent Waltham Calorie Control, and 25 percent
each of Hil ’s Science Diet Senior and Meow Mix. “Without
the Meow Mix, he gets seriously constipated from al the
fiber in the other two,” says Michel e. She says it took a long
time to work out the perfect mixture for Pooh—and what
works for him might not work for others. “It might take a
couple of months to work out the right mix for your overweight
cat,” she says.
As a breeder of Scottish Folds, Michel e had two
other cats in the household that needed a different diet: Toni,
a breeding female, and an aging retired girl named Punkin
with arthritis problems. “I needed three different foods for my
cats,” she says. “The minute I knew Pooh had to go on a diet
that was the end of free feeding in my house.” Before, they
didn't like each other’s food anyway, so leaving it out al the
time wasn’t a problem. But once he was on a diet, Pooh
wanted to eat anything that didn’t move faster than he did.
Once the diet started, Michel e locked up al the food in
one-pound cottage cheese containers, labeled them for
Toni, Punkin or Pooh, and kept a set for each cat by the
living room chair, by the couch, and by her bed next to the
desk where she works. “Wherever I am, I am close to food,”
says Michel e. “For the girls, it was easy to teach them to
come to the containers when they wanted to eat. I’d just open
the right one when they’d rub against or sit by the container.”
She says they get as much food as they want, every time
they ask, so it’s stil very similar to the free-feeding schedule
from before.
To begin his diet, Pooh was given one cup of his mixed dry
foods spread out over a 24-hour period. This amount was
slowly reduced. “Now he’s holding at about half a cup mixed
dry foods a day,” says Michel e. “He is always hungry and
always begging for food. He has the biggest gold eyes, and
he looks at me so sadly. But I had to learn to be strong.”
Pooh is fed on a strict schedule around the clock, to keep
his blood sugar as stable as possible, which has ensured a
lack of complications from the diabetes. Each
morning
Pooh’s daily ration of a half cup is measured into a cottage
cheese container, and his meals are doled out every two-
and-a-half hours throughout the day until the tub is empty.
“I give him these dry food meals spread out in a large
fifteen-inch round tray. It takes him longer to eat because he
has to hunt al the pieces down,” she says. She’l give him ten
pieces or so as a snack if he paw-pats her head to wake her
during the night for a snack. “Then I fal right back asleep,”
says Michel e. “Pooh is so used to his schedule, his little
tummy-clock keeps perfect time.”
For times when she must be out of the house, Michel e
bought an automatic Cat Mate Feeder. Its two food
compartments are on a timer and open only at prescribed
intervals. “He always tries to break into it when I'm gone,”
says Michel e. “I've even found it in a different room from him
pushing it. Even if he did get in, he would get no more than
his usual next tablespoon a little early.”
Michel e’s method for locking up al the food works best for
someone who works at home, or for people able to come
home at lunch time. “My girls ask for food at least eight to ten
times a day each,” says Michel e. “If you are home at meal
times, this container system makes feeding different foods a
breeze. It's so much easier than feeding multiple in different
rooms, some on the counter and some on the floor. That's
very difficult.”
The system simplifies giving Pooh his insulin shot. “He’s
so hungry that when he's eating at 11:00 a.m., I give the shot
and he never even notices!”
Pooh’s diabetes has been wel regulated for four years.
Michel e’s diet system enabled him to lose ten pounds in one
year until at thirteen-and-a-half-years old he was stable at
sixteen pounds—and to reduce his insulin needs to one unit
once a day.
“I know I'm probably going overboard in my care for Pooh,
but I love him so much and want him to be with me as long as
possible,” says Michel e. “He's in perfect health now, and is
more alert and lively than when he was younger. I hope he
wil be with me another thirteen years.”
Feeding For Health
Some cats are able to lose weight simply by reducing the
amount of their regular diet and increasing exercise. Most
cats, though, need the extra help of a reduced-calorie food.
Some “lite” products are available in grocery stores but
obese cats usual y do best on a therapeutic diet dispensed
from the veterinarian. Products designed for feline reducing
diets include:
Eukanuba Adult Weight Control Formula
Hil ’s Prescription Diet Feline r/d
Hil ’s Prescription Diet Felin w/d
Iams Veterinary Diets Nutritional Weight Loss
Formulas Restricted-Calorie/Feline
IVD (Royal Canin) Select Care Feline HiFactor
Formula
IVD (Royal Canin) Select Care Feline Weight
Formula
Nutro Complete Care Weight Management
Max Cat Lite
Precise Feline Light Formula
Purina
Veterinary
Diets,
OM
Overweight
Management Formula
Waltham Feline Calorie Control Diet
PANCREATITIS
The pancreas, a smal organ situated near the liver,
provides digestive enzymes for the smal intestines, and
insulin that aids in glucose metabolism. Inflammation of the
organ, cal ed pancreatitis, disrupts the function and spil s
enzymes into the bloodstream and abdominal cavity. That
causes an array of subtle to severe symptoms.
Pancreatitis has been recognized in cats only in the last
decade. Most often, chronic pancreatitis affects middle aged
and older cats. “Pancreatitis is a very frustrating disease in
cats,” says Debbie Davenport, DVM, an internist with Hil ’s
Pet Nutrition. The disease is hard to diagnose, and difficult
to treat, and there are no good answers about what causes
the condition. Since the organ is linked to the intestines and
also to the liver, cats suffering from pancreatitis may have
concurrent liver or inflammatory bowel disease. “It’s possible
that an inflammation can actual y move from one organ to the
other,” says Dr. Davenport. That makes the disease even
more difficult to diagnose and treat.
In dogs, feeding fatty table scraps, obesity, and injury are
commonly incriminated. Fatty diets and obesity don’t seem
to play a role in the feline disease, although the list of
potential causes includes trauma, parasites and toxins, says
Susan Little, DVM, a feline specialist in Ottawa, Canada.
Despite these puzzles, more cases are being recognized
than ever before. “Part of that is we’re looking for it, and part
of it is the advent of abdominal ultrasound,” says Dr. Nelson.
“Part of it is that I think for some reason, something has
shifted, and it’s causing an increase in the prevalence of
pancreatitis in cats. It’s become a significant problem.”
Senior Symptoms
Signs of pancreatitis in cats tend to come and go, and often
are quite vague.
Lethargy
Anorexia
Dehydration
Low body temperature
Vomiting
Abdominal pain
Diagnosis
Tests diagnose pancreatitis very wel in dogs and people
don’t work with cats because the disease reacts differently in
the feline body. For example, Dr. Webster says humans with
pancreatitis have certain enzyme levels in the blood that
consistently go up. “That doesn’t happen in cats,” she says.
Even the symptoms and test results are frustrating.
“They’re just tremendously varied. It’s real y hard to hang your
hat on anything,” says Dr. Little. “The blood work can be
highly variable. The signs of il ness can be highly variable.”
One of the more recent and promising tests is the feline
trypsin-like immunoreactivity (TLI), but most times diagnosis
is based on an ultrasound of the cat’s pancreas. Even then,
the diagnosis may not be definitive, says Cynthia R. Leveil e-
Webster, DVM, an internist at Tufts University. “Chronic
pancreatitis is an old cat disease that’s real y hard to get a
handle on without doing surgery and a biopsy of the
pancreas.”
Treatment
Currently there is no consensus on the best way to treat
feline pancreatitis once it’s diagnosed. Dogs usual y have
acute disease and are supported with fluid therapy to
counteract the dehydration, pain-relieving drugs, medicine to
control vomiting, and fasting—withholding food for three or
four days. Food stimulates the pancreas to continue
releasing enzymes, so fasting helps break the cycle.
But cats with chronic disease have symptoms that come
and go. They rarely vomit, and fasting can cause life-
threatening hepatic lipidosis. “It’s very diff
icult to safely fast a
cat,” says Dr. Davenport. “Most people feed in the face of
pancreatitis.” Other supportive care, such as fluid therapy, or
drugs to control vomiting, is offered as needed.
Cats that have a mild form of chronic pancreatitis often
benefit from a daily dose of pancreatic enzyme, says Dr.
Hoskins. A teaspoon of dried powdered extracts of beef or
pig pancreas (Pancrezyme, or Viokase-V) can be mixed in
the food given twice daily. If the cat refuses the treated food,
the veterinarian may have other alternatives such as raw
beef pancreas or a fish-based liquid supplement.
Dr. Webster treats cats on a case-by-case basis. “If the
cat’s vomiting every two hours I’m not going to shove food
down the throat,” she says. “You can give it some parenteral
nutrition through the vein for a couple of days until it calms
down a little bit.”
Parenteral nutrition—intravenous nutrition—does not
stimulate the pancreas as much, agrees Dr. Davenport, but it
requires constant monitoring. “If you overfeed calories—in
particular, fat—to cats intravenously, you can predispose
lipidosis, so you’re back to making the situation worse.”
In most cases, she says veterinarians wil place a tube
device either down the throat or directly into the stomach
through the cat’s side. That is combined with fluid therapy to
keep the cat wel hydrated. “Sometimes it just becomes a
wait-it-out phenomenon,” she says. “You just have to keep
the cat supported long enough for the pancreatic
inflammation to subside.”
Nurse Alert!
When a cat refuses to eat due to pancreatitis, your
veterinarian may need to surgical y implant a feeding tube to
keep her fed so she’l recover from the condition. This may
go down the cat’s throat, or through her side directly into the
stomach. Often, cats improve more quickly and do better at
home than in the veterinary hospital, so you may be asked to
tube feed your cat. You’l be shown exactly how to do this—
it’s real y quite simple.
Usual y a semi-liquid soft therapeutic diet is provided.
It should be slightly warmed to prevent cold food
upsetting the stomach. A large syringe (without the
needle) is often used to draw up the right amount, and
this is squirted through the stomach tube to feed the
cat.
Keep the end of the tube clean and protected when