Our clinic cat, Zeta, put on quite a few pounds this past year so we decided it was time to put her on a strict diet, with the help of Royal Canin. Royal Canin manufactures most of our therapeutic diets and their weight loss diet, Feline Satiety, was the perfect choice for Zeta. Like any diet, being hungry all the time is the hardest thing to overcome. This particular diet has psyllium fibre added to it which helps to keep pets feeling full and has all the important nutrients that are needed while reducing calories. It definitely works because we noticed a big difference in Zeta’s begging habits.
Zeta started out at 6.30 kg on November 25, 2015 and her target weight is 4.50 kg. Royal Canin has an awesome on-line program called “Slimfit” with a special calculator that veterinarians can use to easily determine a patient’s target weight and calorie allowance. After plugging all of Zeta’s information into the program it told us how much Satiety Diet to feed her (50 grams total per day in divided meals) each day. We actually weigh her food to make sure she doesn’t accidentally get overfed. It’s easy to add a few extra kibbles to a measuring cup, but by weighing the food she gets exactly the amount prescribed. The program figures everything out for us; the calories, how much to give in cups and in grams. All we needed was a kitchen weigh scale.
Zeta’s progress has been steady, with the exception of a little stagnation around Christmas time, but that’s to be expected. We know it’s hard to resist good food over the holidays, right? With each weigh in we also add her body condition score (BCS)to the program so it helps to control the rate at which she’s losing weight. Her BCS in November was 8 out of 9. Now she’s 7 out of 9. When we first changed her BCS to 7 the program told us she was losing weight too fast so for a week we fed her a few grams more. It would be awesome to see her with a BCS of 5!
Today she’s 5.60 kg and we are very proud of her. Dieting is never easy, but Zeta is a trooper!
Overweight cats and dogs can suffer from a variety of ailments, such as arthritis, heart disease and lung disease that can be managed and possibly eliminated if we can get the extra pounds off of them.
Zeta’s next weigh in will be in a couple of weeks so we’ll keep you posted.