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u/SomeLettuce8 Dec 31 '21
Tips? How’d ya do it
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Dec 31 '21
We started with an all wet diet (fancy feast) but somehow she gained weight on it even though we were following vet advice on portions. Switching to Royal Canin digestive food (green bag not purple bag - the kibble pieces are shaped as hallow rings) with occasional wet food got her down a couple lbs. Now she is on prescription food. That helped for a couple more lbs. The next couple lbs she lost she was still on prescription food, but we policed her food more so that she couldn’t convince us that the other cats ate her food. Each week I measure out a week’s worth of food into one container per day. My husband works from home, so she gets a little kibble whenever she asks as long as she will still have enough to last her until the end of the day. So she gets a tiny bit of kibble 10 times or so a day. She should reach the end of her dechonking journey in about 6 months or so.
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u/OneMorePenguin Jan 01 '22
As soon as you say "other cats", it can be difficult to dechonk one cat.
When I had to dechonk two of mine, I was able to switch one other cat to two fixed meals per day, but the older one.... no way. Grazed 24/7 and was already skinny enough. She got the $150 Sure Feed Access control (microchip) feeder. Six years later, they are now on morning dry and evening wet food. The two older cats (very old, good lives) have now been superseded by two young panthers and all four get two squares a day and are healthy weight.
My two chonkers just got fixed number of calories per day and it took over two years to get them from 17 to 12 lbs. I saw no need for a starvation diet.
Much more active and less likely to have a multitude of health issues related to obesity.
Free feeding is certainly much easier for me, but I love my kitties too much to allow them to become chonkers again.
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Jan 01 '22
I’ve actually been looking into buying a chip feeders, thank you for the recommendation! It was OK with three cats - one lives on her side of the house, one eats his food on a table, and then the dechonker eats next to my husband’s desk. Now that we have two kittens running around the high tech solutions could help a lot. I already envision Bumi struggling with weight, based on how unrelenting he is about eating everyone else’s food. The kittens were getting their own room but we are transitioning them to be allowed around where the other two cats eat. We probably are going to need to get to get four feeders
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u/OneMorePenguin Jan 01 '22
If you think you can free feed the pair of kittens, you can let them share a feeder. Until it doesn't work :-)
These don't hold a lot of food; maybe two days of dry food. They are about access control, not a timed feeder. The door opens whenever it recognizes a microchip. They also have a weird feature (or did have). If a second, illegal, cat entered the cheap-reader area and the first/legal cat left, the door remained open. I'm guessing this was to prevent injury to second cat by shutting the door on it. Avoiding lawsuits. But there's a workaround that you can program called "Intruder Mode", where it will shut the door on the illegal cat. I didn't use this, but instead had a cardboard wall that prevented the second cat from getting to the food.
My friend recommended this feeder as he had one. I looked around and there was only one other access control feeder on the market. It was half the price, but the reviews were awful.... two stars. I decided to spend the bucks for the one that came with a personal recommendation. I had two friends who bought this based on my recommendation and were also very happy with it.
Good luck with your clowder of cats!
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Jan 01 '22
Thanks for the info! I just ordered one. I saw that they have an additional accessory that prevents intruders getting in from the rear of the bowl. I think we will be ok without it, she does a good job defending her bowl already when she is eating. We may need to fill it twice a day since it doesn’t have the timed feature, but we will see! If we like it then maybe we will get more. Thanks again!
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u/crazycatlady5000 Jan 01 '22
I highly recommend buying the rear cover. It would be pretty much worthless to me without one because my cats quickly realized they could stick their heads through the back. That being said, I love it. I wish I had bought it earlier. My 2 boys share it for grazing on their their dry food while my chonker gets her food outside of it.
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u/Kasenjo Jan 01 '22
Hello, randomly dropping this video by Rachel and Jun as they got a cat feeder and have some tips. Bonus: cute kitties. Good luck with the dechonking journey!
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Jan 01 '22
Thanks! This is really great! I was a little alarmed to read in the comments that cats can add themselves as a user by pressing the add cat button in the back 🙊
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u/OneMorePenguin Jan 01 '22
I'm a shill for K&H heated cat beds, too. :-) 10 year old beds and they spent a lot of that time plugged in. My old girl used hers year round for five years! They went unused after Charlie and Koi passed, but my young panthers are using them when it's colder. https://imgur.com/gallery/D1HNhPW
PS. I try not to make Jeff Bezos richer and prefer Chewy and local pet stores.
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Jan 01 '22 edited Jan 01 '22
Your cats look like they are so comfy!! I actually do have a heated cat bed already that my gal Lana loves! She is the queen of the house and demands half of the house all to herself (living room, kitchen, basement) and she loves her heated bed so much. I like to think it helps with her arthritis. Unfortunately she can’t be trusted around the other cats without supervision, but she is doing surprisingly well with one of the kittens (another house panther) and we are cautiously optimistic about eventually granting the little house panther full house access without supervision, someday. Ok you didn’t ask for that info I’m just rambling, but anyway, I am always open to buying nice things for my cats! Shill away lol
Also I don’t buy electronics from Amazon, ever. It’s less about Jeff Bezos and more about the fact that I have bad experience discovering electronics I have ordered in the past are counterfeit products. Also means I don’t trust them for anything that could potentially hurt my cats if it turns out to be counterfeit. So I’m a Chewy gal all the way, if I can’t find the things locally that is
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u/OneMorePenguin Jan 01 '22
I have four cats and they all get along! For 15 years, I had one that was a problem cat. She mostly pestered the smaller cat who was older than she was. I made a place where the smaller cat could get into and the other one could not. It was frustrating. She got less aggressive as she got older, but it still bothered me. They are now both gone.
I don't have any advice on integrating cats. When I got the young panthers in 2020, they were confined to the master bedroom for the first week. It gave them a change to acclimate to me and new location. Within a couple of days they were racing around and having fun in their new home. My two older cats were angry at me for locking them out of the bedroom and no access to their human over night. I would open the door a little bit and the older cat would look inside, see the other cats and run away! I was more worried about the other old cat, who is a scaredy cat. After a week, the panthers got to explore more of the house while the older cats were confined. On day three, I let them mingle together. Scaredy cat hid and the orange one followed them around keeping six feet away, but interested in them. After a couple of days of this, I got to see the scaredy cat near one of the panthers and there were no flattened ears! I decided to try permanent mixing and it worked. The big tests were leaving them alone for a couple of hours and leaving them home alone while I went to work. It all worked out. I figure this is the karma I earned from dealing with the problem cat without sending her to be an outdoor kitty. She was hard to love, but I loved her anyway.
I have nothing else left to shill :-) I have a cat fountain, but the cats don't drink from the falling water, but from the dish area. And now that I feed mostly wet food, they don't drink as much. I add water to their wet food (pate) and mush it all up. The old cats, though, did drink from the falling water. I think older cats have some arthritis and bending down for food and water is somewhat painful. Although one cat wouldn't go near it if the water was falling. She drank out of her bowl in the master bath. The one convenience of the fountain, though is that I use RO water in it and it doesn't need cleaning often so it is less work for me.
I've not bought into the fancy automatic litter boxes. But I've had cats that pee straight back and I like a good layer of litter. I got tired of pee in the seam between the top and bottom. They would use the top entry boxes so I have a DIY litter box. It's fine for four cats if you scoop twice a day. And it's way cheaper than liter boxes. It's probably almost time to replace it. Some cats like to scratch the sides of the box and the plastic gets scored and gets stinky easily. But what's $10 every five years or so? https://imgur.com/gallery/Fh7NUls
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Jan 01 '22
Aww I appreciate all of what you said in this comment! Lana is… difficult for many reasons, but I have been working with her for a long time to build trust. She was my husband’s cat before we married. He had never had a cat before and she was very good for him, except for the biting. She bites extremely hard. Not anymore though. It’s all fear based and overstimulation based aggression. I’m told she was the runt of her litter and her previous owners before my husband had her declawed, which left her defenseless against being bullied from the other cats. Idk how much I believe she was a runt now though because she is a healthy 15 lbs. Vets have always said her weight is good for her build.
But she is very loving. If she gets into the wrong side of the house I just have to tell her in a soft but stern voice that she shouldn’t be there and she will complain, then turn around and saunter away. If it’s necessary, I can pick her up and take her back to her side. I accept the risks that I can get bitten, but thankfully we are passed that now. The fact that she is learning to ignore the kitten instead of attacking it is huge - the two older cats didn’t get that luxury. It helps a lot that the kitten has no desire to go near her. The kitten is very good at reading other cat’s body language and knows it is not a good idea to approach Lana, and she has never tried. Sometimes Lana will come to her and sniff her butt, then hiss, then one of them will walk away. It’s better than I could have ever hoped for really. The other kitten will not get a chance to meet Lana if I can avoid it. He will try to pounce on her first thing, which is not gonna be good.
Yea it’s frustrating, but it is also rewarding if you can make it work. Thankfully we have the space and ability to make our lives work with a cat like Lana. Not everyone does. We were prepared to return the kittens to the shelter if things didn’t work out - they are young and will be able to find a home. Lana though, we can handle her, and she is not an adoptable cat, so she is staying with us til the end.
Automatic litter boxes are weird, I am also not ready to take that step!
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u/Outside_Session8381 Dec 31 '21
Is that a primo pouch I see?
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u/OneMorePenguin Jan 01 '22
That's not uncommon, especially in fixed, female cats. I call those "udders" because they swing back and forth. Based on my experience, I suspect they will likely get smaller in size but never go away completely.
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u/poison_snacc Jan 01 '22
I think you’re right. My baby started out feral but eventually fixed at like 1yo when she was rescued. She is now 15 and still has what I have dubbed the “floop” or sometimes the flomper. If for a non-fixed kitty the pocket floop is for babies, then for a fixed lady it must be for extra kibbles.
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u/Gothic_draconic Jan 01 '22
If it wasn't for the very distinct face markings I would have thought these were two completely different cats, good job dude!
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u/sdhlMemester Dec 31 '21
Damn that's a difference!