Slimming down kitty simple, but it takes determination

Anyone who has ever put a cat on a diet knows the drill.

The drama. The hysterics. The meowing and yowling and “pleeeeease-feed-me” looks of utter feline desperation.

Then there’s the forlorn watch over the food bowl, emptied 30 seconds after it is filled.

“I thought, ‘I can’t do this’ -- I thought I was torturing them,” says Marilyn Lamontagne of Bloomfield, Conn.

She and her husband, Gerry, became the owners of two cats, Hawkeye and Squeaky, when her brother died about three years ago.

When veterinarian Eva Ceranowicz examined the cats, she said they would be healthier if they lost some weight, Lamontagne says.

Hawkeye and Squeaky have lots of company.

There is an epidemic of overweight cats in the United States. Hartford-area vets estimate that as many as half the cats they see are overweight to some degree.

A fat cat might make a cute Christmas card or a funny Internet photograph, but it is no laughing matter.

Ceranowicz, a veterinarian for 16 years and president-elect of the Connecticut Veterinary Medical Assn., has seen her fair share.

“It’s not just that the cat’s heavy,” she said. “It truly is a serious health issue.”

Being overweight can lead to liver disease, diabetes, arthritis and skin problems from being unable to groom.

Dr. Arnold Goldman, immediate past president of the veterinary association, and a vet for 20 years, says the reason our cats are fat is simple: “Calories in versus calories out.” We let them eat too much.

By the time a cat is about 10 months old, they’ve reached their full size, and “that’s more or less what they should weigh the rest of their lives,” Goldman says.

Too many of us, he says, leave a big bowl of dry food on the kitchen floor and let the cat graze all day.

Ethel Fried, a West Hartford resident, discovered what a problem that can be when her first cat, Seiji, a Siamese cross, wound up putting on some extra pounds.

“Because he was my first cat, I went along with the fallacy that cats stop eating when they’ve had enough,” she says. “Wrong, wrong, wrong.”

When her vet, Diana J. Lafer of West Hartford, suggested she put Seiji on a diet, it wasn’t an easy task.

“It’s hard not to give in,” Fried says. “I had to sit there listening to him cry all day.”

Lafer says a weight gain of 1 or 2 pounds can be serious in a cat that weighs 12 pounds, comparable to 10 to 25 pounds in a person.

One extra tablespoon of dry food a day can result in a pound of weight gain a year for an average-sized cat, Lafer says.

So how do you slim down a cat?

Increasing exercise is key, vets say, especially for indoor cats.

Indoor cats have a longer lifespan because they’re not exposed to cars, wild animals, infectious disease and other dangers, but “they often get little exercise,” says Ceranowicz, the Bloomfield veterinarian.

Provide them with toys, cat-climbing posts, catnip mice, another cat or dog -- “anything that adds mental and physical stimulation,” Goldman says.

As for diet, don’t make any sudden or drastic diet changes, vets say. Close down the all-day grazing station and feed them “defined, measured meals,” Goldman says.

If your cat will allow it, stick to a high-protein, low-carbohydrate canned food. Often these are more than 70% water and can be more filling, vets says, and the higher-cost foods are often lower in fat.

And don’t believe what you read on the back of those boxes of dry food.

“Feed them two-thirds of what is recommended on the bag,” says Goldman. “That’s a good starting point.”

For the Lamontagnes, the couple who inherited two overweight cats, it took several tries before they worked out a new diet. They eventually switched their cats to one-quarter cup of dry and three-quarters of a small can of Friskies wet food once a day.

Within two months, they saw results. Both cats have lost weight: Squeaky is 1 1/2 pounds lighter; Hawkeye, the larger cat, has lost 2 pounds.

“I think it’s helped them feel a little better. They’re moving around a little more. They’re a little friskier at times,” Lamontagne says.

She and her younger sister recently started attending Weight Watchers together.

“We’d joke that this was Weight Watchers for cats,” Lamontagne says.