4 ms·

Some cats will self regulate intake to maintain a healthy weight, but a large fraction will not. If your cat is one of these then you need to regulate it's inta

• kortilla 2y ago
  > But I think it's also a bad idea to reduce abruptly. Why? That’s usually the advice from vets. Immediately take away free feeding and switch to portions that result in a calorie deficit until they get to a healthy weight.
  • userid1303 2y ago
    Reducing a cat's caloric intake too quickly will result in hepatic lipidosis (fatty liver). This only takes days and is very likely to result in death without immediate veterinary intervention.
    • doublepg23 2y ago
      Do you have a source for this, even Wikipedia doesn’t seem to name a cause for this disease.
      • jprete 2y ago
        Not the GP but https://vcahospitals.com/know-your-pet/liver-disease-fatty-liver-syndrome-in-cats https://vcahospitals.com/know-your-pet/liver-disease-fatty-l... I have never personally heard that a cat could get fatty liver disease from undereating, but I have heard it's a risk if they don't eat anything all for 24 hours.
        • b112 2y ago
          In greater than 90% of cats, an underlying disease has caused the inappetence. These may include inflammatory bowel disease, other types of liver disease, cancer, pancreatitis, anxiety, respiratory disease and diabetes mellitus. So in 90% of these cases, cats were very ill with some other dosease, causing them to forgo food, and this additional symptom sets in. It should be noted: * the other 10% could be due to unidentified other issues * this has nothing to do with withholding food, but with cats purposefully not eating food
    • b112 2y ago
      So cats die in the wild, if they cannot catch mice for a few days? No mammal I know of dies due to food interruptions of a mere few days. This sounds wildly inaccurate.
      • jaggederest 2y ago
        Cats hunt 20-50 times a day, with approximately a 50% success rate. No cat in an environment with any available prey goes more than a few hours without eating something. They're not like lions or other climax predators, who eat much less regularly.
        • b112 2y ago
          There are droughts, there are dry seasons and yes for wild cats, and cat ancestors too. Cats can go weeks without food and manage to survive, and going days during tough times is a certainty.
          • jaggederest 2y ago
            They'd almost never go from a full diet back to zero instantly though. If you reduce their intake over time, even a few days, they don't develop liver issues.
          • ajb 2y ago
            They usually won't be starting from obese though.
      • jprete 2y ago
        I agree with the sibling comment about small cats hunting very very frequently, and I'd also add that animals cache food for exactly the reason of avoiding starvation. Small mammals also have quicker metabolisms, and their surface-to-volume ratio is worse than a large mammal so they need a steadier supply of food just to maintain their body temperature. Plenty of mammals also hibernate, and they have to fatten up ahead of time to survive it.
        • 2y ago
    • kortilla 2y ago
      Deficit doesn’t mean 0 calories. Don’t be dramatic
  • ajb 2y ago
    That's not the advice I've got. I've heard a vet advise reducing only 10% a week for a very overweight cat. For my (not very overweight) cats, the advice was not to go to deficit, but to switch to an amount that would be a maintenance amount for the correct weight. Which was presumably not very different to their previous intake. I don't have strong evidence here (hence "I think" above). I'm not a vet and I'm definitely not YOUR vet .
    • kortilla 2y ago
      A maintenance amount for their correct weight is a deficit.