October 31st - Fat cats

31/10/2007 by Brigid.

Poor cats. They are on a diet.

It is difficult to be sure what a 6-month old growing kitten’s ideal weight should be, but we have begun to notice a distinctly inelegant thud each time one of the little angels jumps off the windowsill, and the patter of little paws now sounds like a gun carriage team at full gallop. My suspicions were raised by the veterinary nurse when I went in to buy worming pills at the beginning of the month. When I told her the kittens’ age, she recommended half a pill each. I explained that the vet had given them a whole pill each last time. “What weight?”, she asked. “3.5 Kg”, I replied. She seemed surprised. “At 6 months? C’est enorme!”, she said. Actually, I have no idea exactly how much the cats now weigh as we don’t possess a set of scales. However, they were 3.1 Kg and 3.2 Kg respectively, last time we took them into the vet at 5 months’, so 3.5 Kg seemed like a conservative estimate.

Anyway, the nurse looked at the instructions on the back of the packet, and reassured us hat half a pill would treat a cat up to 5 Kg.

About a week later, a visitor to the house remarked that Tiggy and Fog were “gros”. Charming. True, the cats do appear to be a little on the tubby side. The trouble is that worms can make a kitten look pot-bellied, and I still wasn’t entirely convinced of the Milbemax vermifuge dosage. Perhaps the cats are heavier than I thought, and a half pill wasn’t enough … John suggested we weigh them with the spring balance that we used for the new sash cord windows in London. To date neither of us has been brave enough to try, but we’ll let you know how it goes as soon as the scratches heal.

The Blue Cross produce a useful selection of leaflets on feline health (http://www.allaboutpets.org.uk/web/site/aap_FactsheetList.asp?mainpettype=1), so I did some research. Apparently, just weighing a cat isn’t a reliable indicator of whether or not they are overweight. Their leaflet, “Getting back in Shape” states, “The only way to tell if your cat is overweight is to look at the animal’s body shape and assess the body fat. Does your pet have a potbelly? Viewed from above, do they have a waist – does the body taper after the ribcage? Can you easily feel your cat’s ribs? No waist, a bit of a paunch, and a well-cushioned ribcage mean it is time to take action.”

Put yourself in our cats’ position. How would you appreciate a much larger animal picking you up and prodding you in your ribcage? Not much. I can tell you, however, that they are …hmmmm …well cushioned. Just as well that they are (relatively) small and unable to speak. Can you imagine explaining to Tony Soprano that you weren’t going to buy him any more canoli because he is a touch on the heavy side?

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