the cats strike back

When we first got our cats, our vet told us that healthy weight gain for kittens should be about a quarter pound per week. We own a Wii Fit Plus, and one of its features is the ability to weigh your pets, and it keeps track of their progress. This is fun for us, but Ralph and Remington kind of hate it.

After several months, we asked our vet when this process should stop. He said that a healthy cat should weigh no more than eight pounds. Anything over that, and our cats would one day be diabetic. Oops. Ours had faithfully gained their quarter pound until they weighed eleven pounds! From the way they always acted like they hadn’t eaten in days each time I fed them, I (Chase) had felt bad and continued to increase the amount of food I gave them. Turns out I was feeding them more than double what they needed. I quickly reduced their food amounts to the correct level.

It’s been war even since. The cats now loudly complain every time they feel it’s mealtime and suddenly become very affectionate whenever a can of Pringles is open. Ralph even ran off with Joanna’s bag of chips while she wasn’t looking.

With regards to destroying things in the home, they’ve really gotten a lot better, so we don’t always lock them in the bathroom anymore when we leave the house. Yesterday for the first time in a few months, we left them out for the entire time we were at work. We returned to find their response to their new diet:

This is a picture of one of the two special cat treat bags they dug out (from deep inside our cat stuff bucket), chewed through, and ate the entire contents of. This afternoon snack was worth about a day or two’s worth of healthy eating. I guess even cats have binge days when on a diet.

But they look fatter to me already.