In various discussions, it has become apparent that many of us have cats. How many cats do you have? Do you think that cat ownership has anything to do with your being overweight? Does your cat sabotage your eating or exercise plan?

We have three inside cats and a shop cat. One of the indoor cats (the female - are we surprised?) needs to lose a little.

The four cats can be found stationed around my walking area. I keep expecting them to offer me a water bottle or a banana. None of the cats or the dogs, who also watch me walk, have the slightest interest in going with me on a walk.

4 + 2 = 6

I have two male cats - Pepper and Bob. They both find floor exercises very fascinating...ie, I can't do an ab or other floor exercise without them crawling all over me. Literally. All. Over. Me. They just want love, the poor little monkeys.

One of my cats (Pepper) is at the low end of normal weight. The other is quite overweight. He has been on low-calorie diet cat food for 1.5 years, with a moderate feeding schedule (1/2 cup total per day), and in that time he has gained 2 lbs.

I used to hate going to the doctor because I'd hear all the lectures about losing weight and I WANTED to, and was trying, but success kept being out of my reach. Now I'm fine with the doctor, but the VET - he makes me feel like such a bad person and it seems like he doesn't believe me when i say that the cat REALLY is on diet food and only eating that! No treats, none of his brother's food (we lock them in separate rooms to eat...otherwise the skinny cat gets NADA and the fat cat beats him up to get it all), and still he gains.

My husband and I have one cat. We adopted her from the pound. She's a brindled tortie (mostly black with orange flecking and, a cream colored toe on each of three feet, and two small cream patches, one in her arm pit, and one on her belly).

She's really quirky (as many torties are) and quite the talker.

I think the only way that cat ownership might be related to weight, is that overweight people might need or want a lower maintenance pet than a dog. If you are unable (or unwilling) to exercise, a cat is easier to incorporate into your life than an irish wolfhound.

Not all dogs require high maintenance, but a cat is a lazy pet owner's best friend.

On a silly note, many people say that getting a dog and walking it, has helped them keep fit (ok that's not silly, but I'm getting to that). We trained our cat to walk on a leash, so we could take her on trips without worrying as much about her scooting out of the van). Walking her isn't all that good for exercise, because you have to walk at her pace (which is usually slow and cautious, but if she sees a squirrel in the yard and I try to keep up can be very good exercise - a little too much good exercise).

Oh man. I tried walking my cats once. They looked at me like I was nuts, flopped over to one side, and literally refused to walk to the point of letting me drag them a few feet.

Sort of like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGOXNhU2gAY

7+ my 5 = 12

We've collected cats from five states and are working on the full set of 50 (not!)

Mr. Ohio: an gorgeous blond angora/Persian who wandered into DD's college apartment as a starving two-month old. He's named Nattie, after Natural Light beer -- how college is that? It's hard to run on hard wood floors when you have fur between your toes!

Miss Pennsylvania: Sophie is a miniature dilute tortie (gray with cream and peanut butter spots). She was found abandoned in an apartment that tenants had vacated. All the other cats are afraid of her six pounds of fury. She sleeps on a polar fleece blanket on top of my fax machine to keep an eye on me (like right now!)

Mr. Florida: Charlie is an enormous brown-striped Manx or perhaps American Bobtail, found living between a Winn-Dixie dumpster in Orlando as a tiny, emaciated three-month old. He only has a half-inch stump of a tail, but grew a giant pompom of fur over it in an effort to fit in with the other cats. Kind of a kitty combover. He's 2, loves strawberries and salad, and still is growing.

Mr. New Jersey: Stormy is a gray tabby and our senior citizen --he's 16 now. We found him on a sand dune in NJ on a stormy day when he was only 3 weeks old. He couldn't even lap milk, so we hand feed him kitten formula (he sucked it off our fingers). DH was his mom and taught him how to wash himself. He didn't meow for a few years. He has kidney problems and is hyperthyroid, but is the happiest cat ever.

and Miss New Mexico: Aurora, a beautiful red tabby, came from an animal shelter in Albuquerque when she was a very sick 7-month old, weighing only 4 pounds. She now checks in at 15.4 pounds! Sadly, it turns out that she was born with multiple heart defects that aren't repairable so her life won't be very long. On top of that, her kitty cardiologist thinks that she has a (single) heartworm that is dying or dead and is precipitating a HW "crisis" that she may not survive. She's the sweetest and most loving cat ever and sleeps with her paws wrapped around my arm, purring. We just love her for whatever time she has with us.

They're all strictly indoor cats and try as I might, I can't figure out a way to blame my weight problems on them (darn it!)

I loved the video clip. Yeah, if you want to leash train a cat, you can't just clip on the leash and expect anything (productive) to happen. First we had to train her to accept the harness. You would have thought it weighed 30 lbs the way she flattened herself to the floor and wouldn't move. Once she got used to the harness, we added the leash - another 30 lbs apparently. Then we took her outside - well what do you know the gravity is different outside too. She'd lay flat on the grass and wouldn't move an inch.

It took about two weeks to get her to like sitting outside with us on the leash, and other week to walk, mostly with my husband walking in front and calling to her. She likes to walk around the outside walls of the house, and spends way too much time exploring the window wells.

The bad thing though is that we don't take her outside in the winter, and she loses all her leash skills, and has to be taught all over every spring. This spring and summer she hasn't been out all that much. She'll beg to go out, and will sit still for the harness to be put on, but she gets outside and that darned increase in gravity hits her and she falls to the ground, and every noise starts to frighten her and she wants to come right inside.

The two cats on my avatar are Missy and Simon. Missy is the chubby one. Missy is also a bob tail kitty. She also has lots of fur on her tail - like enough fur to cover an entire tail. She is a small cat and fairly timid, but she has figured out that she can intimidate the dogs and loves doing it. She puffs up (which covers her stub of a tail) hisses and shows her teeth. She looks like a large burr with teeth. The dogs hang their heads and look away. She always inspects the dogs' dinner before they eat to see if there is anything she might want to sample. They let her do it, too.

Our third house cat and the shop cat are black. Roger has two white toes and a small white spot on his chest that moves like a locket when he runs . Roger is very siamese looking in body. Blackie is very domestic shorthair.

Kaplods, I sort of had the same idea about cat ownership. It really doesn't require much movement, except for stroking while seated in the recliner - doing aerobic reclining?

I can't believe I am sitting here reading about everyone's cats like it was the Great American Novel!

I tried putting a leash on Missy. Instant maniac cat. I gave up that idea pretty quickly. I thought she would like the little red harness. Hah!

The most exercise I usually get with my cat is getting her out of my recliner or the middle of my bed. She is clearly "in love," with my husband and makes it very clear that I am her rival (as much as she may love me), and that while she may be second female for the moment, she wants to make it clear she hasn't given up on being top female in my husband's life or in the household. She takes every opportunity to sit or lie in my places. If I get out of bed or out of my recliner, she'll jump into my spot, and not in a way that we can share. If I'm headed toward the chair or the bed, she will often race ahead of me to jump into the spot, and tries to make herself difficult to move. Silly kitty.

Great thread!

Ok, I have 6 in the house and about 18 outside. Yes, that is 24 total!! LOL

The ones outside are mostly part of a feral cat colony that I take care of. Most are now tame. Some used to be pretty wild but I tamed them. Some are drop offs (people dumped them cause they didn't want them anymore). Some are rescues that have joined my colony. We go through a 20 lb bag of cat food about every 4-5 days. I love sitting out on the porch and brushing them. They are so funny. When I sit down, I get about 6-8 cats all trying to climb on my lap at one time.

Believe it or not, some of my outside cats LOVE going for walks with me. I absolutely cannot go outside, and walk anywhere, in the road, around the yard, down the street, anywhere, without at least 5 cats walking with me. My husband took a picture one time and I looked like the pied piper with a cat following! LOL

The inside kitties are great too. They loved to be held and petted. I normally don't have a problem with them interfering with my exercising. Sometimes I have to move them off the recombant bike seat though. They love laying there.

I also have three dogs.They get in the way much more than the cats.Two German Shepherds and one lab/chow mix puppy.

Fun topic!
Kathy

Oh, an FYI:

All the cats are spayed or neutered and have had their shots. I make sure that I vet them as needed. Any new cat that arrives goes to the vet and gets a check up, fixed as needed, ear tipped, then returned to the colony.

We have two cats.
One, was left by the neighbors when they moved ten years ago - so he is really the neighborhood cat. He only comes in on occasion until winter. He is at least 17 years old (no one in the neighborhood knows exactly). He is a rag doll, with a very sweet disposition.

Cat # 2 is a calico who is 2 years old. She loves to hunt, but brings almost everything in the house ALIVE! Yesterday it was a gold finch. Last week it was butterflies. A couple months ago we found an entire family of baby mice living in her catbox. It has high walls, and they couldn't get out.
I have mixed feelings about her sabotaging my diet and exercise. She loves to eat my yoga blocks and wedge, she chases the gazelle until I am afraid I am going to hurt her. She loves to sneak under my feet during dance workouts - to the point of distraction. One saving grace - she is a mooch - worse than the dog. If I have cheese on anything, they both want to share - so they keep me from eating a significant number of calories.

The clincher for me - reducing stress helps make weight loss easier (so says the research) and the TLC they give me is certainly a positive thing!!!!

2 cats...and a dog. One cat is a 15 yr old torti and the other is a 11 yr old siamese mix, flame point color. My torti is afraid of her own shadow..and my meser mix is a talker (her name is gabby for a reason). Both cats are unbelievably healthy for their age...not overweight. But i aslo am a vet and paranoid...so bloodwork 2 x yr and xrays and ekg once a year...so far its kept them healthy

oh and mandalin...we vets just worry about overwt cats. I know it get annoying..but we really do worry.

I have one cat that eats me out of house and home. lol, not really but 3 cans of food a day and more if you will give it to him.

Last time I took him to the vet, I was a bit worried, he is fat. The vet laughed and said he weighs 15lbs and there isn't a bit of fat on him. He is a BIG cat. I said no. he is 3 cats inside one cat coat lol.

He is a mix between one persons Manx and another persons Persian. I thought because of his plain old black and white coloring he was just an old alley cat lol. I asked the vet when we got him and she said nope, what the Manx owner said looks about right. He is a nice mix of both and because of that doesn't have a lot of the problems that either might have.

He is now 11 years old, don't know what I will do when his time with me is over.

There was a documentary on TLC not too long ago about overweight pets. One of the couples had an overweight cat that just wouldn't lose weight. Their vet kept accusing the couple of overfeeding, and while they kept reducing her food, further and further, she just wasn't losing. Finally, a veterinary school got involved, and boarded her for several weeks. Her calorie content was monitored daily, as was her energy and activity level. Surprisingly to the vet students (but not the couple), the cat didn't lose any weight. The less they fed her, the more she slept and less activity she would engage in (sounds like some of us, I think). By combining an extra low calorie diet with daily games to promote exercise, they were able to get her to reach a healthy weight (if they weren't retired, though I wonder if they would have been able to put the time in to keep her exercised).

I think it just shows weight loss isn't always a simple problem, even for pets.