[kaplods]

Tonka's been in our home one week now. She weighed 17.2 lbs when she arrived.

The humane society vet advised against restricting her diet yet, because they don't know what she had been fed, and although fat, she could be malnourished. So we've been freefeeding her, but measuring what she's eaten. She eats a lot less than any cat we've had, so we thought maybe she just has a really slow metabolism.

Then we found out about her french fry and human food addiction.

Yesterday morning, we both noticed that she looked a little slimmer. We thought we were imagining things, so I weigher her, and she's lost half a pound!

I'm really wondering what her prior owners fed her or she had access to (such as people food or the dogs' food).

I'm also wondering if she ever walked around at all. Obviously not much in the humane society cage, but her foot pads were baby soft, and I already notice that her back foot pads are stating to get a little rougher already.

It's very strange. I'm kind of guessing that she hasn't gotten a lot of social interaction for quite some time, and hasn't had much reason to move around much. She's definitely learning to follow us around the apartment, because we talk to her as we go, and she still mouths silently rather than meows, most of the time, but we are getting to hear her talk more and more. She does constantly beg any time she thinks we're eating (even when we take our pills), so I'm still wondering whether she will regain weight once she realizes that her diet isn't going to be overly supplemented with snacks.

We have her on Science Diet Senior and an occasional small can of wet food. The Science Diet, I've been weighing out her food, and she's still eating only about what the bag says is right for an 8 lb cat.

Still, a half pound seems like a pretty sudden and large loss for a cat. It would probably be the human equivalent of 5 lbs, so maybe it isn't as big a loss as it seems.

I don't know, maybe with GirlyGirl's sudden death, I've become a bit paranoid, but does anyone know if this is healthy for her to lose weight so fast?