Everyone wants to live a cat’s life. It is natural for them to sleep at least ten hours a day, to eat and to conserve energy. And if their diet is hectic, full of fats and cheap ingredients, it’s no wonder as to why they get a little chubby in no time. If you want your clumsy furry friend to live as long and as healthy as possible, it’s time you broke the status quo.
It is simpler than it sounds to get rid of those unnecessary pounds. And to make things easier, we’ve compiled a list of the best tricks available. Keep in mind that you are going to need some patience, as cats are not the most malleable of creatures. However, if you stick with this list, you are going to have your companion by your side for many years.
The first thing you have to do is to get rid of the bottomless bowl of food. If your pet has access to food whenever it feels like eating, it will never stop doing so. That’s why you have to create a strict feeding schedule. Feed it three times a day and make sure it has access to plenty of water instead, as that is known for aiding the weight loss process.
This will also help you monitor the amount of food your cat will eat, and prevent it from nibbling all day. Also, you should know that dry food has many carbohydrates, which are not processed by your cat’s metabolism as well as a human one would handle them.
Our next advice would be to consider the portion size. Most pet owners overfeed their pets, which is why so many cats develop obesity-related issues that may reduce their life expectancy by half. You can give your cats two cups of dry food a day if they have a larger size. These portions combined should have around 500 calories, which is more than enough.
The next tip is an easy one. Exercise! This shouldn’t be very hard to do, especially if you own a kitten. If you have a lazier companion, you can try catnip, as that plant seems to activate the playful side of a cat. The market is abundant with options, and a premium catnip filled cat toy will make any feline excited and motivated to jump around.
At number four, we go back to our first tip and detail it a little bit. To stimulate your cat to drink more of that delicious water, you have to make the process more fun. As stated before, you can find online plenty of products to help you do that, like fountains, which play mice sounds and that have LED lights to catch your cat’s attention.
And the last trick to help you make sure your cat doesn’t become obese is to hide its toys from time to time, to make it interested in them again. This will stimulate its interest in finding them – thus running more, getting more exercise, which will make sure the blood flows nicely and that fats are processed faster.