In a nutshell, most cats are fat because they’ve been fed too much (free-feeding or indulging them) and because they’re fed dry food which is NOT appropriate food for them due to the grain/carb/sugar content. Cats are obligate carnivores who need to eat a high meat-based protein diet, which is also high in fats and low in carbs.

Many vets, who are sadly ignorant on the topic of proper cat nutrition, will recommend prescription diet foods (usually dry). Cats are expected to lose weight on a starvation diet of 1/4 or 1/3 cup of food per day. Everyone is miserable in these situations.

The solution is to switch the fat cat (and any others in the household as well) to a good quality canned food. Because these foods are species appropriate, the cat will lose weight at a safe, slow pace (no more than 1 pound per month). Switching foods needs to occur slowly, and if you’re trying to get a kibble junkie to eat canned food, that will happen naturally.

That’s it. Easy as pie. Not only will fat cats lose weight, but it and any others in the home will reap many benefits of eating a speciies appropriate diet.

See the links below for detailed information on this topic.

She needs regular exercise daily. “Hills Science Plan” do a range of food particularly food for overweight cats. It’s more expensive but worth it because it’s recommend by vets ans because it’s one of the best.You can buy it from your vets a 2kg bag is about £12.

Stop feeding your cat ‘human food’ or left overs. Give it proper cat food, even though you may have a problem initially because you have pampered it for too long!

Iams and Science Diet make some good foods for overweight pets, with less of the fattening goodness that makes our pets so jiggly.

You might also try only feeding kitty at certain times, rather than just having cat food lying out for her all the time. Cats, like most animals, will eat food as long as it is available. That goes back to their days of pre-domestication where they had to hunt for the food they ate and gorge to make sure they had enough to last until the next time they killed something.

So I would put kitty on a strict diet, and at least for the first month or two, give treats as sparingly as possible. If possble, take kitty out for a walk, if you can persuade her to put on a leash. I know, this is easier said than done. Playing with her more might help, but cats can be a little picky about when they want to play and how long they are willing to do so.

Cutting down portions and sticking to a regime will be the best thing for your cat.

feed her less, and dont leave the food out all day, most stoors carry a brand/type of food that will help with weight loss and weight management. just dont starve it, and give her exercise, (run around, play with toys)

Exercise and diet will probably be the things that most people tell you. As far as exercise, look in the cat toy aisle and find some toys for her to play with. My cat loves the little mice that are catnip sented. She also LOVES chasing around a laser light and after a good 5 minutes or so, you can tell she has had her workout. I think most cats enjoy the laser lights and it doesn’t take much work from you.

It’s very simple STOP FEEDING DRY FOOD!!!!!!!

Nutrition since there are so many bad things out there is very important to your cat’s health
Contrary to what you may have heard, dry foods are not a great thing to feed a cat.
Dry foods are the number 1 cause of diabetes in cats as well as being a huge contributing factor to kidney disease, obesity, crystals, u.t.i’s and a host of other problems. The problems with it are that they are loaded with carbohydrates which many cats (carnivores) cannot process. Most of the moisture a cat needs is gotten
out of the food and 95% of it is zapped out of dry foods in the processing. Also, most use horrible ingredients and don’t use a muscle meat as the primary ingredient and use vegetable based protein versus animal. Not good for an animal that has to eat meat to survive.
You want to pick a canned food w/o gravy (gravy=carbs) that uses a muscle meat as the first ingredient and doesn’t have corn at least in the first 3 ingredients if at all. Fancy feast is a middle grade food with 9lives, friskies whiskas lower grade canned and wellness and merrick upper grade human quality foods.Also, dry food is not proven to be better for teeth. Please read about cat nutrition.