It *is* abuse. "Killing with kindness" comes to mind, though....but even a very
elderly man should have realized FOUR POUNDS of hamburger meat was excessive.
The mind boggles. Just imagine how *much* that is!
The poor thing. I wonder if it will survive.
Biskit would look just like that if she could. She's the piggiest eater I've
ever had. I keep thinking once she gets out of that "street cat" mentality
she'll slow down.
Sherry

I think you're doing it the healthiest way for your kitty by going slowly.  It
is sad all the overweight pets these days.  Very unhealthy for them.  I read an
article about a study where it said cats that are even a little underweight are
much healthier and longer lived.

Lauren
________
See my cats:  http://community.webshots.com/album/56955940rWhxAe
Raw Diet Info: http://www.holisticat.com/drjletter.html
http://www.geocities.com/rawfeeders/ForCatsOnly.html
Declawing Info: http://www.wholecat.com/articles/claws.htm

That is sad. There is a cat my vet has taken in that is 23 lbs, but she is
really a small cat. She looks this big. She has lost a bit. She ca walk
better than this guy, but it is very sad. I still think that there must be
some genetic problem involved. Pearl could happily eat once an hour and she
really does consume more than Sugar or Grant, but she stays the same weight,
so I'm sure her matabolism is very different than theirs as they all get the
same amount of exercise.

Karen

Mine is 18 pounds and definitely not overweight.  ;-)

The old guy was taken to a nursing home. I'm pretty sure he had alzheimers.
There was a young woman in my grandmothers retirement center. She had
alzheimers. She was obese because she couldn't remember if she ate or not so
she'd eat again, same thing with medications. That's why they sent her to the
retirement hotel wtih a nurse. Her cat was extremely obese also. She'd forget
if she fed it or not. I doubt he did it intentionally. If you see your dead cat
getting exhausted after 4 steps and unable to clean himself, you'd realize
something was wrong.

9-10 years ago someone I worked with at the time asked our bosses if he
could bring his cat into the bookstore for the summer.  He was living in a
tiny SRO hotel and didn't have air conditioning, and said he was worried
about his cat being in the tiny room all day.  We had a store cat (Tiger,
who now lives with me) but it was a big place, and Krisper would be staying
in a stockroom area, not in the main store where Tiger reigned.  When he
brought Krisper in, nobody could believe the size of the poor cat.  He was
the biggest one any of us had ever seen.  Like the cat in the article, he
had trouble walking and after a few steps, he would stop & rest for awhile.
One day another co-worker noticed something on Krisper's butt.  He was so
big that he couldn't clean himself and his rear was infected.  We all
insisted that Krisper be taken to the vet immediately.  The vet prescribed a
reduced calorie RX food and told him how much should be fed twice a day.  In
the past, Krisper always had a huge bowl of dry food available.  I can't
remember if he was also getting canned food, but I don't think so.  I
remember one day I had picked Krisper up and put him on the counter and was
petting him.  His owner freaked, telling me I couldn't put him up that high
because he wouldn't be able to get down.

We caught his owner overfilling his bowl with the diet food a few times and
yelled at him about it.  He felt that Krisper would hate him for withholding
food.  I actually don't remember Krisper begging for food.  I think he was
just really happy to be around so many people all day, and was more
interested in interacting.  By the end of his stay he had lost a little
weight, could walk all the way down the hall without stopping, and could
climb up onto the lower shelf of book shelves.  And one time, when my boss
brought his new puppy in, I even saw Krisper jump over a radio on the floor
and race down the hall.

We were all sad to see Krisper go, mostly because we figured once the
prescription food ran out he would be back to giving him store food in large
quantities.  His owner didn't seem to realize that he was killing his cat,
eventhough he loved Krisper.  He felt he was showing how much he loved the
cat by giving him whatever he wanted, even though he could see that his cat
was obviously suffering because of it.  It would have been good if we could
have kept Krisper at the store permanently.  He really seemed to thrive on
the attention.  He would have been good in a multi-cat household too.  His
woner was a roommate of some other people at one time and there were other
cats in the apartment and Krisper was fine.  He really wanted to make
friends with Tiger but she was terrified of his.

Liz