A recent study about which I have written provides veterinarians and cat caregivers with the first “life tables” for pet cats in the UK. It is an important database built upon the tracking of about 8000 cats that were registered with veterinarians and had died between 2019 and 2021.
If you want to, you can read my report on that study by clicking on the following link: Burmese and Birman cats live the longest of the cat breeds while the sphynx cat has the shortest lifespan (probably due to the varying prevalence of HCM in many cat breeds).
The title to this article is pretty much the article. I can’t add an awful lot to that except to say that we know there is an obesity epidemic among domestic cat companions in the UK and the US. This study pinpoints the negative impact on lifespan that obesity has on our domestic cat companions stating that domestic cats that are hundred grams over the ideal body weight have a decreased lifespan of about 2.5 months.
That might not seem a lot but if a domestic cat is 500 g above the ideal body weight their lifespan will be shortened by 12.5 months. It is quite easy to normalise a cat’s body weight which is 500 g in excess of the ideal.
Ultimately, like all weight issues both for humans and for companion animals, it comes down to 2 aspects of their life namely how much they eat and how much exercise they get with the former being a far more powerful method of reducing weight than the latter especially for cats and especially for cats who live their lives indoors.
It’s about diet and about ensuring that the amount of energy inputted into a cat companion is fully burnt up through the activities of that cat and not stored as fat. This is not hard science. It is common sense. You simply have to be observant and recognise the appearance of a cat with an ideal weight and then constantly measure in your mind your cat’s appearance against that ideal. If weight gain is apparent food intake is reduced accordingly and vice versa.
It is claimed that dry cat food can be slightly addictive because of the high palatability of the fatty spray that they place on the kibble and therefore wet cat food is probably better in terms of maintaining a proper weight. Wet cat food as everybody now knows much more accurately replicates the ideal diet of a domestic cat namely the mouse in terms of nutrients and ratios between protein, carbohydrates and fat plus water.
Some veterinarians would possibly argue that dry cat food can contribute to feline diabetes partly because it is easier to gain weight with this type of cat food and excess weight is linked to diabetes and because of its high carbohydrate content which can lead to a cat becoming hyperglycaemic and which can stress out the pancreas which produces insulin which controls blood sugar levels.
If your cat has feline diabetes and is obese, the natural answer would be to provide him or her with a wet food diet only and you control the amount of food that they eat to gradually reduce it in order to avoid hepatic lipidosis through rapid weight loss and eventually an ideal weight which should be stabilised.
RELATED: Eat less to fix the worldwide obesity epidemic. Simple.
