Pictures of Muffin since I moved into my new apartment in May of this year.

My kitties :)

I apologize for recommending what you said you can't do, but my recommendation is wet food.

Our kitty Petey is just different from our other two cats. With the other two, you could leave dry out and they would eat some and were always a healthy weight.

Not Pete. He would eat IT ALL. 22 pounds later (and a bout with diabetes) and we converter him to only canned. It made all the difference. He dropped several pounds and I was able to get him off insulin.

He doesn't eat expensive stuff - Fancy Feast. 2 cans a day.

I really recommend it. Otherwise you too may be facing diabetes and insulin injections like we were.

Low or no-carb is what works w/ cats... who by nature are obligate carnivores, meaning that in the wild they get no grains or carbs except what little might be in the stomachs of their prey. AKA the "catkins" diet!

My guys slimmed down very nicely on it - involves a lot of reading labels, reading, researching, and experimenting with various frozen pet food diets which dont necessarily have to be fed raw but you have o make sure they get a complete diet with all essential nutrients. The we food can be supplemented with high protein (40% or more) grain free dry food (Taste of the Wild for example).... but once I started that I noticed they had the same addictive food craving behavior around that food as they did with the high grain/carb purina dry stuff...and then stopped eating the wet food and meat I was feeding them! And... how they've started puttin on weight again... sighhh.... back at square one.

It's kinda like me and corn chips - some foods like corn chips are addictive, can sit and eat a whole bag full, whereas its easier to moderae my intake of healthy food - vegs, protein etc.. My cats seem to behave the same way around carbs and grains.

I also suggest you switch to canned. From my research I have not found online ordering to be more economical than buying from my local Petsmart. I've found them to have the best price on canned Fancy Feast and if you become a Petsmart member (free) you'll receive offers to further reduce the price. Just today we got an email with a 15% discount on everything in the store. See if the sale is happening in your area and take advantage of it.
I know others don't like the Fancy Feast brand but it's the only one my cat will eat plus she has stayed a healthy weight since I found her as a malnourished kitten.

Your kitten looks old enough to switch over to regular canned cat food so I'd just start them both on the wet food.
Are you home during the day to feed? If not, try feeding canned in the morning, leave some dry while you're gone, then feed canned whenever you're home.
The throwing up often is not a good sign......do you think it's hair balls or the food? My vet would have your cat on canned food and No dry, especially with her history of bladder stones.

Another vote for canned food. I think an all dry diet is very hard on their kidneys. My cat gets the majority of his fluids/water through his canned food.

He eats one can of friskees per day (about 50 cents a can). I even add a tablespoon of water to it for extra hydration.

I think 9 Lives canned is even cheaper. In my opinion, cheap canned food is better than dry food.

I use O.N.E. dry food, teal bag with palomino colored band. Purina makes it. I've been using it for cats (dogs, too) since well, since it came out. Beautiful coats. One cat was abandoned with us and I wish I had before and after pictures of her. They get canned Fancy Feast not more than once a week, as a treat.

Your cat may be overweight but she also had surgery for bladder stones. I'm sure that you don't want her to have to go through surgery again, so you should use whatever food the vet recommended to stop the creation of new stones.

Desi, one of my cats had surgery for her bladder stones (oxalate) two years ago. The vet and the U of Guelph Veterinary College (the stones were sent there for analysis) recommended that Desi only be allowed to eat MediCal Urinary SO which comes in dry and wet. Since then I have taken her to the vet twice for an annual x-ray. The x-rays show that no new stones have developed. Desi nearly died from the surgery and the stones were very painful when they got stuck in her urethra so I'm not taking any chances of the bladder stones recurring.

The vomiting is a result of her stuffing her stomach too fast and throwing it back up (and it would look just like dry food in her bowl, no digestion/chewing noticable). She used to do it only with dry food now it's moist as well. She only eats a little bit at a time so I can leave some moist and dry and she'll eat the moist when I leave and the dry later in the day. Otherwise I can give her a little bit at a time over the evening/weekend and she can keep it down. But the 4-5 month old kitten can snarf down more food than 6 yr old Muffin!

I've read up and done research in the past that led me to believe that canned is better too. But the vet scared me into thinking she'll get another bladder stone. I was giving my cat Friskies shredded (she doesn't care much for the chunks or pate) with some dry when I'm at work or overnight and the vet convinced me to go all Iams (dry and moist) or she'll get another one. There office even called me up a couple of times over the last year (since her surgery) to ask what food I was feeding her. I truly think that is when she started getting fat. I used to leave some dry out and give her Friskies and she was a healthy weight. I read that the cheapest canned food is better than dry but I wasn't sure if it was a personal belief and then the vet put it in my head she'll get stones. I am worried that the supermarket food might not be healthy enough for my girls.

I think my vet is just believing what she learned in school, paid for by Iams, so I don't think she's trying to mislead me or rip me off (since I buy the food elsewhere). But I don't agree with her food recommendations so I'm going to do some research and choose food that is best that won't make me poor. I could afford feed them all wet supermarket food but I can't afford to feed them both all expensive moist food. I just need to find a brand that is healthy and easier on the pocket.

Learn to read the labels and the difference between chicken, chicken meal, chicken by-products and all that. The main ingredient in wet food is water, so just add water to dry food if you want but it isn't necessary. Your cats should have access to water all the time.

duplicate post deleted.

This post was edited by cottonwood468 on Fri, Dec 5, 14 at 14:47

Have you stopped free feeding and started measuring an appropriate amount of food for a suitable body weight?

Best food for kittens is boiled fresh fish. I never buy any food for cats in store. My pretty boy Simbad agree with me.

About fish, you can look it up online, fresh, canned, boiled, raw, it doesn't matter. Here is just one of many links.

Here is a link that might be useful: Fish and cats

We stopped free feeding about 2 years ago and both of our cats have lost a dramatic amount of weight (to the point where our vet said we should start feeding them more). They are ~15lbs and ~10lbs. We ended up buying an auto feeder with high-quality dry food that spits out 1/4 cup of food twice a day (4am, noon). When I get home in the evenings, I feed half a can of grain-free wet food (so 1/4 to each) -- I actually get this at Trader Joe's now, who knew.

It's helped so much with their weight and energy and is also great for vacation. It has taken a lot of trial an error to reach a diet plan where I feel they're balanced. And thankfully my cats aren't picky.

Glad to see so many chime in about canned food being better than dry. Not quite so simple an answer, really, but that is 90% of the way there.. .it is high meat and low carb that is best for cats (these are indeed obligate carnivores). Can't do that with dry food as so far the industries have not been able to create a low carb dry food (falls apart). But some canned foods can be high in carbs, too, so try to avoid those (foods with lots of gravy for example). Someday in the future, a dry food that is 95% meat protein will probably exist⦠but not any time soon that we can see.

Fish meat is a terrible diet for a cat (if not extremely well supplemented at least). Fish meat is deficient in all sorts of essential nutrients and far to high in polyunsaturated fatty acids (very bad for cats). Balanced fish diets are a relatively decent choice (from a nutritional standpoint), though the toxic mercury issue is probably a real concern, particularly for young cats.

Ayimera where did you get a self feeder that controls daily dosages? Can you tell me the brand name?

I found Dr. Pierson's website 2 years ago and put our 16 lb. VERY food motivated female on an all-wet, no-free-feeding diet and she did wonderfully. On top of the weight loss, her bowel movements improved 100%, as she used to have soft, pudding-like movements quite frequently when we gave her dry. Her energy levels did a complete 180 degrees as well and she was back to acting like a kitten.

She is exactly like Sarah's cat in that if you food down, she will eat it ALL and then go over to the other kitty's bowls and eat ALL of their food...and then beg for more! We knew that if we didn't get a handle on things, she would become obese quite quickly.

Now, she gets Wellness Chicken or Turkey wet food twice a day. We have to feed her separately from our other cat, as she will inhale her food in 3 seconds while our male is just getting started. We also noticed that wet foods with fish or seafood are too rich for her and contribute to her getting what I call "pudding butt".

She managed to trim down 3 1/2 lbs and looks great!

Here is a link that might be useful: Cat Info Website - Feeding Your Cat