A while back, I happened to mention to someone that I have a fat cat who has to lose weight.
And I got an unexpected reaction; it was as if I had said "all fatness is an abomination; all existing fat throughout the span of time and space should be mercilessly hunted down and destroyed".
So I need to emphasize here that I am not proclaiming any aesthetic or moral judgments on fatness. The only reason I even bloody noticed kitty was quote fat unquote in the first place was because my vet told me she was. And he made a point of impressing this information upon me:
Look at her genital area, he said, holding her out rump~first. It's soiled because she can't reach around her belly and clean herself. If it's not clean, she will be vulnerable to urinary tract, vaginal and rectal infections. Cats who can't keep themselves clean will lose interest in general grooming, and that will cause skin problems. Furthermore, overweight cats run a very high risk of developing diabetes, cardiovascular disease, liver failure and joint problems; so they are more likely suffer a lower quality of life and then die young.
But right now, he said, the bottom line is, if she can't clean her own bum, then you will have to buy a special cleanser and do it for her.
And that's when we started feeding her the diet cat food.
Now that the vet has told me she's overweight, I can see what he saw: she's really quite a delicately~boned small cat who is able to fool you into thinking she's a big~boned brawny cat because she carries herself so well.
But I still never bothered to keep tabs on her weight; I just figured she'd do fine so long as she was fed only the diet food. Okay, so we let her eat as much as she wanted. Okay, so ocaaaasionally we ran out of the diet food and we ran down to the corner store to pick up a can, or two, to tide her over. But that shouldn't affect whether or not she's at a healthy weight...
Last month I decided to start taking her outside for more exercise. And the walking harness could not encompass her girth.
So I weighed her on our bathroom scale; and she weighed as much as she did two years ago when the vet told me she was fat. Fourteen pounds.
It had been in the back of my mind for those two years that a cat forced to lose weight too quickly would suffer hepatic lipidosis ~~ so, on the bright side, while she wasn't any better, at least she wasn't significantly worse.
But I'll now have to properly monitor her weight loss. And because the increments will have to be measured by the ounce {or gram}, I will need a special scale.
Vets usually use baby scales, and that's what I would prefer to buy; the problem is, they're expensive. Boyfriend has argued that kitchen scales are cheaper and more versatile; but I have trouble believing that there's a domestic kitchen scale out there with a fourteen pound capacity...
We may compromise on shipping/postal scales; perhaps one of the pulley~type hook~on hanging scales would be most convenient. You know how cats never like to stay where they're told to stay, and so sometimes it's hard to make them stay on the scales... so, imagine a kitty bed with straps on to which one could hook the pulley scales and lift. I could weigh her in her sleep and she'd never have to know.
Still, I like the lines of this little item; and if I had the cash, I'd buy one. *grumble* You'd think that the market would be flooded with used baby scales that have been outgrown; but my preliminary research seems to indicate that new mums are being encouraged to rent rather than buy nowadays...
I'd be happy even with the low~tech baby scale my mum had {i.e., non~digital ~ mostly all the modern scales are digital, with rare exceptions}. My mum's baby scale looked rather like an old~fashioned candy scale {though much plainer, of course}. But I can't even find any of those.
Where do new mums go to buy used baby stuff?
Posted by edgar at September 4, 2003 10:37 AM
