Day 49: Losing weight

My Project: 365 Creative Writing Prompts

Day 49: Losing weight

Everybody knows that carrying extra weight is not good. There’s the risk of heart attack or stroke, diabetes, certain cancers, gallbladder disease, and quite a few others.

For people, there are various ways of losing weight. They can change their diet, reduce their intake of sugar and alcohol, and start exercising. But how does one manage weight loss in animals?

I have two male and two female cats, and while the males are of a perfect weight, the females are overweight. I talked to the vet about this and he said that there’s little or nothing to be done about it. Females, especially after being spayed, tend to get chubby.

This is Holly as a kitten ...

But as you can see, now she is on the chubby side. 

When I took her to the vet, he suggested feeding her by way of the catmosphere. The idea is that if the cat wants the food that is inside, she has to roll the sphere around and nibbles will fall out. Well, that didn’t work. Not only did my cats not roll the sphere around, they wouldn’t even go near it. When I showed them what to do, they took off. They were scared of the ball.

Adjusting Holly’s diet is impossible too. I can’t very well let her go hungry or present her with a salad. Cats need meat. So, in addition to canned cat food, I started buying weight management nibbles. It didn’t have any effect. Holly’s weight stayed exactly the same.

So now I’ve resorted to exercising Holly. We play with toys and whenever possible we take walks up and down the 11th-floor corridor of the condo building. It doesn’t always work though, as my neighbor has a large dog with a frightening bark. One woof out of him and Holly runs back inside.

So now we’re exercising inside. Running, jumping, and of late … sit-ups. You don’t believe a cat can do sit-ups? See for yourself …

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