amateur kitty dieters

Despite our moderate success in kitty dieting, our cats are bush league dieters. They’re nothing compared the kitty candidate for slimmer of the year.

Willie the Cat – has lost almost 5 pounds – although his picture looks like he’s lost way more than that. (Of course, Willie’s standing up pose is well chosen to make him look trim. Is he sucking in his kitty tum there?)

My colleague – the one who from time to time likes to look at (and laugh at) this picture of Other Cat when she’s feeling down – sent me this news of Willie.

And although I’m sure she didn’t mean anything by it – Willie the Cat is the typical fat American.

Ms Ebrahim, 43, who moved to Manobier near Tenby, three years ago, said Willie put on weight through lack of exercise when they were living in the US a few years ago. He was always a very big cat in size. We lived in America and he was primarily an indoor cat – we lived in an upstairs flat and he got bigger and bigger,” she said.

Oh dear. It turns out that after moving to the UK, he got more excercise and is now competing for the svelte cat crown.

lil peanut

Expact blogger Anglofille is doing some fine dining in France. On peanut butter.

When I first told my GP I was pregnant she gave me a list of foods I shouldn’t eat.

1. Liver and organ meats – no sweat, if I ever needed an excuse beyond my usual gag reflex, this was perfect.
2. Soft, mold-ripened cheese – that one kind of bit, since I had a fridge stuffed with dee-licious bries and camemberts and similar cheeses that we’d just bought on our holiday in France (not to mention the cases of wine and hard cider…)
3. Swordfish – tasty, but not a big part of my regular diet
4. Peanut butter – hunhh??

Apparently, liver is too high in birth-defect causing vitamin A, the bries are rife with listeria, the swordfish is full of mercury and the peanut butter…well, the peanut butter might…just might cause your baby to develop a trans-placental intolerance of peanut proteins giving it a susceptibility to peanut allergies.

Yeah, whatver. When I first moved to the UK, I couldn’t really find any peanut butter worth eating. In London, it’s a little easier. You can occasionally even find American brands (like Jiff). But I sort of got out of the habit of eating peanut butter. But as soon as I was told I couldn’t have it, I wanted it.

I read up on the subject. Apparently, the peanut butter threat is only valid in Britain.

The March of Dimes (a US birth defect site) says:

Although there is not yet an extensive amount of research on fetal sensitization, there have been suggestions that a fetus may be exposed to peanut allergens if a woman consumes peanut products while pregnant, so that an infant with predisposition to allergy may develop a peanut allergy.

Parents with severe food allergies in general and/or family histories of nut allergies should probably try to avoid early infant exposure to formulas or foods made with nut products, and these same mothers may want to avoid peanut consumption while breastfeeding.

But the British advice is anyone who’s ever suffered hay fever should steer clear of the brown stuff. And I did, pretty much. Sure I ate cocktail peanuts and Thai food with peanut sauce, but that was just a little bit.

Then I thought

1. This baby is American, it needs peanut butter.
2. What do the Brits know about peanut butter anyway?

And I was craving protein and peanut butter is one of the cheapest, easiest ways to get it. So, I bought myself some peanut butter and I did enjoy it. I like peanut butter and honey and peanut butter and banana sandwiches on whole wheat bread – Anglofille’s gone whole hog in Paris and had PB and honey and banana (I guess living in Paris does lead to decadence) And here’s another American expat going on about peanut butter and banana – this time in a muffin recipe.

England safe again…

…for fat pet owners. Or more politely, the owners of fat pets.

The case of the two brothers who owned a really, really fat dog who were charged with animal cruelty for overfeeding it has concluded this week in the conviction of the two men. But at least British justice is consistent, and the guys got merely a slap on the wrist. I think they had to promise not to be so generous with the kibble, but they received no jail time and no fine and they got Rusty the-not-quite-so-fat dog back.

Magistrates convicted Derek Benton, 62 and his brother David, 53, of causing unnecessary suffering after a £12,000 two-day trial. But they decided that the dog, Rusty – who was 11-and-a-half stone [160 pounds] at his heaviest – could be returned to the Bentons providing it was properly cared for. They imposed a conditional discharge on each of the men.

Whewwwww….the Vol-in-Law and I breathed a huge sigh of relief. We have a fat cat.

Earlier the brothers’ lawyer, Ann-Marie Gregory, had told the court in Ely, Cambridgeshire, that the case had left the owners of overweight animals living in fear of prosecution.

You got that right. And our poor kitties have been on a diet ever since a co-worker of mine highlighted parallels in the pet rearing approaches of the Benton Brothers and ourselves.

The kitty diet update

Hey, after a slow start – the cats have actually lost weight. Fancy didn’t really need to lose weight, but she’d put on just enough that we didn’t think it would hurt her. But Other Cat, well – her lack of personal responsibility was putting us in danger of a court date. After following Melusina’s advice of 2/3 cup of cat food per cat per day, Other Cat is considerably lighter – though still “big boned” – and Fancy is down to an optimum weight which means we’ve moved them back to regular food, but we’re keeping a close eye on portion size. Other Cat already seems more active, so we’re hoping that her weight loss will continue – albeit perhaps at a slower rate.

Kitty diet

Prompted by this post – and the not yet dangerous or unsightly, but growing paunch of our slim cat – the Vol-in-Law has decided that he is putting our cats on a diet.

The first step was buying “senior, low-activity”, i.e. lazy fat-cat cat food. We have switched from an apparently deee-licious imported American brand of cat food to a probably far less tasty brand of low-cal “la ligne” preserving French cat food. I think it might be mostly made of hay.

The second step will be PORTION CONTROL. This may be where we have been going wrong in the past. According to the diagram on the French bag of cat food (which shows one sleekit cat and how much it should eat and one fat cat and how much it should eat) – we may have been feeding our cats too much. Let’s refer to the picture again:

It’s quite likely that we’ve been feeding our cats too much.

Unfortunately all the European recipes and portion sizes are in grams – a weight measurement – which means scales. This includes the cat food portion sizes. After 10 years in the UK – I still use American cookbooks because I use cups – a volume measurement. Using scales seems faffy and pointless – but I do have a scale somewhere. The Vol-in-Law must be serious about slimming these cats down because he:

1. asked me where the scale was
2. ventured into the chaotic pots and pans cabinet to find the scales (I heard the clanging from the other room and held my breath against breakages)
3. did not find the scales, but is determined to look in the cabinet above the oven (which is where I thought it was all along). That is the hard-to-reach storage space for disposable cups and plates, never-used and rarely-used nice tablecloths and cloth napkins and our collection of national flags for display on national holidays and the occasional international sporting events. (please don’t ask why scales are in there)

Anyway, since we’ve not yet found the scales the cats have about a day or two left of the tasty American cat food (at least in terms of their current portion sizes) before they’re put on the French hay.

Soon to be hungry

Fat cat

Two brothers are facing a private prosecution in the UK brought on by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA). What’s the charge? They let their dog get fat. Real fat.

Alex Wylie, a vet from Bury St Edmunds who treated Rusty, said that the dog suffered from painful joints and breathing problems. “He did literally look like a walrus. There were times when he couldn’t get up.”

This being a nation of animal-lovers, the story is getting quite a bit of coverage.

I was looking at this picture of my cat on my Flickr account when a colleague glanced over my shoulder and said quite causually – “How many years do you think those brothers are going to get?”

She’s not fat – she’s just extra fluffy.