FAQ’s

Is your cat’s behaviour bothering you? your partner? your neighbour? but especially your cat? Here’s the low-down
Yes you can talk to Dr Kim, in purr-son by booking a 1 hour consultation here (do your thing)

If you need other sources of information or have 3 or more cats you are worried about, please connect with Dr Kersti Seksel and her team at www.https://sabs.com.au/ If you aren’t in Sydney, you can contact Dr Cam Day – he runs a phone and internet-based behaviour consultation service https://petbehaviour.com.au/ where has some DIY materials as well.

The iCatCare.org has a great starter course which might help you solve your cat’s problem here https://courses.icatcare.org/product?catalog=GTKYC-OD-Y2021

And for really great information, free, check out spend some time here https://www.fearfreehappyhomes.com/kit/cats-101/

and here: https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?ref=watch_permalink&v=499736160706895

You can NEVER know too much about the furry feline friend you share your life with

Dr Kim runs these occasionally – they are great fun! The concept is that prospective and current kitten owners come and learn the skills they need to help their new kitten companion blossom into a furry fiend – oops make that friend. It starts with a litter of kittens looking for a home, and they become a ‘training kit’. Watch video (I will video the powerpoint to go here). soonish. You need to teach your kitten to have its nails clipped, take a pill without fuss, get into a carrier happily (even though they may never enjoy being picked up at other times!), be brushed and wear a harness. If you can do all those things to your kitten, then your cat will be more trusting of the weird things humans do. Check out the video below:

First find out if your feline friend is actually fat. Weight has nothing to do with it. Check out the Purina 9 point Body Condition Score (BCS) here https://www.aspcapro.org/sites/default/files/nestle_body_condition_scale.pdf (it was in an old newsletter?). It is OK for your cat to have a BCS of between 5 and 7 as long as your cat can still jump 1 metre up and has no trouble jumping down. Arthritis stops cats moving and they then become fat and sore, and cats as young as 18 months old can become arthritic and you need to treat that. It turns out that most cats are BCS of 6 and don’t need a restricted diet anyway. The flappy fat under the belly near the back legs – called the primordial pouch – is not the kind of fat that you need to worry about. It is special fat that keeps the cat alive when there is no food at all (see starvation event..) and is more like a camel’s hump whose energy can only be accessed when the cat is actually starving.

The Fat Farm was designed to get cats to eat the barely palatable RC Satiety or HIlls Metabolic diets. The diets do work because they are excellent nutritionally, but not hyper-palatable, so the cat will learn to eat only what they need. After that, the diet should be able to be given ad lib and the cat won’t overeat. However, it turns out the owners could not resist giving other food and that undoes the entire nutritional advantage of using those diets. ANY different food will send the cat back to begging, and that’s hard to resist (see Kitty Blackmail pdf) so the cats who have been to the Feline Fat Farm all ended up, well, fat again.

From a welfare point of view – if your cat is mobile and fat, no problem, keep a regular check for diabetes (which is VERY treatable) and don’t stress yourself or the cat with calorie restrictions. If your cat has ever had a starvation event (locked away in a garage, got thin from a bowel problem, lived on the streets or been pregnant and not fed well), then let them carry the weight – they KNOW what hunger is and they never want to go there again.