How to fatten up a skinny girl?

Midgie, our civvie, is a skinny little thing. She rings in between 5.5 - 5.75 lbs, depending on the scale. Now that her lung surgery is behind us, I remembered that one of the vets mentioned it might not be a bad idea to see if we can fatten her up a tiny bit. She's always been this skinny and was a teeny, tiny thing as a kitten. She's tall, but boney and its really obvious on the side of her that was shaved for the surgery. She's back to her normal happy, energetic self and has started race tracking around the house again.

Any suggestions on what we can do for her? She & Ru have always eaten the same thing, now 2 cans of FF classic a day, and rarely cleans her bowl. She's always been a finicky eater. She'll crawl up your leg to get to ice cream if you let her though, but we're pretty sure that's a bad idea. ;-)

And on the Ruby front, other than being her normal neurotic, grouchy self, she's pretty dang good. I last tested her around July 4th and she pulled a 118 on the AlphaTrak. \M/

 

I've been told that kitten food is good for bulking up an adult cat. I don't know if it's OK for your sugarbaby though, so if Ruby tends to steal some of Midgie's food, you may want to check on the carb counts. Good luck, glad to hear that she's feeling better after surgery :smile:

 

Wellness kitten is excellent for weight gain--it's very high calorie and low carb. Wellness Chicken and Turkey flavors are also great. EVO also has some high calorie foods, but I found that my cats liked and handled the Wellness better.

 

I'll check out the Wellness kitten. Thanks!
The fun will be keeping chunky Ru out of it.

 

darn. I typed out an answer to your question while ago and my computer crashed so I'll have to write it all again and hope I don't forget anything.

We here are all so very focused on our carb counts first and foremost but our binky list have much more to offer.

I printed the binky lists and used a yellow highlighter to mark all the ones with less than 8 % carbs.

So now with your subset highlighted.
The list also gives us protein % , fat %, fiber, phosphorus content, and calories.

You can narrow down even more to help her gain weight.

You want to pick thru and find the higher fat canned food but keep the fiber on the lower end. *higher fiber will just go right thru them)
The kitten foods tend to be higher in phosphorus and
I need to go look that up again and I'll get back to you on that part of it. Or someone who can tell you off the top of their head will chime in.
I do remember there was one of the kitten foods on the list that wasn't higher in phosphorus .... I think it was wellness.
also pay attention to the calories. You don't want to only feed the highest fat, low carb. You still want to mix and match.


I'll use an example . Natura/INNova brand EVO 95% Duck 26 protein, 70 fat, 4 carbs 0.1 fiber 252 phosphorus 215 calories


IF your kitty likes duck ( i haven' tried it myself) , duck is low carb but generally higher in fat and it's low in fiber and mid range in the phosphorus.
this would be a good one. Try it, maybe it won't get rejected.

Just keep going thru the binky list and pick a few to go out and find and try. There were quite a few good choices and I had noted them for you.
I'll do it again if you want.

Also. Now that we are on a high protein low carb diet. It will be quite difficult to over feed , especially early in the treatment.
Our kitties have been starving because of their diabetes so they have catching up to do.
As they get more regulated and back to a healthy weight, the appetite will go back to normal.

 

Wow..that's a LOT of information! Thanks!

In this case, I'm not asking for my diabetic girl. This is our civvie, Midgie, the naturally skinny one in the family. She had a lung tumor removed a couple of weeks back and our vet mentioned, in an offhand way, that it would be good for her to gain a bit of weight. I'm going to call tomorrow and ask what they recommend. Even though Ru is currently OTJ, this is where I turn first for kitty questions.

 

Wellness kitten is not high in phosphorus (1.15 % dm). You would want something a tad lower than that for a cat with CKD, but it's my understanding that Midgie does not have kidney disease, correct?

I think it's a good idea to look at all parts of composition when picking a food. Wellness Kitten is actually more calorie dense than the EVO duck, while containing less fat and more protein, which is healthier for cat.

 

Other than the lung tumor she's very healthy, just skinny as all get out.

 

When the rescue started giving me food for my foster, they offered wellness core and SOlid Gold canned food.

Boy did she ever love that Solid Gold. She started gaining weight quickly, too. I could not find calories online, so I called the company. Turns out they are around 300 calories per 5.5oz can! :shock: She only gets 1 can/week, in her rotation now. :lol: There are grains and the carb content, if I remember was pretty high. Since you are not worried about that, then I might give it a shot.

I tried wellness kitten (122 cal/3oz) for Latte when I syringe fed, because I figured it would be higher calories. Turns out it is not any higher than the chicken (120/cal) or turkey (119/cal) http://www.wellnesspetfood.com/recipes.aspx?pet=cat&ft=2.
Because we had issues with eating in general, I let her eat EVO dry which is extremely high in calories. Not sure if you want to go that route...maybe just 15-20 pieces/day as a treat. I also fed Latte lots of treats in addition to meals. :mrgreen:

Glad to hear she is feeling better overall!

 

I knew this was the place to ask!

I definitely want to completely avoid having the dry food in the house. Here's why...when Ru was first diagnosed, I tried feeding her canned and kept Midgie on the dry (just for a couple of weeks). I would put Midgie's bowl on a tall table downstairs where Ruby rarely goes. The other night we were all hanging out downstairs and I noticed Ruby up on that table, sniffing the surface of it like crazy. Then she started LICKING the table top! There hasn't been food on that table for 6 months, yet her sensitive little sniffer found it and was determined to get a taste. :lol:

 

One other option I forgot to mention when I was feeding Gabby for weight (she had stomach cancer so I was trying to get as many calories in her as possible) was PetGuard Chicken and Beef. It is a bit higher in Carbs (13%) because it has rice flour so you don't want your diabetic to eat it, but it has nearly the exact same nutritional makeup as Hills A/D Recovery canned but with better quality meat and very low phosphorus (Gabby had early stage CKD, so I did consider phos values). When she got pickier with food, we switched to the Wellness Kitten, Turkey and Chicken flavors and rotated, so that if she didn't finish something or refused it I could feed it to Bandit and not waste the food. When she eventually got picky with those, I tried some EVO flavors but finally got to the point where I fed her whatever food she'd eat. You should have seen my cupboards--I must have been buying about 20 different flavors of food a week.