My cat is losing weight. What's the best dry food to help her gain?

Lil'Bit may be having some dental problems so eating dry food may be painful. I do not like an elderly cat to lose weight. Increase her wet food so she maintains a normal weight. I recommend a senior exam where they will check her teeth, heart and lungs and do screening blood work and a urinalysis. Then you'll know if there is underlying kidney disease or if the weight loss is due to her being hyperthyroid. There are a lot of medical issues in senior animals that are easily managed once they are diagnosed. Treating any medical problems now will improve the length and quality of her life. Thanks for using Petco Pet Education Center, formerly Petcoach to help you care for Lil'Bit.

Adding in the wet food while providing her regular dry diet available as much as she wants should help increase her calorie count some. It is common for cats to start to lose weight as they age as their nutritional needs tend to change when they hit their senior years, plus absorption of nutrients overall tends to decrease with age as well. Mixing the wet into the dry may encourage her to eat a bit more and increase calorie count which should help. Your vet can also monitor her weight/BCS (most vets will let you weigh your pets at no charge) to make sure she is gaining/maintaining a healthier weight with the changes.

Hi there and thank you for using PetCoach to address your concern. I would increase the amount of food being fed per day. Science Diet Adult maintenance would be a good choice or something high in protein and calories. If you would like to feed a homemade diet to see if he eats better with home cooked food, I would recommend visiting www. balanceit.com If he continues to lose weight or does not gain any weight with the diet switch, I would recommend having a veterinarian examine him so that the most appropriate diagnostic and treatment recommendations can be made. I would definitely consider testing his thyroid to make sure he does not have hyperthyroidism, which can lead to weight loss or difficulty gaining weight. I hope this helps! Please let me know if you have any other questions or concerns and I would be more than happy to help you further.

This kind of dramatic weight loss is almost always due to an underlying medical condition. Ask your vet if he has checked Frida Katio's thyroid levels to rule out hyperthyroidism and performed full body X-rays to scan for any masses. He should also perform full mouth dental X-rays to rule out any dental disease that may be preventing her from eating. If all of these diseases have been ruled out, you could consider switching Frida to a higher calorie canned food such as Hills Science Diet AD.

If Magic has been fine for years and suddenly is losing weight and sick, I would worry that there could be something else going on. I would recommend having your vet examine her and run some routine bloodwork. That may give us an idea of what is going on. In the meantime, any wet food will not have the artificial colors that some dry foods have, so you could try any wet food (but I would try to stick with the same protein sources that she has been eating previously since she has done well on them). But as I said, I would recommend having an exam and bloodwork checked ASPAP to see what else might be going on. Good luck! I hope that was helpful. Thanks for using Petco Pet Education Center, formerly Petcoach.

Hi! It does concern me that Myla has lost a noticeable amount of weight over the past few months. It's certainly possible that this could be due to her picky eating habits, but I wouldn't necessarily expect her to lose a considerable amount of weight from that alone since I'm assuming that she's always been a bit picky. Other causes of weight loss can include inflammatory bowel disease, a heavy burden of parasites, cancer, kidney disease, or diabetes, although we often see other changes associated with many of these conditions. I do think it would be best to take Myla to her vet for an exam and some diagnostic testing (blood work and/or imaging - x-rays or ultrasound) to try to get to the bottom of this situation. Until her appointment, try feeding her wet food in a room away from your other two cats so that you can more accurately see exactly how much she's eating. I hope that everything goes well!

Hello, thank you for using Petco Pet Education Center, formerly Petcoach. With gastrointestinal disease, sometimes the intestines are just unable to absorb nutrients regardless of the type of food you feed. So, it is important to feed Elvis whatever he will eat. There are no natural remedies, as there is no quick medical fixes, either. Oral steroids often help for a while, but then other medications are often needed. You can try some of the cat foods labeled as sensitive stomach or sensitive skin. The best ones are made by Science Diet & Royal Canin. I would also try him on a good probiotic, like Purina's FortiFlora. It really does seem to help some of these cats with GI issues. I hope this helps Elvis with his weight loss & vomiting.