Cat Diets
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The vet recently described my cat as “very overweight. This seemed harsh. He’s, like, three lbs overweight. If a person were three lbs overweight, would you describe them as “very overweight”? Surely not. I’d ask that you please extend the same courtesy to my sweet cat.
I was surprised to learn Brian was overweight. I pulled him off the street about a year ago, and I’ve always thought of him as an underfed, tiny little kitten. And he seems so little!
On the other hand, he never leaves the house and I’d been feeding him any time his bowl was empty. So maybe I wasn’t shocked.
After the vet’s visit, I began researching cat weights. One author wrote: “A fat cat may look cute and cuddly but in reality you are killing it with kindness.” Totally insane – what is this “may”??? I have never met a cat who isn’t cute and cuddly! Nonetheless, I wanted my Bri-Guy to be healthy (and I’m so obsessed with him that I know if he developed diabetes, I’d bankrupt myself on the cat-Ozempic), so I got a measuring cup and started counting his calories.
It turns out that it’s very easy to keep a cat on a diet because you have complete control over their consumption (assuming their food is shut away, which Brian’s has been since our third week together when he knocked over his box of treats in the middle of the night, ate them all, and vomited everywhere). Brian doesn’t find human food appealing so I didn’t even have to worry about him jumping into the sink to eat leftovers, even though we can all agree that would be adorable. In fact, it was easy to keep Brian to his diet that I got jealous. Free will, it turns out, makes dieting so hard.
The jealousy is unfounded. Brian has been fully miserable since the diet commenced. He wakes us up in the middle of the night to beg for food. He meows aggressively every time we open the door, and often when we don’t. He puts his paws up on our chairs to get our attention, swatting forlornly until we notice him, at which point he leads us to his empty bowl. He’s skittish, weird, and whiny. In short, he’s exactly like I am when I’m on a diet, I mean, he was all of these things before the diet, too. But I’m his mother. I can sense when he’s sad.
I started dieting in the 90s, back when low-fat yogurt was healthy and avocados were bad. Since then, I’ve been on all of them. I did the paleo diet, where you eat food off the ground. The Mayo Clinic diet – very misleading name. I was a vegan for a while. That one wasn’t even for health reasons, I just fundamentally believe food should be expensive. I did the keto diet, which was so effective. It only took six hours before I’d alienated most of my close friends.
I don’t officially “diet” anymore, but not because I’ve “evolved” or developed some sense of “self-love.” I’ve just internalized so much diet culture over the past 25 years that the rules are baked in. I don’t really ever go on a diet because I don’t really ever come off one.
There’s a common misconception that eating disorders – or a mere obsession with dieting, which probably counts – are about weight or physical appearance. This hasn’t been my experience. I very rarely weigh myself, and more to the point, if I were so obsessed with my physical appearance, there are easier steps I could take (I don’t brush my hair, for example, and I still haven’t figured out eyeliner. Like JD Vance, I get made fun of for it online a lot).
Eating disorders are about control. They’re about wanting to wrestle one thing back for ourselves in a world that systematically deprives us of power. And as I watched my poor, sweet, hungry cat struggle with his diminished food supply, I felt envious. The control is exhausting. I want to give some of it up. I want to have somebody else do it for me. So I guess what I’m saying is, Brian should stop complaining.