Aisling

Aisling has been quite pudgy for years and since she was a kitten, she's been extremely food-oriented. Her response to nearly any stimulus (getting petted, waking up, getting into a spat with another cat) was to hit the food bowls. 

She has a neurological condition called cerebellar hypoplasia, which affects her motor function. Because of this, she walks kind of funny and we are concerned about the extra weight combined with the odd gait putting a lot of stress on her joints, as that puts her at increased risk for developing arthritis.  

We were worried about how she'd react to not having dry food available most of the time, but she adjusted quite well, although she refused to touch the grain-free food for some time. Oddly, she's quit looking for food in response to stimuli and is now eating a good deal less than she used to. Every so often we offer the kitties a few pieces of Wellness dry food as a treat. Aisling won't touch it. It's like she doesn't regard dry food as food anymore. 

She has lost about a pound so far. Some of the small fluctuations you see in the graph below may be due to the fact that she hates being weighed and tends to squirm around on the scale quite a bit. Like Tamerlane, she's hit a plateau at this point, which will hopefully resolve itself when we move to Phase 4 of the diet switch and reduce her intake a bit. She should probably lose at least another pound, but we're quite pleased that she managed to lose what she did without us restricting feedings at all.

Like the other cats, Aisling's activity level increased quite a bit with the diet change. In addition, she's more assertive with the other cats than she used to be, explores more during Supervised Outdoor Playtime, and plays with toys much more often than she used to. Every so often, she even "works out." This involves her marching in circles around my elliptical trainer while I'm working out.

We don't know yet what the long-term effects of the switch will be, but for now it's certainly improved her quality of life.