• ickplant@lemmy.worldOP
    237·
    2 months ago

    Please don’t consider this an approval of his chonkiness - he is at “fat camp,” which is the obviously right thing to do. Don’t overfeed your pets, people!

    • celeste@kbin.earth
      56·
      2 months ago

      I get it! A friend adopted an overweight dog once, whose previous owners let free feed on cat food. Getting her to a healthy weight took a while, and everyone wants to share pet pics.

    • VindictiveJudge@lemmy.worldEnglish
      99·
      2 months ago

      Says he’s a rescue. I’m assuming the person who sent him to fat camp isn’t the person who let him become obese.

      • unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de
        481·
        2 months ago

        He was not abandoned, he was overfed by humans. Says so right in the article.

        It’s believed that hospital staff enjoyed feeding him to the point where things went more than a little overboard.

          • unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de
            241·
            2 months ago

            Uuh yeah, when people put a cat somewhere with no way to escape, then it will probably be in that basement… If people were feeding it, then it probably wasnt “accidentally” kept there.

    • ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.worldEnglish
      151·
      2 months ago

      I don’t really understand how cats even can get this large. I’ve kept a number of cats and always just fed them dry food in big bowls or auto-feed dispensers where they could eat as much as they wanted whenever they wanted it, and they always stayed a normal weight.

      • SkyeStarfall@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        16·
        2 months ago

        Probably a similar reason to humans. A cat in a healthy environment will regulate itself, but when stressed it may form eating disorders from using food as a coping mechanism. Or when given unhealthy food that has imbalanced nutrition

        • TheFriar@lemm.ee
          8·
          2 months ago

          Cats will actually eat until they get the necessary nutrients from their food, unlike us where we stop when we’re full, regardless of how good the food actually is. So a cat free feeding terrible food can become obese fairly easily.

          Kibble is the absolute worst thing you can feed cats. It’s usually at least half fillers and binders. They’re obligate carnivores so raw meat or high quality canned food where it’s mostly meat with some hydrating broth or something is as good as it gets for them.

          • ArtemisimetrA@lemmy.duck.cafeEnglish
            31·
            2 months ago

            A fellow ZeFrank enjoyer, perhaps? The obligate carnivore thing is so important to remember. I have a vegan friend who feeds her animals plant-based foods and her dog is underweight and her cat is overweight. Absolutely hate to see it, but adults apparently don’t respond well to being told that their pets with completely different physiology and no choice in what they’re fed won’t live their best lives on a vegan diet.

            • TheFriar@lemm.ee
              4·
              2 months ago

              I actually don’t know what that is! I got all this knowledge working in the pet food industry. Vegetarian diets are such a bummer. Like, if you get an animal, it’s on you to adapt to their needs, not them adapting to your principles! I get that it’s hard for some vegans/vegetarians to handle meat—but in that case…don’t get an animal that needs it lol

              There’s unfortunately so much misinformation, and a lot of it is pushed by the kibble companies. Did you know that most veterinarian schools are at least partially funded by purina, Iams, etc? The fact that most vets offices sell science diet for insane markups should be a huge tip off. So unfortunately the lies run deep. It’s not surprising so many people fall for it—like the myth that kibble cleans your pet’s teeth!? What poppycock! Do crackers and croutons clean our teeth? Hell no. And there is an enzyme in the saliva of dogs that actually turns the necessary starches to bind kibble into sugar. Hence the pandemic of tooth decay in so many.

            • wise_pancake@lemmy.ca
              1·
              2 months ago

              This might be a little too tangential and not your area of expertise at all…

              Is there a reason why we can’t make a plant-based diet that has the same nutrition as meat? I assume there must be otherwise I think that idea would take off more.

      • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
        3·
        2 months ago

        I’ve had two kitties that got one or two pounds overweight and both were long-hairs. I always figured that cats that are built for colder weather have an instinct to eat and bulk up in case of food scarcity. My short-hair kitty has stayed slender which, to me, seems to back that up. But I don’t know anything scientific or medical, it’s just an observation.

    • Etterra@lemmy.world
      8·
      2 months ago

      Why did you think that the tweet called him a “rescue cat?” They sure didn’t save him from a tree.

    • BradleyUffner@lemmy.worldEnglish
      721·
      2 months ago

      He was a stray living / hiding in a hospital basement if I recall. Staff was feeding without coordinating with each other.

      • driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br
        35·
        2 months ago

        Something like that almost happened to us. There was a stray visiting our apartment building and we feed him a couple of times until the building manager call us telling us that there were already other 3 neighbors feeding him, and that he was taking care so please stop. But he just keep running and crying for food every time we came in to the building.

        • Tartufo@lemmy.world
          482·
          2 months ago

          Then again you really should notice long before a cat gets this fat. Unless you turned off your brain or something. This is way too fat to be considered an accident.

  • Tylerdurdon@lemmy.world
    28·
    2 months ago

    I wonder if they shaved him before or during the shoe rack, and is he eating out of a crock? This seems like a Southpark episode for some reason. Next they’re going to say he snuck an amusement park in…

    • Tartufo@lemmy.world
      53·
      2 months ago

      I looked up the full article about his case and they wrote that the shaving happened because he has to walk on a treadmill to help him loose weight. They submerged that treadmill under some water to help ease stress on the poor cat’s joints. They also take him getting stuck as a good sign because he used to be so fat he wasn’t able to move at all and his attempt at escape is proof that he’s becoming more energetic.

    • brown567@sh.itjust.works
      35·
      2 months ago

      My guess is that he was very badly matted, so they shaved him at the beginning of “fat camp”

      Really obese cats can’t groom themselves well enough, so they get really bad fur mats (especially long-haired cats)

      • norimee@lemmy.world
        10·
        2 months ago

        Even more likely since it seems like he was a stray. Seems to me, like he cried at everyone around about how hungry he is and found more than one bleeding heart.

      • Emerald@lemmy.world
        1·
        2 months ago

        Really obese cats can’t groom themselves well enough, so they get really bad fur mats

        Our households cat is a healthy weight yet he still gets severe matting. He has to be shaved every couple years otherwise the matts will hurt him. Brushing doesn’t seem to help. He has a weird, almost silky feeling fur.

        • brown567@sh.itjust.works
          1·
          2 months ago

          I get that feeling, I have a long-haired orange cat and we constantly have to cut mats out of his armpits XD

  • norimee@lemmy.world
    171·
    2 months ago

    Aww… he was too chonky to escape chonk camp. Cute, (not so) little chonky Chonk. I hope he learns a lot at camp and comes out a healthy one.

  • bobo@lemmy.world
    131·
    2 months ago

    Countdown to JD Vance posting the first pic as a “Springfield rotisserie”