Our Garfield Cat

Remember Garfield? The cartoon cat with a weight problem? Growing up, I couldn't imagine a cat being fat. Our cats were always slim and fit. The whole Garfield-is-fat thing just never really made sense to me. When Amos came into our lives eight years ago, he was this tiny little puffball, so young he couldn't even be fixed yet. In Manhattan, he made a game of begging to be let out (on the pretense that he had to use the facilities) and then racing up and down the street, hiding under cars, in a tremendously-fun-for-him game of chase. In Lawrence, he raced around the yard, chasing bunnies and birds and anything else that moved. And here in Gainesville... well, here in Gainesville the lethargy set in. At first he tried chasing lizards and frogs, but quickly found that they caused him to froth at the mouth if he caught them (they being poisonous and all). Ever since he's given up on that, he's just been eating and sleeping. And eating some more. Until one day, it dawned on us that it's not just that Amos has a lot of hair, nossir. Amos is fat. "How fat is he?" Amos is so fat, when we recently went to look for a cat door for the front of the house, we realized that he'd get wedged in the one we picked out. We put it back. Frankly, I'm at a loss as to what to do. For almost two years now, we've had Amos on a diet. He no longer gets his daily ration of food in one go, because he'll eat it all. Instead, he gets (no kidding) two tablespoons of food at a time, three times a day. When I took him to the vet recently and asked what we could do to help him lose weight, the doctor (not our usual vet) responded, "feed him less." When I pointed out how little we already feed him, she hemmed and hawed and said that we could try taking him on walks. Ha. Ha ha. It is to laugh. Have you taken a cat on a walk? It's not so grate, akshully. We've tried playing with him, pulling a string around the house (which he used to love), and he's nonplussed. My only hope for Amos is that when we finally get out of here (fingers crossed, knock on wood, salt over the shoulder) next summer, we'll move to a place that's better for him physically and mentally and he'll start to drop the weight. Otherwise, I fear the worst.