The influence of diet and other factors on owner-perceived obesity in privately owned cats from metropolitan Perth, Western Australia

A randomly selected group of cat-owning households (n = 458) were interview ed to determine the diet of their cats (n = 644) in the week prior to the s urvey and to identify dietary and other factors which were associated with obesity. All cats were categorised by their owners as underweight, correct- weight or overweight and the weight of 127 cats was also recorded. Nearly a ll cats were fed commercially prepared dry pet food (90.5%) or canned pet f ood (84.6%) in the week prior to the survey. Nineteen percent of cats were classified as overweight. Although the make-up of a cat's diet was found no t to be associated with its weight or weight category, cats fed dietary sup plements ol those which had not received a specific kitten diet when <6 mon ths of age were more likely to be overweight after univariable analysis. Lo gistic multiple regression was used to investigate the effect of putative r isk factors on obesity while controlling for other factors. Overweight cats were more likely to be cross-bred (OR = 2.1), neutered (OR = 2.8), living in houses with only one or two cats (OR = 1.8), male (OR = 1.4) and predomi nantly confined inside a house (OR = 1.4). Obesity is influenced by a varie ty of factors including host, dietary and management factors and these must be considered when developing weight control programmes for cats. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.