"His Weight Saved Him"

As you know, we have a hefty cat. He hadn't been weighed in awhile, but we took him to the vet this morning and Theodore weighed in (on the dog scale) at 22lbs 4oz. The last time Anja was weighed she was 23lbs. Our cat is as big as our two-year-old! He is my precious loveyboy and I love him as much as I love my daughters, even though he is kind of disgusting and has a habit of missing his litter box. Anyway.... we've been noticing that he's been acting weird for a few months. We had a short battle with fleas late in the summer, so we became very diligent about the flea medicine. Then in the past week he's developed all these bald spots and sores, and has been really kind of crazy and almost eating himself he licks and chews his skin so often. I know, this is so gross. So we took him into the vet (I love our vet) and as it turns out, we've been doing EVERYTHING WRONG. First, we feed him weight control food. Evidently that's very bad. It doesn't supply them with the nutrients they need, and the sores on his skin were because his skin was deteriorating from not having enough nutrients!! How awful is that?! We are supposed to make sure he gets more fiber (luckily, he loves Cheerios!) and we are putting him on regular Iams food, not weight control. The vet predicts he'll drop below 20lbs in six weeks. The other thing we've been doing is using over-the-counter flea medicine, which is very toxic and builds up in their bodies and they can actually die. This vet has had nine animals die this year from cheap flea medicine. Isn't that terrible?! And this is where they told us "his weight saved him." MY LOVEYBOY COULD HAVE DIED!!!!! I feel like such a horrible pet owner, doing everything wrong. But the good news is, we know what to do now, we've got good flea medicine (Advantage) and hopefully Theodore will be feeling better and acting normal and dropping some poundage over the next few weeks. Poor boy!