New Year’s is quickly approaching, and with the new year comes the annual ritual of making resolutions to change something about yourself during the course of the year. So, what are your plans for 2006? Some cats may be vowing to cut down on the catnip habit, while others might be interested in pursuing a lifestyle that includes more naps. Perhaps you are one of those bold felines who want to make more time to explore the great outdoors. Veterinarians recommend that overweight cats get more exercise, change their diet, and lose some weight.
Have you thought about your pet human’s resolutions? A vast majority of American Humans are obese, many even morbidly so. Since you might be entrusted with the care of your human, you might consider his health while making your own resolutions for this year. That’s why we are making this guide to help you as a cat to treat your pet human to more exercise.
Before we list our tips, we should explain a little about how weight loss works. Basically, food is consumed as energy and any extra, unneeded food is stored in the human’s fat. It is kept there until there is a negative intake/expenditure, so the human will have energy when they are unable to eat. Energy is measured in calories. So, the simple formula is that a human needs to eat less calories than they need. It is easy to make a human need more calories by making them do more exercise. Popular theories are that a human usually needs around 2,000 calories per day and it takes a deficit of 3,500 calories to lose one pound of fat. That’s the simple math. Unfortunately there’s a lot more to it, but we don’t really have to waste time on it. All veterinarians and human physicians agree that eating less and exercising more will do the trick. Weight loss is not easy, but with hard work and dedication, any cat can convince their human to lose weight steadily and safely!
1. Let’s start with when the human wakes up in the morning. Cats love to wake their humans when it is time to be fed, but you can do better than this. Let your paws do the walking and, while your human is unconscious and asleep, reprogram his alarm clock. What you can do is roll forward the time to about 2 hours in the future. This way, the human will wake up earlier than expected because he really believes the time is late. He will spend more energy than usual by hustling to prepare for his day, and then once he realizes that the clock was just wrong, and he’s already ready for the day, he’ll just have to find something to do to fill his time before he has to go to work or school. You need to be very, very careful about this. If the human discovers you are messing with the controls, then he’ll take steps to resist you. The number of calories burned in this tip will generally be around 140-200 for the hour, plus more for whatever activity you can convince him to do during his extra hour awake.
2. When your human is getting ready for work or school, take off with an article of clothing. Make sure that he sees you do this, because he will chase you down to get his clothes back. We recommend starting with the socks, and making a game of it. Once he has his socks back, run back to the room quickly and get the underwear or pants and go off in another direction. This will burn around 40-50 calories for every 10 minutes that you can keep up the game. Note: this might get you locked out of the room in question, so plan ahead. Build alternate routes into the room if necessary.
3. Once you are locked out of the dressing area (bathroom, bedroom, etc) for good, go find your human’s car keys. Move them to a place that will require great effort in order to retrieve them. Make sure you also do this to any alternate sets of keys, or else your human will just give up and use those instead. It would be best if you put each set of keys in a different place, kind of like hiding easter eggs. Good places to try this would be behind the refridgerator, under the stove, on the roof, inside the car. Calories burned trying to locate lost keys can run into the hundreds, depending on how long it takes until the human gives up and calls a locksmith.
4. Oh no! Your bag of catfood has suddenly gone missing (wink, wink - hopefully on the roof with the keys). Now your human will have to walk to the store to get you some food or else he’ll feel guilty for making you “go hungry” all day. A 20 minute walk to the store and back could run around 50-100 calories depending on how fat he is and how fast he walks.
5. When he gets ready to step outside, make sure you want to go outside too. But when you get outside, you need to go back inside. When you’re inside, you need to go back outside. You’ve done this before. Well, that door doesn’t move on its own. It takes calories to keep opening and shutting it! So keep this up as long as you can. We haven’t found an accurate source as to how many calories this might burn, but as long as you’re having fun, who cares?
6. After the human finally leaves for the day, repeat the key procedure with very important items that are related to laziness and convenience, such as the remote control, the cordless phone, anything that makes his life easier. The more useful the item is, the longer he’ll spend walking around loking for it. No need to do the math here, walking means calories!
7. If you’re feeling especially brave, keep an eye out for when your pet human is carrying something that stains when spilled or dropped. Good items to watch for are wine, grape juice, bright red paint, dogs with diarrhea. Step in front of him while he’s walking, and he’ll drop what he’s doing and make a mess, therefore needing to clean it up. It takes 150-250 calories an hour to clean up a mess, so the bigger and more difficult the mess, the more energy he’ll burn! Make sure that when you trip your human, he thinks it is his own fault for not looking. If you limp around a little while afterwards, you can milk this for all its worth - get the treats, the cuddles, the works! Also, if he spends more time giving you attention before cleaning the mess, the harder he’ll have to work to clean it up later. Stains that set quickly are best for this tip.
Remember, you are doing this all for a very good reason. Your human will have a long healthy life with you if you keep him active! Enjoy the fruits of your work as much as possible - and never forget the most important activity of all: PLAY!