You should always consult your medical practitioner before starting any diet.

So, with this in mind, as a responsible pet owner, I made a private appointment to consult my personal surgeon, Saint Ben of Park House Vets, who, quite co-incidentally is currently running a ‘podgy pets campaign’ with a view to putting my podgy pet human, Maid, on a diet. Ben weighed me and discussed how my weight was absolutely spot on and what a good example I am to my pet human, Maid.

Considering Maid made a point of having a ‘frugal’ and ‘economy’ Christmas, she is still shovelling things down her throat that are stashed in the Christmas cupboard. The Christmas sales saw the cupboard restocked to the gunnels with continual bulk deliveries of Christmas puds and other goodies at 90% knock-down as she could not just walk past them at that price.

February saw her birthday, and a deluge of chocolate, red wine and champers flooding into Tom Cat Towers which are now being consumed with gusto as well as the last of the Chrimble noshies!

Maid lacks willpower.

Pork scratchings are also a weakness, along with the human version of catnip, red wine - which she seems to consume in copious quantity while lozzing on a chair watching TV.

She has recently discovered gin which she has taken to like a duck to water.

Maid seems to be treating her tummy as a landfill site and her spare tyre is now a wibbly-wobbly tractor tyre. Not attractive.

She lies in bed, like a multi-pregnancy orangutan with a large mound of blubber between her neck and knees which I have to haul myself, nay mountaineer, over to reach my side of the bed.

Something has to be done. If she is to continue as my Maid, she needs to unfatten and fitten up!

She is going back to the Arctic later this year, and needs to lose a bit of weight to get her survival gear on. Currently the zip does not pull up over her gut and up to her throat, despite her lying on the bed, sucking her tummy in and trying to wrestle the zip up with much grunting and most unladylike words!.

With that in mind, we have trawled EBay and bought a rather natty pair of very bright purple and yellow trainers. The intention is that at lunchtimes, she gets off her rather well-endowed rump, away from Facebook, and walks for at least 40 minutes round the Victorian terraced streets near her workplace.

She did this twice, almost enjoyed it then promptly came down with a rather bad chest infection which has her barking like a tramp’s dog and lounging around moaning a lot ….. consuming, on a regular basis, something called ‘comfort food’ as apparently you have to feed a cold. (Really? How come colds are so ravenously hungry that you have to non-stop feed them junk food and booze?)

However, the intent  and new trainers are there.

When is she better she will walk at lunchtimes, at least three times a week. Then, when the weather is nicer she will also walk half an hour both to and from work over common lands filled with buttercups, dandelions, cows and skylarks. It will be good for her soul …. and her currently, rapidly expanding waistline.

With a bit of luck, it will flatten her tummy and she’ll have thighs with muscles like a carthorse. My theory, as her trainer, is that she will be so fit, she will be able to hop up Everest!!

I will keep you posted.

Dumpty
Responsible pet human owner
Tom Cat Towers

We here, at the Daily Mews Office, are very sad to report that two days after Dumpty sent us this article, she died of a heart attack at home.  She was 18 years of age. Her much younger toy boy, Gabion Tzchugge, 3, has nobly volunteered to continue monitoring Maid’s progress and has agreed to write a regular column for the Daily Mews subscribers.  Our condolences are with Dumpty’s grieving family at this sad time.   

I am a fit kitten. Lean as a racing snake and as bendy as a banana. I put this down to Tom Cat Towers being my own personal gym… especially between the hours of midnight and 6am - when my human is sleeping lightly.

Each night I thunder loudly around the house. Galloping across the carpet, skidding across the laminated floors, crashing into walls and furniture, bounding onto the table then across onto the chairs. Leaping up onto the work surface, skittling any bits and bobs onto the floor.  Good professional bashing of the two scratching posts is always a loud exercise routine. But my piece de resistance is throwing myself enthusiastically onto the bed, landing on my human’s lifeless body which always elicits a yowl of annoyance as I bounce off the other side of the bed and crash noisily into a wicker hamper.

Quite breathless after my intense Keep Fit regime is over, it’s then time to curl up tightly and kip for the rest of the day as my humans go off to work, bleary-eyed through lack of sleep.

 My human is part of the ‘Podgy Pets Campaign’. Dumpty our Himalayan Lynx, horrified at how unfit our human was, decided to unfatten and fitten her up. Sadly, at the very start of this onerous task, Dumpty tragically died suddenly, so I inherited the project.

What an uphill, complete loser of a project I have taken up! All bets are off with this one.  It’s a total no-hoper. Having treated her stomach as a landfill site, the human, whilst promising to walk more and eat less to get fit for the Arctic, was just all hot air and empty words.

After Dumpty died, it was a downward spiral into sadness. Apparently, grief is helped in some way by ‘comfort eating’ This, my human took to like a duck to water. Pork scratchings, normally a quid a bag were on offer, 6 bags for £1. Tom Cat Towers was stuffed to the gunnels; she was as good as bringing them home in a wheelbarrow.

Then she became ill and had 3 weeks off work. This resulted in three square, very large and gourmet, meals a day as you have to ‘feed a cold’. This must have been the mother of all colds as she was stuffing her face constantly, sitting watching rubbish on TV whilst having cake, industrial sized slices.  …

And drinking. The human version of catnip; red wine. It was almost as if she was on a mission to guzzle a wine lake empty!

Easter arrived in a haze of chocolate. Chocolate cake, and chocolate delights. Which is rather odd as my human hates chocolate. Didn’t stop her shovelling in down her throat in vast quantities though.

Normally when the human is in the bath, water covers her. However, last night when I put my paws on the rim of the bath and peered over, there was this enormous pink mound of blubber emerging above the water line.

Clearly, I have a job to do here. I have my thinking cap on trying to work out what measures I can implement here at Tom Cat Towers to get some of the fat off the human…..  and Chav Cat too.

Chav Cat must have discovered another food source as she has exploded into obesity. Her tummy is now so large she cannot sit down properly. She sort of slops it onto the floor and arranges her legs around the wobbly fat. Her stomach hangs down like a bag of udders and flops from side to side when she walks, sorry waddles, round the garden. When she lies down she looks like a walrus, her whiskers sparkling in the sunshine. It’s a wonder she doesn’t crack the slabs when she keels over onto her side in the garden

So, two for the price of one. I have Two Fat Ladies of Tom Cat Towers to whip into shape.

I’ll let you know how I get on ….. but I’m not holding my breath!

Gabion
Feline Fitness Expert
Tom Cat Towers