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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.