BELLA – a success story
Bella was a tiny kitten, and a petite teenage cat. Over the next twelve years however, her indolent lifestyle meant that the weight had crept on. After her weigh-in at her annual booster jab check up in the summer of 
2007, I decided it was time for Bella to go on a diet.
She had reached a weight of 6.85 kg, which is over three stone! With her overlarge body came a general malaise - she was grumpy, always lying down, unable to jump up onto the sofa or easily ascend the stairs. She was obviously a very unhappy cat. Her fur had becoming increasingly dry and showed signs of dandruff. It was clear that her obesity meant she could not even stretch around her own body to lick and groom herself on her back, allowing her natural oils to condition her coat.
The vets warned me that this obesity could cause early death from diabetes and her joints could become crippled with arthritis as her weight increased the strain.
So Bella joined the Cliffe Veterinary Group Waist Watchers. We put her on a strict measure of Royal Canin Obesity control food. She was allowed 50g per day which I measured into a pot and gave to her in two sessions. One in the morning and one in the evening.
Bella was constantly hungry at the start of this diet but after a few weeks seemed to get used to it. It didn't help that my other cat Stella, who is thin and in perfect nick, had to also be fed a normal diet which Bella was not allowed to touch! I sometimes fed Bella a small amount of her rations during the course of the day, when her whinging got too much. As long as it came out of the measured quotient, it seemed to satisfy her.
After several of our monthly weigh-in visits to Nicola, it was clear that the diet was working and after eighteen months Bella had lost 1.7kg! More than the achievement was the enormous pleasure I had in seeing her a much happier cat. She could leap up the garden wall and over to the next-door garden, something she hadn't done in five years! Now she grooms herself with ease and skips up the stairs as she did ten years ago as a young cat.
I am enormously grateful to Nicola and the Cliffe group for their advice and for persuading me to give Bella this diet, thus giving her back her health and well-being
Chloë Alexander, Lewes