I was filling my cup at the coffee bar in Animal Care Clinic the other when I noticed one of the little Coffeemate creamer cups open on the floor. I laughed and took it to the reception desk to show them how silly our clients can be – offering œmilk to our hospital cat, Snookie! The guilty faces revealed to me that it was our office manager that was treating Snookie! She defended herself by saying that it was just a little bit and he rarely drank the whole thing – she was doing this everyday!
If you have been in to Animal Care Clinic lately, you know we are emphasizing weight loss, and in fact have a display charting Snookie ™s weight loss progress (he is not exactly svelte!) We often forget that animals are much smaller than us – what seems like a small snack to me can be a massive meal to a cat. Snookie weighs about 10 pounds and is overweight. Compared to a 150 pound person, he is 15 times smaller or 1/15 of our size. A Coffeemate creamer has only 30 calories in it, but when you multiply that by 15 you get a 450-calorie snack! That is equal to a Starbucks caramel Frapuccino with whip cream, an order of Wendy ™s Biggie fries or a Jack-in-the-Box double cheeseburger for you an me! Even a cream filled doughnut has fewer calories for a person than this little creamer has for our pudgy cat!
Please keep this in mind when you feed your pets snacks – make them small and healthy. For more weight loss tips, visit us or give us a call.
by Bonnie Markoff, DVM, ABVP
Leave A Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.