Are cats getting fatter? Until now, animal owners and vets weren't sure. Now the University of Guelph researchers are the first to access data on more than 19 million cats to get a picture of typical weight gain and loss over their lifetime. The researchers found that most cats gain weight as they age and their average weight increases. The findings reveal that even after cats mature from the kitten stage, their weight continues to increase until they are eight years old on average.
The researchers analyzed 54 million vet weight measurements of 19 million cats as part of the study. The research team broke the data to spread out any differences over gender, castration status and breed.
They found that male cats tended to peak higher than females and spayed or neutered cats tended to be heavier than unaltered cats. Of the four most common purebred breeds (Siamese, Persian, Himalayan and Maine Coon), average weight peaked between six and ten years of age. Among common domestic cats, it peaked after eight years.
The team also found that the average weight of neutered eight-year-old domestic cats increased between 1995 and 2005, but remained stable between 2005 and 2015.
The team noted that 52 percent of the cats in the study group had only one body weight measurement on file, which may suggest that their owners were not returning the animals for regular veterinary checkups or transferring them to another veterinary clinic.
