Is My 12 Pound, 9 Month Old Kitten Overweight? Pics! (2024)

Age is not 100% certain. Albus was not quite 6 pounds when he was surrendered to a shelter 4 months ago, and was not in great shape due to double eye infections. He's now 11.5 lbs, almost 12 lbs and still growing and eating. He and his littermate Sylvia (she's about 9.5 pounds but looks more slender) free feed on Pure Vita dry food all day. They even like it better than some of the Weruva or Wellness wet food I bring home, of which they each get about 2 - 3 oz per day, split between 2 - 3 meals.
I don't know precisely how much food they eat each day , but I've been buying a 15 lb bag every 5 - 6 weeks, so they're eating a combined ~3 lbs of dry food every week. This is all adult food.
So everything I read seems to imply that I should just let kittens eat all they want up to a year old, and that it's rare for a kitten to be considered truly overweight. Is this true, or should I look into scaling back their dry and/or measuring it out in set meals? Am I going to have a naturally huge tomcat on my hands?

This last pic is of him at his foster's, a little less thsn 4 months ago, when he was still between 6 - 7 lbs and was estimated to be 5 months old.

Hello MsPrudence, for an adult neutered male, weighing in at 11.5 - 12.5 lbs is acceptable. Anymore than this is not so good or no good.

A female is lighter and smaller in size than a male.

To maintain weight, best is not free feed dry food as dry food is full of carbs. Wet food is a good way to maintain weight.

Kittens do a lot of growing and developing until sometime after 1 year old, so we dont normally want to restrict their food. I dont even with my adults. I do feed a lot of low cal, low fat, low carb, high protein wet foods, such as weruva, and tiki cat, Almo naturals, the complete ones, not the supplemental ones, some of the new american journey wet, but its not really low fat, i worry more about carbs than fat. mine also like fancy feast classics which is low carb. For Dry all i feed is Dr. Elseys clean protein chicken, lowest carb dry i can find.

i feed two wet meals, sometimes 3, of all the wet they want. i free feed dr. elseys. with my four feeding this way i go through a 6lb bag of dr elseys dry food every 5 to 6 weeks.

you may want to feed more wet, and less dry? especially good for a male.

One thing i do is check the protein and carbs on a few sites. we want high protein, moderate fat, and low carbs, i think this lets cats eat, and not get fat.

I know a lot of people and cats like purevita dry, but it is quite high in carbs, if weight is a concern you may want to try a lower carb dry food? Dr. Elseys...my fav. Instinct, wellness core, Orijen, Farmina, and American journey which isnt super low carb, but not too bad and a lot of people are saying their cats like it.

http://catinfo.org/docs/CatFoodProteinFatCarbPhosphorusChart.pdf

CatFoodDB - Cat Food Reviews to help you find the best cat food for your cat

I agree with duckpondand tabbytomabout watching the carbs: beyond the weight gain carby foods can cause because of empty calories, our vet especially recommends lots of wet food for kittens because they need lots of good meat protein for growth and development. Caloric but low-carb wet foods work very well for a lot of cats because they keep a cat from getting hungry for a long time. I write that knowing it can be hard to feed only wet food to a kitten: maybe one of the high-protein dry foods that duckpond mentioned would help?

It's hard to tell from your photos if Albus is heavy for his frame but here's a body condition chart that might help you decide.

It’s hard to tell in your pics. Best to get side or overhead views.

I had a kitten that was 13 pounds at 9 months. Some cats are meant to grow larger than others. There’s no “set” weight that they are supposed to be at.