If you want your fat cat to show more affection toward you, then you should start it on a diet. Veterinarians at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, together with animal behavior experts from Hills Pet Nutrition in Topeka, Kan., studied 58 fat cats with 25 percent more body weight than recommended and observed how their behavior changed during one of three eight-week diets: high fiber, low carb/high protein and a control diet made to maintain adult cat weight, according to Cat Channel.
Just as humans react toward dieting, cats also showed difficulty in coping with the changes, nagging their humans to give them more food than what their diet allowed.
In fact, four weeks into the study, there was an increase in begging, meowing, and pacing, 16 and 45 minutes before a meal. They would even go as far as follow their humans around just to show how hungry they were for food, according to Telegraph.
Despite the struggle, when the eight-week mark was achieved, cats were seen to show increased signs of affection.
"When compared with their behaviour before food restriction, the cats were significantly more likely to have increased purring, sitting in the owner's lap, resting, and using the litter after their meal at either four, eight weeks, or both," wrote Emily Levine, lead researcher, according to Daily Mail.
Seventy-six percent of the cats showed weight loss and the most effective diet was the high fiber diet. Two cats exhibited retaliation and showed aggresive behavior as a result of the diet.
The study is published in The Journal of Veterinary Behaviour: Clinical Applications and Research.
