Last Updated on September 28, 2026 by admin
Patches weighed 42 pounds.
Not twelve. Not the fifteen that owners quietly negotiate with themselves about — he’s just big-boned, he’s fluffy, it’s mostly fur. Forty-two. Roughly three healthy cats packed into one white-and-gray body.
By the time he reached Richmond Animal Care and Control, the city’s open-admission shelter on Chamberlayne Avenue, he could barely get around. His previous owner had surrendered him. The shelter did the one thing it could think of and put his photo on Facebook.
He was adopted within hours.
The woman who said yes
Kay Ford lives in Mechanicsville, about twenty minutes north of the shelter. She saw the post. She did not see a joke.
“So when I saw Patches, I desperately wanted to help him,” Ford said. “He was the very first big old overweight cat I ever had.”
What she signed up for was not a rescue in the usual sense. Nobody had to pull Patches out of a storm drain or a shipping container. The thing he needed saving from was his own body — and that kind of rescue is measured in years, not minutes.
Why you can’t just feed a fat cat less
Here is the part most owners get wrong, and it is why Patches’ diet looks backwards on paper.
You cannot simply cut a severely overweight cat’s food. According to the Cornell Feline Health Center, a cat put on a sudden starvation diet risks hepatic lipidosis, a serious liver condition. The safe target is gradual — roughly one to two percent of body weight per week, under a veterinarian’s direction.
So Ford fed him more often, not less. Five measured meals a day. Wet food only, no treats, every calorie counted.
“He started off being fed five times a day and then I was able to cut him back to four times a day,” Ford said. “I hope one day to get him down to three times a day. But, you know, I think he’s going to rebel if I do that.”
Cornell also names the habit that gets cats here in the first place: free-feeding, the bowl of dry food left out all day. The stakes are not cosmetic. Overweight cats are four-and-a-half times more likely to develop diabetes, seven times more likely to need veterinary care for lameness, and twice as likely to die in middle age.
The number that made her cry
Progress on a cat that heavy is measured in ounces and long flat stretches where nothing happens. Weeks of weighing. Weeks of the same number.
Then, in the summer of 2025, Patches stepped on the scale and it read 19.98 pounds.
Under twenty. For the first time since anyone had known him.
“I don’t know whether to laugh or cry,” Ford said at the time.
Where he is now
In April 2026 — three years to the month after that Facebook post — Patches weighed about 17 pounds. Twenty-three pounds gone. More than half the cat he used to be.
Ford wants 16.
“And at that point, I have no idea what I will do,” she said. “Maybe I’ll plan a parade for him or something.”
She documents all of it on a Facebook page called Patches’ Journey, where people follow along from across the country and overseas. One of them turned up to a meet-and-greet having lost 100 pounds and run a marathon. She told Ford that Patches was the reason she started.
Ford is now working with two more overweight cats.
The part that applies to your cat
Most cats reading over your shoulder right now are not 42 pounds. A lot of them are 14 when they should be 11, which is the weight range nobody photographs and nobody posts about.
Cornell defines feline obesity as roughly 20 percent above normal weight. On an 11-pound frame, that is a little over two pounds — about the difference between a cat who jumps onto the counter and a cat who thinks about it and then doesn’t.
The fix in Patches’ case was not dramatic. Measured wet food. More meals, not fewer. A vet involved from the start. Three years of someone weighing a cat and writing the number down.
“I don’t think it would be a stretch to say that he has completely changed my life for the better,” Ford said.
He is 17 pounds now, and his owner is seriously considering a parade.
Patches’ current weight and Ford’s quotes were reported by WWBT in April 2026.
How much does your cat weigh? Drop the number in the comments. 👇