Last Updated on June 1, 2026 by admin
Picture a tabby cat. Now picture one that weighs the same as a corgi.
That was Patches in April 2023 — 42 pounds of white-and-gray domestic shorthair, surrendered to Richmond Animal Care and Control by an owner who could no longer lift him. The shelter posted his photo at lunchtime. He was in a new home before dinner.
Three years later, he weighs 18 pounds and counting.
The cat who broke a pantry door
Patches did not arrive at the Mechanicsville, Virginia home of his new owner, Kay Ford, in any kind of compliant mood. He had spent his previous life as what one of his vets later described, in print, as a “steamroller.” During his first weeks with Ford, he reportedly leaned his full weight against a closed pantry door, popped the latch off the wood, and helped himself.
Ford did not laugh. She started counting calories.
Five meals a day, then four
The trick to getting weight off a cat, vets will tell you, is the opposite of what owners assume. You don’t yank the bowl. You feed more often, in smaller portions, so the cat never panics.
Patches started on five tightly measured meals per day, on a printed schedule taped inside the kitchen cupboard. After a year, Ford cut him down to four. After two, she cut his goal weight to 16 pounds.
As of the April 2026 update from NBC12, he weighed 18.48 pounds on the kitchen scale on a Wednesday morning. He was not pleased to be on it.
A Facebook account, an arthritis flare, a bookstore tour
Ford set up a Facebook page for Patches in his first month home. The followers came fast — 54,000 of them. They watched him learn to jump again. They watched him learn the shelf the dry food was no longer on.
They also watched him have a hard spring. A flare-up of arthritis in his hips this March left him, in Ford’s words, hissing at everybody — the vet, the dog next door, the woman holding the syringe. He came through it.
In April, he sat for two hours of strangers’ photographs at a small bookshop in Mechanicsville called Books, Beads & More. By every account from that day, he behaved.
What the vets actually say about cat weight
A healthy adult domestic shorthair generally lands between eight and twelve pounds. Patches was nearly four times that when he was surrendered.
The American Veterinary Medical Association notes that even a “normal-sized” cat carrying two or three extra pounds is at meaningfully higher risk of diabetes, liver disease, and the kind of joint pain that turns a cat into a hisser.
Patches is not at his goal yet. He is closer.
The part the followers love most
Anyone who has ever lived with a cat on a diet knows the look. The one that says: I have read every label, and I am keeping a list.
Patches reportedly does this look every morning at 5:47 a.m., from the foot of the bed, in silence. Then he yells.
He has lost a corgi’s worth of weight. He has gained, somewhere along the way, a personality his original owners never met. He is also, finally, light enough to land on a kitchen counter without making the sound of furniture falling.
Does your cat have a “diet face”? Tell us about it in the comments 👇