Search Here

In St. Louis, a sweet cat with a sweet tooth is searching for a home.

Biscuit is a gray and white tabby who is believed to be about four years old. At 37 pounds, he weighs about as much as a human four-year-old. He also weighs up to four times the weight of a normal male housecat. In fact, he is so heavy that he needs to be weighed on the dog scale. Shelter workers worry that his morbid obesity may make his condition and his adoption a concern.

Little is known about Biscuit's early life, according to the Saint Louis Post-Dispatch. His first owner was a disabled woman who lived with her mother and who enjoyed feeding him snacks. Shelter workers said that she probably meant well; she simply did not know any better. Then, about a year ago, she brought Biscuit into the shelter.

His second owner adopted him afterwards, but she recently brought him back to the shelter. Her new apartment, she explained, did not allow pets.

Since then, the St. Charles Shelter in St. Louis, Missouri has been attempting to whip him into shape. The cat has been put on a strict diet, only allowed one and a half cups of food a day - diet food, to boot.

At first, Biscuit did not take well to his new diet. He has since started to adjust to it - and it shows. When he first arrived at the shelter, he could only take a couple of steps at a time before lying down and panting. In just a week, though, Biscuit has shown an enormous amount of progress. With coaxing, he now walks around in the area behind the counter. Teresa Gilley, the shelter's lead animal control officer, said that she recently found Biscuit on her chair, so he was able to jump relatively high.

Biscuit has been neutered. Any person who would want to adopt the easy-going cat would need to keep him on a strict diet.

A recent study found that, as Americans' waistlines have been expanding, so too have that of their pets. According to a 2010 study conducted by the Association for Pet Obesity Prevention, 53 percent of cats and 55 percent dogs are overweight or obese.