Vet says my cat needs to lose a kilo. How do you put a cat on a diet when he screams for food at 5am?

Oscar again, some of you will remember the recipe change standoff last year. Well, the vet's verdict back then of "slightly too round" has become "needs to lose about a kilo" at his annual this week. He's 6.2kg and she'd like him nearer 5.

The problem is not the food. The problem is that from about 5am he sits on my chest and SCREAMS until something goes in the bowl, and I have caved every single morning for years. My husband says just be strong. My husband is a heavy sleeper.

Has anyone actually managed to slim down a cat who is this loud about it? And how fast should it come off? I don't want to starve him but a kilo feels like a mountain.

Yes! Millie went from 5.6kg towards 4.5 this year and she is not a quiet cat either. The vet nurse gave us a daily amount and a target of 100g a month, which I thought was laughably slow, but she said that's the safe speed and faster is genuinely dangerous for cats.

Best thing we did was weigh out the whole day's food into a jar in the morning. When the jar's empty, that's it. Takes the arguing out of it because it isn't you saying no, it's the jar.

The 5am thing: we bought one of those timed feeders with a lid that pops open. Put part of his breakfast in it, set it for 5am. Within about a week Alfie stopped screaming at me and started sitting in front of the feeder staring at it instead. The machine is the villain now, not me, and I get to sleep.

Only works if the food in it comes out of the daily amount, though, not on top of it.

Denise M. said:

a kilo feels like a mountain

Denise, it's a mountain you walk up slowly, which is the good news and the bad news. Millie's 100g a month is about right as a ballpark: vets generally aim for a slow, steady loss, roughly 1 to 2 percent of body weight a week at most, so for Oscar a kilo is a project of several months rather than weeks. The reason the slowness matters isn't just kindness. A cat that suddenly eats much less, especially an overweight one, can develop a serious liver condition called hepatic lipidosis, which is why crash diets and "just don't feed him" are never the plan for a cat.

So the plan that tends to work looks like the one Millie's family used: your vet or vet nurse sets a daily amount for his target weight, the whole day's ration is weighed out on kitchen scales each morning (cup measures are wildly inaccurate for biscuits), and every treat, topper, and bribe comes out of it. A timed feeder like Kevin's for the dawn chorus, and a puzzle feeder or two so the food takes effort and lasts longer.

Then weigh him every two to three weeks and write it down, so you can see it moving even when the mirror says nothing has changed. Our guides to helping an overweight cat lose weight and how much to feed a cat go into the portions and the body condition check in more detail.

I'll be honest about the first fortnight: it's loud. I had a ginger lad who protested every morning for about ten days and then simply accepted the new regime as if it had been his idea all along.

Ordered the timed feeder. Weighed his biscuits for the first time ever and discovered my "small handful" was nearly double what the bag says for his target weight. Which explains a lot, frankly.

Three week update. Nurse weigh-in this morning: 6.05kg. Only 150g but it's going the right way and the nurse was pleased it wasn't faster. The feeder pings at 5am, Oscar stares at it, I stay in bed. The screaming lasted eight days, almost exactly Hannah's ten. Jar system for everything else. Onwards.