Americans look to waistlines as fat cat dies
There are fat cats and then there was Meow. Last month the feline’s extraordinary girth made headlines when he was brought to an animal shelter in New Mexico.
This week, America is in mourning, for Meow is no more. He died this week of breathing difficulties, a result of his morbid obesity.
The tabby was left at the shelter after his owner, 87, found she could no longer care for him. Indeed, she could no longer pick him up: Meow weighed 17.7 kilograms – about four times the average cat.
At first his story was played for laughs: Meow, who was between 2 and 5 years old, favoured hot dogs, and was so fat that he got stuck inside things – large things. But his weight highlighted a creeping crisis: pets in America are getting fatter, just like their owners.
Meow’s demise coincided with a new report on America’s overweight humans, which has stoked fears of a dramatic jump in healthcare costs if the epidemic is allowed to continue. The new forecast warns that as many as 42 per cent of Americans could be obese by 2030, up from about a third today, and that 11 per cent could be severely obese.
The report, which was presented at a Weight of the Nation conference sponsored by the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, estimates that the cost of treating newly obese people for diabetes, heart disease and other ailments will approach US$500 billion (NZ$637B) over the next 20 years. US obesity rates have risen 74 per cent in the last 15 years, a trend that is testing science’s ability to extend life expectancies.
There was some good news: the researchers found that the growth in the number of obese people had slowed to its lowest in 30 years. If that slowdown does not continue, more than half of Americans could be obese in 20 years.
The fear, of course, is that more human beings will fall to similar fates as Meow. His shelter had put him on a strict diet and had posted all his weighins on a Facebook page. He had lost 0.9kg and appeared on TV.
Last Wednesday, however, he began to suffer breathing problems.
He was put on oxygen but died three days later.