Over the past 20 years extraordinary progress has been made in the development of highly specialised pet food formulas. These range from general weight management and sensitive digestion recipes, to diets designed to help manage specific conditions such as gastrointestinal problems and failures in renal function. Some formulations work to support treatment over a limited period of time, but others can help your pet for life. The very latest advances can even reduce or eliminate the need for medication.

Medical conditions
You can now find a range of cat foods that have been created as nutritional aids in the dietary management of cats with specific health problems. Today veterinary prescribed dietetic foods, often known as therapeutic diets, play a major role in modern veterinary practice, supporting the treatment of many feline diseases, either as the sole therapy or as part of the total treatment. The science behind these formulations is often ground breaking, each providing a proper balance of total nutrients whilst satisfying special dietary needs. Such foods can support or replace drugs and dramatically increase a cat's chances of living a longer and healthier life, despite what could otherwise have been potentially a very limiting condition.

Commonly prescribed therapeutic diets offer nutritional support for cats suffering from:

• heart conditions and high blood pressure.
• diabetes mellitus, constipation and diarrhoea.
• dermatitis and inflammatory skin conditions.
• gastrointestinal conditions such as enteritis, gastritis and inflammatory bowel disease.
• severe food allergies or intolerances.
• kidney failure or liver disease.
• clinical obesity.
• urinary and bladder disorders.

Formulas are also available to support cats during convalescence, such as recovery pre-and post surgery, or when suffering from nutritional stress.

Diet formulations
Obesity is the most common nutritional disorder in cats, affecting around one in three in the UK adult population. So it's vital to tackle the problem by looking at both the amount of energy consumed (food eaten) as well as the amount expended (through exercise). Just feeding overweight cats less of their regular food is not recommended without veterinary instruction, as the result could simply be that they don't get the right balance of nutrients.

Of course, if a cat becomes overweight the most important step is to reduce treats, titbits and extras. But commercially prepared 'light' diets can also help. These are lower in fat, but contain all the necessary vitamins and minerals, so you can reduce the amount of calories without cutting down on portion size or nutrients. Light diets not only help overweight cats return to their correct weight, but can also help older, less active cats maintain a healthy body condition thereafter.

Indoor cats
Many less active cat breeds are very happy living life as an indoor cat. But any cat living in a restricted space will have less opportunity for exercise. This more sedate lifestyle means it is much harder for indoor cats to retain their natural shape than outdoor cats. Specially formulated indoor diets are high in protein and low in fat, designed to help keep indoor cats in peak condition.

Indoor cats are also much more likely to suffer from troublesome hairballs. Indoor diets also include high levels of less digestible, fermentable fibre, helping to ease swallowed hair along the digestive system rather than forming hairballs (as well as acting to reduce litter box odours).

Allergies
Allergies can develop at any time in a cat's life, often as a result of a reaction to certain food groups. Diet can play an important role in alleviating allergic reactions such as itchy skin, recurrent ear infections, hair loss, hot spots, skin abrasions, vomiting, and diarrhoea.  The protein source of a food is usually to blame for an allergy, with the main culprits including beef, dairy products, chicken, wheat, chicken, eggs, corn and soy.  Switching to another source of protein, such as lamb or rabbit, or to a non-wheat based carbohydrate, such as rice, will often relieve the symptoms.