A 0.3 kg drop in a cat looks like nothing on a sticky note. Spread across three months, it can be the first measurable sign that something is wrong — long before appetite or behavior visibly changes. The problem is that most of us record weight as scattered numbers and never see the line they form.
That gap is why I built PetHealthLog: a free, offline pet weight tracker that turns each weigh-in into a trend chart instantly.
Why weight trends matter more than single numbers
Vets care about the slope, not the snapshot. In feline medicine, a sudden loss of more than 5% of body weight, or a gradual loss exceeding 10%, is treated as a red flag worth investigating — and unintentional weight loss often precedes other visible signs of disease. Cats in particular are good at masking illness, so a quiet downward line on a chart is sometimes the earliest clue an owner ever gets.
The catch: 10% of a 4 kg cat is 400 grams. You will not feel that by picking your pet up. You only catch it if you have last month's number sitting right next to this month's — on the same chart, same units, same axis. That is exactly the moment a record-keeping tool earns its place.
