Thanks for the possible answers guys. It just really disturbed me to see these obese kitties and have nobody give me a clear answer as to why they're so FAT! It's a pain for everybody really. We ended up drawing blood from the arm of the 25 lb cat like a dog after poking around her leathery neck

Freedom, you raised an interesting point about cat exercise. How do other cat owners exercise their cats, if at all? I come from dogs where the basic weight loss regimen is less food, more exercise. It doesn't seem like a simple task for cats, however, so I'm just interested what is the usual routine for cats.

One last question, what's the normal weight for most cats? We have a lot of underweight and overweight cats, but none that are right on the money :P I'm going to infer from the previous posts that around 12 lbs is about right for a normal kitty (think normal as in a classic DSH). Thanks again!