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So I’ve got a really weird situation on my hands and my vet and I are stumped trying to figure it out. For a few weeks now Moose has had two weird things going on, I initially noticed them when he was on doxycycline but it’s possible the trembling has been going on since before then as it’s usually invisible and only detected by touching him. He has been off the doxy for 2.5 weeks. It was liquid form and followed by a large wet food meal with extra water everytime so my vet doubts it’s from that, but with the timing I don’t know…
1) He trembles whenever he eats wet food. It’s not a “excited shake” as he is frankly quite bored of and unenthusiastic about the two specific wet foods he gets, and I am going to try adding new ones. His whole little body trembles/shivers while he eats. If he stops eating for a second it stops and starts up right again as he continues to eat. Sometimes it persists for a bit after eating but that’s rare. The wet food is not cold, and it ONLY happens with wet food! Not dry food, not 50/50 wet dry mix (most of the time)… only wet food.
2) After eating he will go about his business and if he lays on his side he will have these weird contractions for up to 30 minutes on and off after eating. I first noticed this on the 26th. They are mostly visible in his legs but do seem to be full body… just a slow tensing and relaxing of muscles, not violent or anything, but slow, subtle, and rhythmic. Sometimes he will jut his head forward as if he is having acid reflux, and sometimes it looks like he’s slightly bobbing up and down. It almost looks as if his whole body is trying to “push” the food through his system, like he’s “riding the waves” of the contractions. So he just lays there, having these odd subtle movements while his muscles contract, at times less subtle than others, and then eventually it stops completely until after his next wet meal. This also only happens after wet food! He has wet 3x per day and dry 1x per day.
His urinalysis was perfect. His blood work was perfect. His UPCR is normal. His mouth and teeth look great. He is high energy and totally normal otherwise though he has been acting a bit more like a crazy teenage boy cat recently and at times tries to dominate my female senior cat (not aggressively but he’s tried to dominantly bite her neck a few times, ect), and he is only 11 months old. I also highly doubt it’s FHS. Because it only happens after wet food we are not inclined to believe it is neurological or a virus/disease of any kind. We are currently trialing him on 2 weeks of Sulcrate incase it is a GI issue and I have probiotics too but I stopped giving them for awhile incase they were the issue, but clearly they aren’t, so I’ll start him back on them.
I don’t know what to think. Obviously I don’t want to stop giving him wet food as feeding dry only could open him up to a whole slew of other issues. Researching online shows me a million possibilities from normal to severe. There are also a few people whose cats seemed to have done this and grown out of it with time. At this point I am inclined to just give it time and see if he grows out of it as he doesn’t seem distressed or in pain and is normal otherwise, but it stresses me the heck out. The vet thinks it’s really odd but given his perfect labs she doesn’t seem too concerned either, he just saw her on Wednesday for an exam and said labs. I don’t even know what further diagnostics would do more good than harm, he’s petrified of the trip to the vet even on gabapentin and I’m also dealing with some new health issues in my senior girl so the mix of everything is a lot right now. Has anyone experienced anything like this before?? Or any ideas?? It’s so weird…
1) He trembles whenever he eats wet food. It’s not a “excited shake” as he is frankly quite bored of and unenthusiastic about the two specific wet foods he gets, and I am going to try adding new ones. His whole little body trembles/shivers while he eats. If he stops eating for a second it stops and starts up right again as he continues to eat. Sometimes it persists for a bit after eating but that’s rare. The wet food is not cold, and it ONLY happens with wet food! Not dry food, not 50/50 wet dry mix (most of the time)… only wet food.
2) After eating he will go about his business and if he lays on his side he will have these weird contractions for up to 30 minutes on and off after eating. I first noticed this on the 26th. They are mostly visible in his legs but do seem to be full body… just a slow tensing and relaxing of muscles, not violent or anything, but slow, subtle, and rhythmic. Sometimes he will jut his head forward as if he is having acid reflux, and sometimes it looks like he’s slightly bobbing up and down. It almost looks as if his whole body is trying to “push” the food through his system, like he’s “riding the waves” of the contractions. So he just lays there, having these odd subtle movements while his muscles contract, at times less subtle than others, and then eventually it stops completely until after his next wet meal. This also only happens after wet food! He has wet 3x per day and dry 1x per day.
His urinalysis was perfect. His blood work was perfect. His UPCR is normal. His mouth and teeth look great. He is high energy and totally normal otherwise though he has been acting a bit more like a crazy teenage boy cat recently and at times tries to dominate my female senior cat (not aggressively but he’s tried to dominantly bite her neck a few times, ect), and he is only 11 months old. I also highly doubt it’s FHS. Because it only happens after wet food we are not inclined to believe it is neurological or a virus/disease of any kind. We are currently trialing him on 2 weeks of Sulcrate incase it is a GI issue and I have probiotics too but I stopped giving them for awhile incase they were the issue, but clearly they aren’t, so I’ll start him back on them.
I don’t know what to think. Obviously I don’t want to stop giving him wet food as feeding dry only could open him up to a whole slew of other issues. Researching online shows me a million possibilities from normal to severe. There are also a few people whose cats seemed to have done this and grown out of it with time. At this point I am inclined to just give it time and see if he grows out of it as he doesn’t seem distressed or in pain and is normal otherwise, but it stresses me the heck out. The vet thinks it’s really odd but given his perfect labs she doesn’t seem too concerned either, he just saw her on Wednesday for an exam and said labs. I don’t even know what further diagnostics would do more good than harm, he’s petrified of the trip to the vet even on gabapentin and I’m also dealing with some new health issues in my senior girl so the mix of everything is a lot right now. Has anyone experienced anything like this before?? Or any ideas?? It’s so weird…