Constipated and will not eat

Hello all,

My cat is 1,5 years old and he is an 100% indoors cat.

Last few days he started being a little constipated. He used to go daily for his need, now he would go once every 2 days, even 3 days lately. So I started mixing a bit of wet food into his ordinary dry food (Royal Canin Nutered male).

It helped a bit, he is going again every day but he seems to not have it easy and also his faeces seem really hard, black and dry. Last 3 days he would chew the food into really really small pieces that would even stay in his plate, and today all he does is lick any liquid that is in his plate, but not eat any solid food at all. He seems hungry, goes where he knows we keep his food and meows, like he would always do, but he just will not eat.

Other than that, he seems in a normal mood, he drinks normal amounts of water and pees as always, maybe even a little more. Note that he does not seem to be in pain in his mouth/teeth area, tried to check that, and that there does not seem to be any kind of bruised/bloody areas in his mouth. His teeth also seem fine and not in pain at all, since while we are playing he is biting as he used to, without any signs of pain.

Is there any possibility of all those being signs of renal failure? I'm really worried. Our vet is out of town and will be back at Wednesday. If things get worse I will have to get him to another vet.

I would really appreciate your help. Thank you in advance!

Constipation does cause nausea and your kitty is showing symptoms of nausea.  An all wet diet will go along way in preventing this in the future.  You may have to get him to a vet because not eating can cause problems.  Miralax can help prevent constipation if this becomes a chronic problem but from what I have read it isn't good to give it to a cat that is already constipated to this point.

If an all wet diet doesn't prevent this in the future you can give Miralax daily as a preventative.  You would start with 1/8 teaspoon twice daily and adjust the dosage.  It's a tastless powder that can be mixed into wet food.

I doubt that he is in any kind of renal failure because of his age.  The all wet diet will help ward off those problems in later life because of the extra moisture. This website http://www.catinfo.org/  explains the best way to feed a cat and why it is the best way.

I would get him to a vet, constipation can be dangerous.  Black stools can indicate an excess of Bilirubin in the system.  It can also be bleeding in the intestines somewhere.  As mentioned above a cat not eating can get serious quite rapidly.  I am dealing with my own constiapted cat at the moment, she quit eating, and was yowling.  She went to the vet, had an enema and is now on Miralax daily to prevent future problems.  She was diagnosed with Megacolon.  While kidney disease is usually an older cat disease, I have seen it in younger cats due to things they were born with.

Thank you both for your replies, I really appreciate your time.

Well things didnt get any better today... I opened him his favourite can of wet food and again he just licked it, nothing more. He keeps going to the place where we keep his food and cries even more now, almost constantly. I think we are going to the vet first thing in the morning tomorrow, he is starving and will not eat.

How long has it been since your cat ate anything?  You may need to force feed it to prevent Fatty Liver Syndrome which can be deadly.

For some reason today he wasnt eating all day, but a couple of hours ago i tried to feed him out of my hand and he actually ate! Then I thought of trying to do an experiment and change his feeding bowl, so I put some food in a normal plate and gave it to him, he ate it clean! I cant really understand. Did he for some reason think of his feeding bowl as pain? All day he would only lick liquids out of his feeding bowl, but the moment i changed it to my hand and then the plate he ate everything.

My cat DeeJay was the same way I have used a food bowl for years, but she started not wanting to eat it so I switched her to a saucer and she started eating better.  Glad to hear your kitty is eating better.

Blood tests are out and things are bad. He has problem in the liver. We dont know what exactly yet, some extra tests will be run, we will have the results tomorrow. I don't know, we never saw that coming. He was in perfect condition just 10 days ago. And he is extremely young, how? I don't know, really.

If he wasn't eating for a few days and lost a bunch of weight, he could have damaged his liver.  My thoughts will be with you, hopefully he will be able to get through this.  The liver is an amazing organ in the fact that it can heal itself.  Ask your vet about Denamarin it helps with liver issues.

Even in those 10 days, we never left him without eating anything, we would always try to feed him until he would eat at least half a meal. He had a huge appetite 10 days ago, and now its all gone. We will be waiting for tomorrow's results and I will ask about that medicine as well. Thank you for your suggestions and thank you for your wishes, I will keep you informed on his condition.

Usually if a cat eats at least half of the normal amount they won't develop Fatty Liver.  If he has developed it even with eating at least half then that safety amount isn't necessarily true.  One of my cats had fatty liver and cholangiohepatitis as a result of IBD.  He did survive it, that was 3 years ago and he's still here, but it is a long recovery time. 

I'll keep you and your cat in my thoughts and prayers. Lots of vibes....

Denice excuse me for my ignorance, what is IBD?

Ritz thank you, it means a lot...

IBD is Inflammatory Bowel Disease.  It's basically the same autoimmune response as is found in humans.  My kitty had his first flare when he was only 18 months and he has constipation with it.  Most kitties have the opposite problem.   http://ibdkitties.net  is one good website that explains it.  You can also google it which will bring up a lot of articles.

Thanks for the info, I'll look into it!

Okay, we have an update! The first blood results are proven to be false, cause of blood going thick and the machine reading it incorrectly or something. The final results show no actual liver problem. He has a parasite, something called haemobartonella. The good news is that it hasn't caused anemia yet, so we caught it in early stages. The mystery is were did he get it from, since he is an 100% indoors cat and we never had issues with ticks or anything similar. Anyway, we are already on antibiotics for it, and the doctor said most cats respond well in the treatment. We will be on antibiotics for 1 month, and then rerun blood tests. Hope everything will go well. Thanks everyone for your support and advices!

Well I guess that's good news that his liver is okay.  Yes Hemobart usually responds well to the antibiotics.  Good luck.

Wonderful news!  I'm so glad that they found the problem and can treat it. Did I read somewhere that haemobartonella can come from fleas, too?

Thank you all Yes Susan, it can come from fleas too, but we never had an issue with fleas and ticks. Last time he had fleas on him was when he was born and we found him and adopted him. After that he has been treated for fleas etc on a regular basis.

An update on his condition: He is still not eating normaly but he doesn't seem to feel very sick though. The strange thing is that he will not eat from his bowl or any other plate, but when I hold the food in my hand, he will usually eat more that half of it out of my hand. Any idea why he behaves like that?

I think it's probably just a result of not feeling well and really not wanting to eat.  Luckily he will eat with a little coaxing and TLC instead of having to resort to TLC.  I have read that cats can have this without symptoms and then when something happens as far as their immune system goes it can be something symptomatic.  I don't want to scare you and I assume it has been done was he rechecked for feline leukemia and FIV?  The stress on his immune system could've really been anything including fighting off a kitty cold.