Bizzare Chews

Hello all,

This post is going to be very detailed. I have a female cat around 1 yr and 6 months old, named Merkey. She's a happy cat but recently, me and my family members found out something strange happening to her. She's beginning to chew nothing and look as if she's choking on something.

We know she had furballs before and usually she will just vomit it out. But this time round its totally a different action. Following on, I will describe her behaviour.

Here goes:
Whenever she starts using her tongue, like for cases where she smells food and licks her nose wanting to eat, she will start to chew nothing vigorously and do the choking behaviour. At times, it gets so bad that she will use her paws to like 'dig' out something from her jaws/mouth. Almost looking like she smack herself.

Its going to be quite hard to visualize it through my words but probably one of you ever felt like choking and tried very hard to force it out. This is something that's happening to my cat. I checked her jaws and teeth and nothing seems wrong. She do this very often and its been going on for more than 3 days. I also massage her throat and neck area often hoping to make her feel better.

This choking like behaviour has caused her to stop eating her biscuits and shes going for soft food like tuna meat and sardines instead. Just a few hours ago, she tried to eat wet food (tuna) but only managed to eat only a very very small portion.

This worries us alot and I have no idea if I should bring her to the vet yet hoping it will be a normal thing among cats. It's very hard for me to open up her mouth to really check as she can get quite violent and bite us. And if I were to bring her to the vet, with her violent condition, I bet the vet would sedate her. I do not wish for her to go through anaesthatic again as she looked very upset when she had her spaying last year.

My only possible guesses are she's got ulcer on her lips or the inner parts of her jaw, toothache or something's really stuck on her throat cos shes been trying to force out something.

Have anyone of your cats gone through this? Pls advice. Is there anything I can do to make Merkey feel better?

The only time that I've seen that with my cats was with one of mine that had stomititus - an inflamation of their gums. I have had 2 cats over the years with this condition and the one that had it in the back of her mouth did this motion from time to time. Once in a while she would get a small piece of food stuck in the back of her mouth and she would make that motion in an attempt to dislodge it. It is very painful for them! The other red flag that I read is that she gets violent when you try to look in her mouth, which tells me it hurts her when you do this.

As much as you don't want to, I think your vet needs to see this girl. It sounds like she has some type of gum disorder (stomititus, gingivitus, ulcer, etc) that will need to be treated with antibiotics, anti-inflamatories or something else. If you don't catch some illnesses early, they can get chronic and become nearly impossible to treat. Also suggest that you talk to your vet about dental care for this girl.

And yes, unfortunately, my cat does get violent with the vet when he tries to examine her - last time she clawed at him and left a claw in his hand (he admitted that he hadn't gotten clawed like that in 10 years). But now that we know the diagnosis, we only have to sedate her when she is having dental work to help the overall problem.

Poor baby!!

I agree with Amy, your cat needs a thorough dental exam by the vet. I understand that she doesn't like her mouth opened, most cats don't. The vet will NOT need to anesthetize her to do the exam. He can give her a small amount of a mild sedative which will take effect in minutes and calm her enough that he can take his time looking at her teeth and mouth. Please take her to the vet ASAP - as Amy has said, there are many diseases and conditions of the mouth and teeth that are very painful.
Bacteria from dental disease can cause other serious health problems as well.

Its the public holidays here and some vets are not opened. So I guess I will have to wait till it opens. That way I can observe her condition as well. She's less 'choking' now and has started to eat again.

Lets hope she gets better. Should I give her milk to drink or should I stick to plain water?

Milk is usually not good for any cats to drink unless it is a tiny bit of skim milk or something watered down. Stick to water. They make CapSip milk I think it is called in a little juice box type container. It is sold by the dry and canned foods on the shelf. You can get that if you like for your cat. Otherwise water is fine.

As I've learned the hard way with a couple of my pets, if they eat thread or string it can get caught on the back of their tongue (back so far you can't see it unless you sedate them) and cause them to behave the way you said. In my case, the thread was also bunched in their intestines, causing a blockage, vomitting and life threatening illness.
I would get her to the vet ASAP, especially since she's not eating.
Good luck and I hope it's something minor!!!

Dev

Also, please keep in mind that milk and tuna are not good for cats. Milk frequently causes digestive upsets, and tuna can deplete the cat's body of Vitamin E which leads to a condition called steatitis. Steatitis causes a cat to become very nervous and affects the nerve endings in the skin. It becomes painful for the cat to even be touched. Tuna is also very addictive - many cats won't eat anything else if they get tuna too frequently.

If there's an emergency vet who's open, please take her in. You don't want to risk waiting too long and having things get worse.

Hello all I just got back from the vet. The vet suspects hairball or something soft stuck in her throat. He inspected her stomach and couldnt find anything hard inside except that its very compact. That's because she ate before going to the vet. So his assumption was that even if something is stuck, it would be soft, hopefully hairballs only. Since Merkey's stool is normal, he went on and checked further. He also inspected her mouth, teeth and gums and find everything of her healthy. Her pulse as well.

Surprisingly, the vet gave my cat a TUNA flavoured lubricant. It's weird but I had to take it. This lubricant is in gel like form which I have to feed my cat with for a week and observe. If things persists or get worse, they have to perform an X-ray on Merkey.

On food advice, he actually suggested canned food rather than biscuits. He claimed Merkey is bright and alert and shows interest for food (tested that too). On my side I tried my best to explain what Merkey went through but was assured that she is healthy except for her vetching and choking behaviour.

Hopefully it will really be just hairballs and go away. Thanks to ALL of your replies. I used every advice from your replies and asked the vet regarding it and good answers were given like taking care of her gums, teeth and the right choice of food.

Lets pray for Merkey and all cats in the world to be safe. *prays*

Hi all!

Some updates on Merkey. As I am typing this out, she's asking me to play with her so I guess that's a good sign. Well its 630am now and I woke up earlier just to make sure Merkey let off her waste as she's not been doing it since the vet visit 2 days ago.

Finally this morning, she did. I inspected her waste and found some thick fur at some parts of it so I assume it is really hairball. However I will still observe her 'choking' behaviour. She's been eating more than usual and getting back to her biscuits as well. I hope not to overfeed her. Like they say, a healthy person is a person who eats, and a healthy pet is a pet that's eating!

Someone suggested me to try feed her wheatgrass occasionally to prevent/remove hairballs. Any say on that anyone? I am also willing to try natural methods to keep a cat healthy.

Yay! I'm so glad Merkey is ok.
Dev & Crew

Hi everyone,

Merkey is fine now and back to her normal self. In fact more joyful than before. She wakes up purring, greet us in the morning and always hinting to us to catch her with her come-and-get-me stares. I have yet to try the cat grass but sooner or later I will. She's been eating well.

However, she kind of prefer wet food nowadays rather than dry. Anyway, someone from another forum mentioned something about barfs for their kitties. Anyone of you feed barfs to your cats? Pls share.

You really want to stay away from BARF or raw diet. There is a lot of bacteria in uncooked meat. If your cat is prone to hairballs, brushing her twice a day will help. Also if you have access to something like yams (cooked) or canned pumpkin (uncooked) you can add that to her diet to help her pass the fur she is passing. Keeping her safely flea treated with Advantage or Frontline will stop her from wanting to over groom-

Good luck!