SOS CAT NOT EATING OR DRINKING

[Aleja]

Hi! My cat, Mars (F), is 4. She’s always had a nausea/vomiting issue but all the vets we saw said she was fine. She stopped commuting f as much a few months ago and gained some healthy weight. However, she isn’t eating since Tuesday 3/15, today is 3/19. She’s been seen by two clinics and had blood work done. She’s low on red blood count but outside of that they can’t figure out what’s wrong. Have any of you experienced anything like this?
Tips on how to hand feed/drink her would be k credibly helpful.

 

[fionasmom]

Any Good Tips To Get Your Cats To Eat? Share Them Here!

Welcome to The Cat Site! The above thread has information about how to encourage your cat to eat which might be helpful. Four days is getting a little long for your cat not to eat. Did either of the clinics mention syringe feeding? She can't continue on without eating, so I would call one of the vets and ask for advice at this point. If they want you to syringe feed, they can give you instructions and you can come back here as well and check online videos. Trying to hand feed her small pieces of wet cat food may work depending on how willing she is to try to eat.

 

[FeebysOwner]

Hi there! The above advice for feeding will hopefully be helpful. But the underlying issue is not being addressed, and you will have to pursue that aspect in order to give Mars more permanent help and relief.

What else can you tell us? Are you saying that she stopped vomiting a while back? What changed? Food, medications, or? And, what else has changed recently, in terms of her eating/drinking/peeing/pooping before she stopped eating on 3/15?

The vets said she is fine - fine based on what? What do her other blood work results say? Do you have the results to share with us?

Low red blood cell counts need to be pursued and I would most certainly hope the vets you are dealing with are recommending further testing. They can't just say they cannot figure it out. What other vet options do you have available to you - any specialists/internal medicine vets?

 

[stephanietx]

Did they do an x-ray to rule out an obstruction or something else going on in her intestines?

 

[NadiaRey]

Hi, just to add to what everybody else said, and to answer your question in particular, these are my suggestions as for what to give her and how:

> Giving her Recovery, which is canned food supplement made by Royal Cannin that helps a cat put on weight or worrying cases when the pet is loosing weight fast. Also, cats love it.

> Home-made cooking. My first suggestion is chicken (no salt). It can be chicken broth to help her swallow if that's a problem (*). Chicken is a great source of taurine, you can't go wrong with it.

> (Homemade, slightly raw) salmon. If she went so much time without eating, it's probable her kidney got hurt in the process. If that's the case, salmon might be your best bet. A portion at least twice a week for a month, maybe two.

> Obviously, if her redbloodcell count is low: meat. Even cow meat (again, no salt). I recently spoke to a vet nutricionist and she suggested the tongue and heart for protein.

> Once you get a better idea of the underlying problem, you could add more things to her diet accordingly. If, for example, it's a virus, I suggest hemocianine moluscs such as octopi or calamari. (Yeah, weird, but it's been helpful for my FIV+ cat.)

> Anything that interests her. If the smell entices her, that's it... and it's gonna be useful always. If she gives up eating after a couple of tries, try observing her carefully for signs of why she doesn't carry through. Maybe you can figure out the reason this way.


(*) Note: The difficulty eating might be due to tooth ache, in which case she will swallow almost without chewing, which will make her vomit often. If that's the case, you can give her the chicken in tiny bits easy to digest, but not so small that she can't grab them with the mouth... because often, when the teeth hurt, cats will try grabbing the food with their tongue alone.

(You could try mixing the food with something sticky like cheese BUT not yet, because like I said, if your cat hasn't been eating, there's more likely some harm on the kidney and you should avoid ALL salt in her food.)

And of course, have the vet check her gums...
...additionally to giving her a blood panel checking her urea and GPT (kidney and liver function) and an abdominal echocardiogram.



It's like you said. While you look for the underlying cause (I suggest the FIV test, because that affects both the gums and kidney. And it also messes up with the red bloodcell count), you need to keep her weight. You are not wrong to try find ways to feed her while that gets sorted out.
I hope anything about this works. Keep us posted.