4 Year Old Cat Has Stopped Eating.

[IPYF]

Sorry for the essay but I'm going badly out of my mind as it seems my cat is starving herself. 3-7 days ago our 4yr old wholly indoor female cat started tapering off eating. She is a gobbleguts and normally begs for food constantly, but she is appallingly fussy and has a hatred for most cat food. She has been rationed on a light diet dry that she likes ever since we adopted her to avoid her overeating and to get some weight off.

It was impossible not to notice the change in behaviour. Food begging at the usual times continued, but it was followed by an angry stare at a full bowl, then she'd return to food begging like I hadn't fed her and her meal went uneaten. I thought she might have an issue with a sore mouth so I got some wet Fancy Feast, which she has never turned down. She'd lick at the gravy a little, then try a nibble, shake her head angrily and leave. After 2 days of her not eating, we went to the vet for an investigation. The vet said that she had an inflamed gum but nothing that would stop a hungry cat from eating. She was given pain medicine, and appetite boosters, and blood was taken. We have to wait two more days for results from blood.

After taking her home she ate a whole tin of Fancy Feast and we felt like maybe it was just mouth pain and that she was being a sook, but that was the last thing she has properly eaten since coming home yesterday, so clearly neither intervention worked as she's still on painkillers. She does not go to her bowl anymore, and she hasn't asked for breakfast and dinner which is the first time that's happened since we adopted her.



We have tried:
- Moving her bowl and using different bowls to see if it was environmental upset.
- Trying about 5 different bags of dry and about 6-9 different wet flavours none of which went further than a nose poke and a look of disgust.
- We attempted to lax her to see if it was a stuck hairball, despite the fact she has been pooping ok up until yesterday (I don't think there's anything left in her belly now for her to poop). She refused catlax, which is the first cat I've ever seen do that. We stuffed it in her mouth and got it down, but it did nothing.
- There's no point giving her stinky person food at all. She will not eat it under usual circumstances, but we tried it anyway and nothing.

Strangely, she is totally happy to scarf down cat treats, which we have been giving her just so that she gets a few meager calories. This makes no sense as we can hand her as many as we like and she'll just swallow them. The second you attempt to mix in any other food with a treat, she leaves. We want to keep giving her treats so there's something in her belly, but if she's just gone crazy fussy, we're just reinforcing her acting out.

I'm unsure what I'm looking for, but I've gotten nothing in her belly today other than a fistful of treats which surely have no nutrition, and I have to get her through to Tuesday. Is there anything else that anyone could recommend?

 

[FeebysOwner]

Hi. What is in the cat treats that she likes so much? Look at the ingredients and see if something 'sticks out' and then replicate it as close as you can with either wet or dry. Not the long term solution, but perhaps just to keep more food in her until you get the test results back. Hopefully, they will help provide an answer/solution.

 

[daftcat75]

Ask your vet about FortiFlora. It's a probiotic but it has a taste that cats really go for.

You have to get a hold of this anorexia as quickly as possible. I thought as long as I was getting something in Krista, she'd be okay. But it wasn't enough. Her mouth has been bothering her and I scheduled a dental appointment for her. But when we took pre-anesthesia blood screen, her liver enzymes were elevated and her bilirubin is also elevated. About one week of her not eating right was all it took. She was consuming 8 oz a day or approximately 240 calories. Because her mouth really started bothering her, she dropped to less than 2 oz a day (less than 60 calories--the rest of her energy needs being made up by fat metabolism, overwhelming the liver in the process.) This all happenend over holiday break so part of the delay in getting her into her regular vet's office was the holidays and my hatred for the emergency hospital. Now I'm stuck having to re-feed Krista's liver back to health with a sore mouth. I've been using dehyrdated raw turkey liver powdered up and sprinkled on her food and sometimes Tiki Cat tuna mousse. But this morning, she was just licking those off. Then I put some FortiFlora on top (just picked some up yesterday), and she went from licking the bribes off to finishing her portion and licking the plate clean. Seriously a game changer!

What pain meds did they send you home with and are you still giving them? That your cat bites something, winces, and shakes her head tells me that eating is causing her pain. The treats must be more appealing than the pain is discouraging. Maybe she also reasons that she can power through treats easier than a full meal portion. If the vet saw inflammation in a visual inspection, maybe re-schedule her for a dental under anesthetic to see if there are issues happening below the gum line. Clearly it's not just a little inflammation from the way she reacts to chewing.

Maybe try a softer food and also add a topper like Tiki Cat Mousse. If you don't have an objection to chicken or fish, Tiki Cat makes a Velvet Mousse food that's very appealing and very lickable. I wish I could give this to Krista until we can get her mouth done but she doesn't tolerate it well. Mousse in, mousse out. I don't know that she gets anything out of it other than a good colon cleanse. The topper she seems to tolerate though.

I take Krista in for an ultrasound on Monday. It's a drop-off appointment. While she's away, I'll be pureeing up some Fancy Feast with various additions to try to achieve a lickable pudding texture for her. I think this will be vastly easier without my furry foreman supervising. Remind me Monday night or Tuesday and I'll let you know if I arrived at a winning recipe for her sore mouth.

 

[Wile]

If she is just sick of her current diet you could get a few different samples of foods from a pet store and put together a buffet-style plate of samples. Then you can see what she likes of the options and go from there.

 

[daftcat75]

Fancy Feast Classic is a pate. Fancy Feast Classic is the only one I will feed Krista because the other lines are either too chewy (grills) or have wheat-gluten or other inappropriate grain or veggie ingredients that are not so friendly to an IBD kitty.

That your cat is licking gravy suggests to me that she is not eating the pate. First try switching to the pate, then see if she will take it pureed in a blender with some Kitten Milk Replacer. I feel like KMR would add nutrition back that would be diluted with the addition of just water. Goat's milk or kefir (the kind sold in the freezer section at pet food stores, not people food stores) are other substitutions you can try in place of KMR.

Weruva Slip-n-Serve is another soft food that Krista took to despite her mouth pain. But it has some ingredients that gave her tummy discomfort so I can't keep feeding that to her. But your cat may enjoy that food and it might treat her better than mine.

The other thing Krista enjoyed, which will also act as a laxative if you need one, is what I call cat omelette. Separate the yolk from the white of an egg. Cook the white throughoughly. Let it cool completely. Mix it in a blender or hand-mixer or whisk it with the raw yolk. Make sure the white has cooled so that it doesn't cook the yolk when you mix them back together. The raw yolk will have a shot of B-vitamins and other nutrition including choline, which will loosen up fat inside her stomach, intestines, and colon. It makes a good hairball remedy at smaller amounts like 1/8 to 1/4 tsp. The cooked white will provide protein. The raw white has an anti-nutrient that binds biotin making it unavailable to the cat. This is why you cook the white. The B vitamins in the yolk are destroyed by heat. This is why the yolk is served raw. When you mix it up, it will look like scrambled eggs but have a stronger smell because of the raw yolk.

As I said in my other post, you have to get her eating because the longer she doesn't eat, the worse she will feel when her liver starts processing fat and then she will continue to not want to eat. I am lucky in that I caught it soon enough in Krista that I was able to restart her eating with appetite stimulants, pain meds, soft foods, and a generous use of toppers and bribes. If I wasn't able to get her eating restarted, she would need to be hospitailized with a feeding tube inserted into her esophagus and fed that way until her appetite returned.

 

[Jem]

If she is refusing to eat on her own, you may need to start syringe feeding her. Any wet food that you can puree into a slurry that can be easily pushed thru a syringe would be fine. But you can also get wet food from the vet called "recovery" from royal canin. It is highly digestible and very smooth, so it is easy to syringe feed, but it is also easy to eat when you have a sore mouth.

If she'll eat a handful of treats, could you trick her into eating a handful of kibble? Sometimes when my cat starts begging for treats, I hand him a few pieces of kibble that he does not eat on a regular basis and he thinks it's treats because it's "not in his bowl".

I really think that her mouth needs to be investigated further. There are several things that are under the gum line/not visible that could be causing serious pain. She could also have something going on further back in her mouth or throat that could be causing pain while swallowing.

Does she display any signs of nausea? (licking of lips, drooling, vomiting...) If not, I would suspect that pain, for whatever reason, is the culprit. Just my opinion.

 

[LTS3]

I second having the mouth issue looked at again. Many regular vets don't really have a clue about dental health. You should look for a veterinary dentist. "Inflamed gums" can be a sign of painful periodontal disease or resorptive lesions.

 

[IPYF]

Thanks for the help so far. I've managed to get her to gobble more treats but she's pissed off with me now for hassling her. I also think the painkillers are making her strange. It's some kind of mild opioid applied straight to the gum. I got some of the Tiki toppers which she regarded with suspicion, then she licked them off my hand. At least that's some moisture as I'm equally worried about dehydration as she's not terribly interested in drinking (though I have spotted her doing it once or twice).

I'm almost positive it's a sore mouth or throat, but I can't (literally can't) afford her to become more gravely ill because of starving herself. Due to human illness related bills this year, we're broke and were hoping to be able to reboot for a fresh start in 2019. We didn't even last a week it seems without something going substantively wrong.

 

[daftcat75]

Thanks for the help so far. I've managed to get her to gobble more treats but she's pissed off with me now for hassling her. I also think the painkillers are making her strange. It's some kind of mild opioid applied straight to the gum. I got some of the Tiki toppers which she regarded with suspicion, then she licked them off my hand. At least that's some moisture as I'm equally worried about dehydration as she's not terribly interested in drinking (though I have spotted her doing it once or twice).

I'm almost positive it's a sore mouth or throat, but I can't (literally can't) afford her to become more gravely ill because of starving herself. Due to human illness related bills this year, we're broke and were hoping to be able to reboot for a fresh start in 2019. We didn't even last a week it seems without something going substantively wrong.

I feel for you. I’ve been wanting to get a new bed because my currrent one is killing me. But this cat. Every few weeks it seems lately. I’m calling her Hat Trick now because she got the IBD, pancreatitis, and now (probably though vet wants more tests) fatty liver. Knock on wood her thyroid and kidneys are still good.

Unlike human dentistry, cat dentals don’t rack up quite the same bills. That’s because if there’s an issue, they just pull the tooth. Trust me. An extraction is cheaper than what I pay for my crowns or my root canal last year. And a dental with extractions will be much cheaper than hospitalization and feeding tubes if she gets fatty liver.

Yeah, syringe feeding is not a bad way to go either. I have some syringes myself but I was able to reboot Krista’s appetite without them. There are YouTube videos on how to syringe feed. It doesn’t have to be “force feeding” if the food is appetizing enough. Fish oil or tuna water is another thing you can add to the wet food to make it more appealing.

 

[stephanietx]

Did she get x-rays to make sure there was no blockage or something going on in her GI tract? Also, I think she needs a better exam of her mouth. She might even need a second opinion. On the food front, have you tried plain meat baby food, chicken or turkey?

 

[IPYF]

Thanks all for the help. I've bought a bunch of packet mouse and I'm syringe force feeding her. She's tolerating so far, and hasn't thrown anything up. I'm a bit worried that the forcefeeding is going to make her stressed, but it's better than her getting a mild case of liver failure.

 

[daftcat75]

Thanks all for the help. I've bought a bunch of packet mouse and I'm syringe force feeding her. She's tolerating so far, and hasn't thrown anything up. I'm a bit worried that the forcefeeding is going to make her stressed, but it's better than her getting a mild case of liver failure.

Did you watch the YouTube videos on syringe feeding? It doesn’t have to be stressful. Get her up to 1/3 of what she was eating the first day. And increase by 1/3 after a couple of days if she’s willing. Also offer some on a plate for her each meal. You will probably find that as she gets food back in her, she may be willing to take a few bites on her own. And a few more next time. And eventually she’ll be eating again on her own. How long will this take? I have no idea. Keep up the pain meds, if you can, until you can afford a dental for her.

 

[FeebysOwner]

Any updates?? Hopefully, good ones...

 

[IPYF]

I wanted to briefly drop in and provide an update, and again thank everyone who took time out to respond to this thread.

The blood test we sent for failed to evidence anything other than very early stages of lower nutrition. After a failure to resume eating and a failure to respond to anti-inflammatory medicine (during which we resorted to force feeding as suggested here) the vet proposed that a dental clean and mouth review was the most logical option.

We went ahead and it was determined that two lower teeth had deep fissures which would have been causing substantial pain. 4 others were showing signs of advanced gingivitis indicating that there was likely something going on under the gum. We elected to remove 6 teeth in total including a fang at great expense, which was more than I'd hoped.

Three-days post dental she's now eating and behaviorally she's back to her usual self. Clearly one of the issues with the teeth that were removed was causing extreme pain to the point where she'd nearly given up, and it now looks like she's going to be ok.

Thanks again for all your help and support.

 

[FeebysOwner]

Yay! Thanks for update and the wonderful end result. Once she is over healing entirely, she will be able to eat anything that she was happily eating before, even dry.

 

[Jem]

Glad to hear she's doing better now that her mouth is no longer in pain. Hopefully she heals up in a jiffy!

 

[catlover73]

I am relieved to hear that your baby is feeling better. I am glad you figured out and fixed the issues that were causing her pain.

 

[daftcat75]

I wanted to briefly drop in and provide an update, and again thank everyone who took time out to respond to this thread.

The blood test we sent for failed to evidence anything other than very early stages of lower nutrition. After a failure to resume eating and a failure to respond to anti-inflammatory medicine (during which we resorted to force feeding as suggested here) the vet proposed that a dental clean and mouth review was the most logical option.

We went ahead and it was determined that two lower teeth had deep fissures which would have been causing substantial pain. 4 others were showing signs of advanced gingivitis indicating that there was likely something going on under the gum. We elected to remove 6 teeth in total including a fang at great expense, which was more than I'd hoped.

Three-days post dental she's now eating and behaviorally she's back to her usual self. Clearly one of the issues with the teeth that were removed was causing extreme pain to the point where she'd nearly given up, and it now looks like she's going to be ok.

Thanks again for all your help and support.

It's amazing how quickly they resume eating once their problem teeth are extracted. If she was sent home with pain meds, assume she needs them, and use them up no matter how hard she may be to medicate. If it's bupenorphine, that's easier to give than a true oral medicine because you only need to peel back her lip and squirt it between the cheek and gum. You now know how well she can hide mouth pain.

Just a heads up. Extraction sites can get irritated and sometimes they aren't able to get all the root fragments when they pull a tooth. Plan on a follow up dental visit in 6 months to make sure everything healed up nicely. Do it with anesthesia and x-rays. You can start planning for that expense now. I let Krista go a little too long without a follow up (mostly because we were addressing other issues like IBD and pancreatitis) that it got really complicated and very expensive.

 

[stephanietx]

Yes! I'm so glad your vet decided to investigate her mouth more extensively. So glad your girl is feeling better and eating better! Good job!

 

[IPYF]

I'm sorry for raising this thread back up, but sadly my cat's illness has ultimately been unresolved and I wondered if anyone else had any insights.

Following tooth extraction we saw what we hoped was an improvement. Unfortunately as soon as opiate analgesia ceased (about 4 days after my last comment), she resumed refusing food and within a day or two resumed an unhappy affect, was hiding again, and couldn't be coaxed to eat. Anti-inflammatory medicine was tried and did nothing, antibiotics were administered to see if any of the extraction sockets were infected, and pain medicine was resumed for a further week. Some eating was resumed but as soon as opiates were expended, she stopped eating again. Main features of the food refusal would be making an attempt at chewing which would fail, and then commencing heavy licking of her tongue around her mouth, licking of her chest and tail, somewhat violent head-shaking and scratching at her jaw with her feet, and what seemed to be an angry paw twitch.

My vet was confused at this point so the next step was to referred to a cat specialist for a second opinion, and I went ahead to see them despite skepticism and considerable expense. The specialist was lovely and she did a thorough exam. My cat's weight is seemingly stable, and she passed a neurological exam. There are no obvious carcinomas of the mouth. The specialist indicated that the mouth wounds were healing well and they would not be causing the pain that I was describing.

The course of action was to administer gabapentin (neurontin) daily for neuropathic pain relief, and to watch to see if this had any impact. The specialist indicated that as weight was constant, that we had plenty of time to investigate. Shockingly, the gabapentin has had considerable positive effect and despite causing serious sedation which is depressing to see, she has shown far more capacity to eat. She's clearly still uncomfortable but she doesn't give up eating immediately. It's good that food is going into the cat, and the change is interesting but it's not really providing any definitive answers.

While I intend to stay the course with the specialist, I wanted to see if anyone ever had a similar situation in which gabapentin or a similar medicine with a younger cat with probable mouth or nerve pain?