Female is not happy about the ferals outside

[thatfilmgirl]

*rubs face*
Okay, so Artemis and her brother, Traveler, are just over 1 years old, I've had them since they were three months. They've rarely had food issues outside of slowly deciding they aren't fans of wet food and I better not change their dry food either.

So in the past month, I TNRed a mama cat and her two (female!!!) kittens, and they got loose in my house for two days and holed up in the bathroom (where the litter box was). After releasing them, sanitizing the bathroom and doing my best to clean things up, Artemis finally accepted the litter box bathroom back. Until last thursday, I hadn't had any food issues, there was no spraying, nada.

However after washing the cat food bowls and putting their regular food in, Artemis took a bite then scratched the floor, wall, the bowl, and wandered away. Notably, her brother has not had any issues with the food in the bowl, so it's something about her. I thought that maybe having the food downstairs with a view of the back patio where the ferals are was distressing her, so I moved the food bowl upstairs. Same issue with her.

Last night I put a bowl of food in my office upstairs and she finally did eat some of it, and I did hear her eating out of the food bowl after dark, but today on the fresh morning feed she's scratching scratching scratching.

I really don't know what to do, and I know for a fact she isn't eating as much as she was a week ago, when the food bowls would be empty by afternoon and morning feeds. I'm suspecting she's stressed about the ferals? But this started AFTER I washed the food bowl with just dawn dish soap and hot water.

 

[ArtNJ]

If she was upset about seeing a feral through the back porch, you would hear the growling and hissing and see the arched backs. If you aren't hearing and seeing that, I think its something else. Serious question though: does it need to *be anything*? By which I mean that a lot of cats scratch around the food bowl, for reasons I've never known. Near as I can tell, it has no significance and isn't correlated with not eating much. All of which leaves us with the decrease in appetite. Thats a real thing to watch out for of course, but you can't look at how much they eat day to day because that does vary. Sometimes its because you have one of those boxes with four different flavors of can, and sometimes its because of who knows what, but somedays they just eat less. So you need to figure out if this is an ongoing thing and if the cat is losing weight. If so, and there is no known cause, a vet visit is a good idea.

 

[thatfilmgirl]

This helps a lot, thank you <3

1. No, she's definitely not hissing. They sort of casually watch when the ferals show up but outside of that are more interested in why are there cats outside and can mommy please let us outside too. So that's a good sign.

2. No, I guess it doesn't. Being WFH now, I'm so very aware of their eating habits, and I guess what worried me is that while she is a prolific litter box scratcher and 'lick mommy's arms at every available moment some days', the food had only been scratched at when I gave them something that neither of them wanted to eat. So when she started scratching, I worried because she'd only done that before on food that both cats seemed disinterested in.

She was coughing up some hairballs (we haven't had a good brush session lately) which was very new! but it's since subsided as well. And I have an instinctive worry there because the cute boy in my profile pic had to have surgery when he got a hairball stuck in his intestines that he couldn't cough up since he had a mouth infection.

I've got a little scale so I'll give her a weigh later, then again in a couple days (she's only 8lbs) and just listen for her going to the litterbox. She is very energetic and definitely gives little meows and shows off her belly from rubs so she's just being moody then.

 

[ArtNJ]

Very understandable. I have two lean cats that aren't food driven myself. They eat shockingly little compared to other cats I've had, and at times its hard not to worry about. With prior cats, I might have made them lick the bowl clean before adding new food, but with these two I find myself doing things like stirring up the moist food remenants with a bit of water or adding some dry to get them interested in finishing it. I just try to remember that years ago, the vet told me that one of them had "the ideal cat figure" which really cracked us up, but I suppose makes sense -- most cats are probably too heavy, and its not a terrible thing to have a lean cat.

 

[thatfilmgirl]

Yeah, I just watched her, for the first time, flip the mat over the food bowl and saunter away while her brother looked very confused by this. Might go back to removing their evening food after the two hour mark and see if that makes her feel better (morning dry food gets left out because I still have to go into the office some days and won't be able to pick up the food bowl).

She's not really into treats either. SHE LOVES to play with them, but her brother eats them before she can finish.