Is my cat senile? (serious question, actually)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I’ll probably post this a few places, because I want to get a variety of opinions, but here is the scenario:

First, the backstory:
I have a cat who is almost 18 years old, named Ding. She had been losing a lot of weight a few months back–We thought it was because of the injury she had (and then surgery and recovery from that), and not feeling well, but then we realized she was having a hard time eating the hard cat food that we use (we have two other cats, who are much younger, for what it’s worth, and we feed them once in the morning with Science Diet dry food). She is missing quite a few of her teeth at this point, and it looked like in addition to maybe being hard to chew, the food would fall out of her mouth before she could swallow it. We tried soaking the food in water to make it softer, but she still had a very hard time just keeping it in her mouth long enough to chew. We tried elevating the food so she wasn’t looking down. We tried mixing the food with sour cream (which she loves). We tried chunky wet food (tuna at first) but she had the same problem. Then we tried baby food, which she would eat, though at first she would only eat a spoonful at a time. Once she was eating bigger servings, we started trying various wet cat foods that were not chunky. At first we mixed them with the baby food, but then we weaned her off the baby food and now she eats Science Diet wet food that is a sort of puree texture. She is able to eat this with no problem, and seems to like it. She will follow you into the kitchen and shark around your legs asking to be fed.

Sounds like we solved the problem, right? Well, no…

As I said we have two other cats, and so we have to sort of fend them off while she eats, (sometimes with military force). This isn’t usually too hard, as Cory (the one wearing the cape in the link) will usually wait until she is done before approaching the bowl, and Indigo is too damned skittish to try to get her food before she walks away.

Still, sounds like no problem, right? But no…

Here is where the question in the title comes in. She will eat several bites, then we’ll notice she’s left the bowl and gone to sit in her bed, or by the heater vent or whatever, leaving most of her food in the bowl. So we say “Ding, don’t you want more food?” and tap the bowl, and she comes over–all excited, even–and eats some more. Or we will go and put the food next to her wherever she is and she will start eating again. But then a few minutes later we see someone else eating the food and she’s wandered off again, but when we show her the food again she wants to eat more.

It’s like she forgets that she’s eating and wanders off, and then is happily surprised to find that gosh! there’s food!

Ideas? We have discussed this with her vet, and in fact he is coming over this weekend* and I’ll talk to him about it again, but I’m curious if anyone has had anything similar happen?
yes, not only does he make housecalls**, but he doesn’t charge us. It’s awesome having a friend who is a vet. He considers it a fair trade for us having him and his wife** over for dinner/drinks/Guitar Hero/Rock Band and stuff.

**before anyone gets mad that the cat is wearing a cute pink party dress, let me 'splain: She’s wearing it to keep her from pulling out the stitches in her chest. It’s a lot less constricting than the bandaging she’d been wearing for months prior to her surgery, and directly after. Cory, on the other hand, we dress up for no reason at all because he really just doesn’t mind at all.

***his wife goes to podiatry school with my boyfriend–that’s how we know them.

2

opalcat, you’ve stumped me.

i’m guessing two things: either a mouth issue or it’s related to the surgery somehow. i’m definitely going to want to hear what the vet has to say about this one when i log back in on monday.

good luck!

3

Well the first time I talked to the vet about it he said that it may have been loss of appetite due to the infection her paw had developed or due to the antibiotics she was on, but he also looked in her mouth and said that from her gums he could tell that she’d lost a tooth recently (she’s lost so many…) and that gum pain might be part of it. But the thing is back then she was still trying to eat the hard food. On the wet food she seems really into it. Eager. Doesn’t seem to have any problems eating it, etc. She definitely has an appetite because she’ll chase you down and meow until you follow her into the kitchen and feed her. But then she’ll “forget” or whatever it is that’s going on.

I’ll let you know what the vet says.

4

oh, that’s good. my peggy lost a batch of teeth. didn’t seem to keep her from eating at all. murphy kept all of his teeth to the bitter end. depends on the animal, i guess.

5

My cat will often stop eating and then if I scrape all the food up in a pile he will come eat again and act like I just put new food there…and the vet says he has lost his sense of smell a bit with age and maybe he really thinks the dish is empty when it’s not…

6

The vet is still coming over this weekend (for dinner) but I talked to him on the phone this evening and discussed it with him. He said he noticed the same behavior over the break when we were out of town for 10 days and he was coming over here every day to feed the kitties and to check on her (she’d had her surgery about a week before we left. He actually took out her sutures while we were out of town) and he thinks that it might be a little bit of senility (or the feline equivalent, whatever that may be called).

7

You may have to adopt a feeding ritual where you give her a measured amount (ask the vet how much minimum she should get per meal) and work at coaxing her to eat as much as you can for a set amount of time, say half an hour. If she doesn’t finish it in a certain “round” put it up for a bit, (Maybe in a tupperware container so it can stay at room temperature and remain tasty smelling?) and try again later until you’ve got at least the minimum amount into her. Repeat as needed for each meal. She might have gone “grazer” too. Some cats don’t eat all of a meal at one sitting, they nibble a bit here and there grazing through the day. This could be a problem for you, since obviously you can’t leave her tasty food laying about for the others to gorge on and get fat. So, I think a “feeding ritual” might be the solution. We had to do that with our elderly cat when he was sick a while back, it’s time consuming in a way, but it works.

8

Well, what we currently do is working just fine (tapping the spoon on the dish to catch her attention, calling her name, moving the food closer to her, etc) so I really am not so much looking for advice on what to do so much as wondering why her behavior is what it is.

9

Could be she was a grazer all along, but it’s only a problem now because you can’t leave the soft food out for the other cats to eat?

10

It seems to me it’s likely that at her age she’s just getting vague. I had a cat of 15 years who was kind of dreamy like that. His channel tuner just kept slipping, which is what you seem to be describing.

My cat also had just one tooth left, but he still managed to eat dry food very well. I don’t think the toothlessness is the issue, but the general vagueness.

Can your vet give you a concentrated nutritional supplement, maybe in paste form, that you can give her so you know she’s getting the nutrients she needs? If you can do that, then anything “extra” she eats is just something nice.

At this age I wouldn’t worry about “fixing” her because it doesn’t sound to me like she’s broken. If she goes off into la-la land every now and then - or even most of the time - it sounds like she’s earned it and she’s in a loving family and a good place to do that.

11

Sprockets, I sincerely hope that when I get old(er) I get vague just as you described, and that I have somebody like OpalCat to keep me focused on the food. (Tho if the present predicts the future I will not need help focusing on FOOD.)

12

Sure, it’s possible she’s getting a bit senile. I had an old dog who would have to be reminded periodically how to use the ramp that went from the ground to the deck in our back yard. He’d go over to the side of it, look confused and then try to scramble up the side instead of starting at the end and walking up. I’d go down the ramp, call him to me and have him follow me up and everything would be fine again for awhile. He’d also get ‘lost’ in the yard at night sometimes when it was really dark, so I’d just go out with him.

I think as he got older it was harder for him to see and hear, and to remember things. It’s happening to me already! :eek:

13

Pepper Mill swears that, as Midnight got older, she started acting senile. She’d go into the kitchen and then stop and look around, as if thinking Now, what did I come in here for? Then she’d go out, without eating or looking at the Cat In The Oven or wheedling for food.

14

There’s definitely a dog version of senility called Canine Cognitive Dysfunction
Symptoms

My 13 year old dog has been diagnosed with this, and he does much better on medication: one med that’s usually prescribed for doggy-OCD, and steroids to keep him eating (he’s pretty much stopped without the steroids; with them, even at very low doses (5 mg every other day) he is a food-obsessed piglet).

Probably pretty safe bet that there’s something similar in cats. I did find this list of symptoms, which is damn near identical to the dog version (from a search on 'feline cognitive dysfunction") Cognitive Dysfunction
Syndrome in Cats

One of the links I found said something about if the cat stares at the wall for a long period of time, it might have this. Every cat I’ve ever had stared at the wall for a long period of time. That’s what cats do.

15

OpalCat, we’ve been wondering the same things about our little old lady (pushing 19, looks disturbingly like Ding, and has a similar name, too). Eighteen / nineteen is pretty old for a cat, and the behavior changes sure remind me of human senility.

16

OpalCat, while senility is certainly a possibility, you should rule out hyperthyroidism and dental disease first. Hyperthyroidism is very common in older cats and caused them to lose weight despite a ravenous appetite.

You’ve mentioned that she’s lost teeth already. It could be that what remaining teeth she has are causing her enough discomfort that she is loathe to eat. Dropping food is a classic fist sign of mouth pain in animals.

If you combine an inability to eat effectively with they hyperthyroidism, you get an older cat who is skinny and who is always interested in food, but gives up due to pain after a little bit, leaving food in the dish. If that went on for a while, the low amounts of food would start to make her feel like crap, so she’d go hunker down in her favorite spot after not finishing her meal.

17

Well there ya go. That explains the staring at the corner of the kitchen wall. The other cat’s just keeping her company! :slight_smile:

18

Yeah we were concerned about that too, and had her thyroid levels checked at the beginning of December, and (thankfully) they came back fine. The vet says that other than the one place where it looked like a recent tooth-loss that her gums looked ok.

porcupine: thanks for the links! Very interesting stuff.

TroubleAgain: except that it’s the other two cats, and not her, that do it. I don’t think she could jump up onto the counter anymore. I built her a ramp to help her get up onto the sofa. She’s not so spry anymore, sadly.

19

My cat does this now - she asks for food, I put the food down (after cleaning out what she didn’t eat before), she eats a couple bites, then goes a couple of steps away and just sits there. I gently move her back to the bowl and she eats a few more bites. Rinse, repeat, until she finally leaves the room. Sometimes she’ll eat more, when it’s particularly tasty food.

However, it sounds different since your cat eats heartily and only needs to be reminded about the food, not coaxed to eat. It also doesn’t sound like your cat is exhibiting any pain reactions or other odd behaviors (weight loss? heaving or burping after eating? lethargy? drinking less water?). So while it probably is not serious (IANA Vet), it is good that the vet is coming over.

Sadly, my kitty has cancer and the explanation (though it really is more of a guess) for her eating habits is that her diseased liver is pressing down on her stomach. So, though she wants food she has some trouble dealing with it once it goes down which makes her hesitant.

I certainly don’t want to worry you as it sounds like a different situation for you but I was ignorant in thinking that because her blood work was all clean that she wouldn’t have a serious problem. It was only an ultrasound that identified the cancer - even the internist was surprised at the size of the masses, because she doesn’t seem that sick.

So the bottom line is that you might want to ask the vet what to look out for and if/when further testing may be warranted. Best of luck to you and kitty!

20

Thanks Rachel, that’s a good idea.