How on earth have cats been so successful if they can easily die after not eating for a few days,(wtf…) something which they will willingly do if they don’t happen to like the taste of nutritious food readily available to them quite as much as something they’ve eaten previously?
I once had a cat like the OP, and moved to a town where it wasn’t easy to find the particular brand he liked. So he got something else, he was pissed, wouldn’t eat, peed in the house, etc., but sorry buddy, tough shit… his attitude lasted a week or so and he got over it. It’s not particularly difficult to out stubborn a cat if you really want to, or in some cases, have to.
I am sure a cat whisperer will wander by to explain better but with fatty liver, a cat may get it, not will get it. There is a vast difference between the 2.
A housepet is much like an american - profuse foods available so they will be very picky. A feral cat, or one that has never been fed absolutely everything it wants at it’s whim will eat whatever it can get down its gullet. My ex-alley cat did not care what hit his food bowl, he was thrilled he didn’t have it hunt it down and kill it. My fat little slob has never been fed anything except whatever food comes in 50 pound bags at BJ’s. She barely will try human food, has turned her little pink nose up at poached chicken, shrimp raw or cooked, cod raw or cooked, lobster raw or cooked. She will grudgingly lap a tiny amount of milk or broth or plate drippings, maybe a teaspoon at the most. She will however eat a black olive or if the other cat was getting gushy fud [very geriatric cat, she died several months ago and had health issues. Normally she lived in the studio in the barn with our roomie] she would try to get the gushie fud. She just really doesn’t get other brands of crunchies. To be honest, she might not recognize them as cat crunchies.
Fatty liver is actually the cat body trying to process the fat cells by sending them to the liver to turn them into energy, think of it as the drain getting clogged in your house. There are so many fat cells being circulated to the liver the metabolism can’t process them fast enough. A couple days may not create a problem, but if the same fat cat got shut into a cargotainer and shipped to Hong Kong, that long a trip without food would definitely probably cause it.
Neither of our two cats is picky about crunchies, but Zim the cat that we believe to have always been a housecat has NO interest in any sort of people food, and little interest in wet catfood.Ripley, the pedigree baltimore city alley cat will eat nearly any kind of people food, will tear open dog food bags, steal food from tbe dog bowls and get into any people food bags left out. And no, she’s not fat. Our first BCAC, Bishop, was much the same, and would try to steal granola bars out of your hand if you wouldn’t give him some. And knock over your water glass if he couldn’t reach the water. (Believe it or not, I miss that cat.)
There are 24 hours in a day. In each and every day. The cat has exactly one thing to think about in every one of those hours: How to win. Your wife presumably has additional responsibilities & activities & thoughts besides cat feeding.
The same issue arises with dogs & toddlers. You absolutely *can *win. Every time. It just takes an appreciation of how the problem looks from the other POV.
And accepting that they have 24 hours every day with which to make their point. You don’t have 24 hours with which to clean up the after effects.
Did you see the link above? The cat’s body tries to use up fat, the cat’s liver sucks at processing so much fat and nothing else, stores most of it, liver fails and cat dies.
Feral cats aren’t obese, and as I understand it a buildup of excess fats is generally needed for FLD; its a syndrome of overweight cats, and is much more rare in the lean.
That is my plan. I sent the wife out to get some decent food, and I will mix the dry.
He will shove everything on the desk to the floor. It is annoying.
It is not going well. Boris is on my desk and his tail is snapping back and forth. I tried to brush him and he smacked me. He is declawed ,so it was not a problem. But he is getting pissed. He is a sweet kitty most of the time.
But won’t the cat eventually figure out that either it goes hungry or eats? If the alternative is nothing or food it doesn’t love, wouldn’t any living creature get it eventually?
My family dog (lived to 16) absolutely refused to eat a new dog food. She’d been eating one particular one (not fancy) and I guess my mom had a coupon or something for a different one and she got that.
The Dog wouldn’t eat it.
My mom thought “Oh, you’ll get hungry enough to eat it.”
The battle of wills went on for at least a week…until the <small> dog spit a mouthfull of the dogfood into my mom’s face while she(my mom) was asleep.
Yep.
My mom said "well, I guess that was her way of saying, 'if you think it’s so great? YOU EAT IT. ’ "
In a word–No. I AM a veterinarian, and letting an obese cat go hungry is a Very Bad Thing. The key is the obesity. As the link above points out, cats have a unique biology that leads to an infiltration of fat into the liver after a fairly short time of anorexia (3 to 5 days) or even reduced feed intake (about 2 weeks at eating just 1/2 of a normal ration in an obese cat).The key here is not age, but obesity. This won’t happen to a thin cat. The other component is that cats have a very, very high need for protein, so will start to metabolize their own body tissues for protein.
Unless you want to end up with a very expensive veterinary bill, I would not advise depriving the cat of a food it has shown it will eat. Cats also have a very high propensity to develop food aversions, so if you mix a food he hates with a food he loves, he may just stop eating the food he already loves. Just let him eat the Fancy Feast. It is a perfectly balanced food, and absent a health reason, I can’t understand your wife’s motive. The cat WILL, quite literally, starve himself to death before he will give in. I’ve seen it happen countless times.
The really important thing for cats is not having liquid. Many cats get most of their water through wet cat food. Be sure he has a clean water bowl. If he is not eating, he still needs liquid.
I’ve played food wars with my cats and we often compromise. They will eat most of what they don’t like but leave enough behind to get the message accross. I will continue to feed it to them occasionally to use it up and then not buy that item again. My cats will eventually cave to their hunger.
Wow, I just read Frilly Nettles comment. I defer to the vet. I must be lucky in cats, but I did read up on how to slim down an obese cat and did the job slowly.
My brother-in-law tried this with his cat, who insisted on 9 Lives dry cat food with a single-mindedness normally displayed only by koala bears about eucalyptus leaves. He bought some other brand because his cat’s usual brand was sold out and figured he could mix them together.
His cat picked out all the “9” shaped bits of kibble and left the rest.
A thin cat can just hold out a lot longer without serious health consequences, but if it has strong food preferences, it will not eat until it gets what it wants. There are plenty of cats who don’t have strong food preferences, and so seem to eat whatever you put before them. Those who do, however, really will starve themselves. It has to do with their quirky food aversion thing–it is truly as though they believe you are trying to poison them.
Now I do have many clients put their cats on special diets and this requires some creative mixing of old and new food. But if the cat does not LIKE the new food even a little bit, he will do just what Chef Troy said–eat everything BUT the new food. This is why I always offer to buy back any and all prescription diet food that the cat is not eating.
or if the other cat was getting gushy fud [very geriatric cat, she died several months ago and had health issues. Normally she lived in the studio in the barn with our roomie] she would try to get the gushie fud. She just really doesn’t get other brands of crunchies. To be honest, she might not recognize them as cat crunchies.