advice on cat eating problem

In My Humble Opinion
1

First, yes, I have taken her - and followed up with calls - to the vet. But they haven’t been terribly helpful and I hope to find someone who has had a similar problem for advice.

The problem: my cat doesn’t eat as much as she should. And when she does eat, it is usually crappy food (Fancy Feast) which I am not comfortable feeding her forever. When she refuses to eat, she complains and then throws up bile, sometimes 2 or 3 times a night (or day, depending)

The background: A few weeks ago I took her to the vet for a teeth-cleaning. In the process 2 teeth needed to be pulled and the vet diagnosed her with calicivirus. As far as that goes, the vet recommended I stop feeding her anything with fish and take her in for annual check-ups.

She has free-fed dry food her whole life with a 3 oz can of wet food once every one or two weeks as a treat. She has always been good at drinking water on her own, so wet food wasn’t a huge part of her diet. I took her the vet because she started refusing her dry food and losing weight. I suspected her teeth hurt, so I upped her wet food to two 3-oz cans a day. This seemed to help, but she stopped eating her dry food entirely.

Now her mouth has healed but she has gotten finicky about her food. Before she would eat any flavor of Wellness I gave her. Then I started trying other brands and flavors of food (Natural Balance). She would eat most of the kinds I put in front of her, but soon she started refusing brands and/or flavors that she ate happily a few days before. I’ve put the dry food out again, and she nibbles on it occasionally, but not enough to sustain her. I would be fine with walking away, but after 12 hours or so without eating, she vomits bile. When she refuses her evening meal, she might vomit 2 or 3 times in the night. She has always been skinny, so she can’t afford to miss too many meals. Once she went about 36 hours without eating, after I had offered her several types of food. In desperation I gave her a can of Fancy Feast, and she went for it.

So, I started giving her Fancy Feast one meal a day with healthier food for the other meal. Guess which one she refuses? She nibbles the dry food occasionally, particularly when she turns up her nose at the wet, but she still vomits frequently. I’ve previously tried putting tuna-water over her food (which one vet recommended) but it didn’t work at all, plus I’m not supposed to give her any fish because of the virus.

I talked to a nurse at the vet’s for a long time on Friday, and he suggested choosing one wet food and sticking with it, continuing to offer it at morning and night, with dry food all day to supplement. And to keep a few cans of Fancy Feast around for when she goes on her “hunger strikes.” But my questions for this strategy are:

  1. How do I choose the “one food”? She has not been consistent with eating any of the healthy varieties lately. If I just have to pick one and hope she gets used to it I’m inclined to go for Wellness, since that’s what she’s eaten her whole life. But if she refuses it, how many cans do I throw away before I conclude she’s never going to eat it and try something else?

  2. How long do I wait for her to not eat before I break down and give her the Fancy Feast? She can’t afford to lose any more weight. Plus I’m getting pretty tired of stepping in puddles of bile every morning.

  3. If she continues to refuse long enough for me to give her the Fancy Feast, then will she ever start eating the healthy stuff again?

How did my totally low-maintenance super-cool cat become such a PITA?!

2

advice on cat eating problem

Can’t you just stick to hamburger and pizza like the rest of us? :smiley:

3

Out of curiosity, how old is the cat?

I remember the first cat my family had, he lived to be 18 or 19. Towards the last 7 or so years he stopped eating dry food, if he tried to eat it he’d throw it right back up in an hour or so. We had to stick to giving him wet food. Then, similar to your problem, he became unable to eat any foods fish or seafood flavored, then he too would/could only eat specific brands…it became a hassle, but I couldn’t think of anything that we could have done different with him (age-related problems aside, he was an awesome cat) and we just stuck with it, cleaning up whatever he horked up and enduring it. Yours does sound a tad trickier though, poor kitty. :frowning:

4

Fight my ignorance: What’s “crappy” about Fancy Feast? And more generally, what makes the difference between crappy and non-crappy in a cat food?

5

What “healthy foods” have you tried? Purina ONE? ProPlan? Science Diet? Iams? NutroMax? There are a great many brands which are perfectly adequate to health and available widely. It may be that you, and not your cat, are the overly choosy party.

Also, have you tried feeding kitten food from any of the bands you find acceptable? When my elderly cat’s bloodwork came back clean (“amazingly good” quoth the vet) I put him on a mix of Purina ONE Senior cut 50/50 with Authority Kitten food (it had the highest fat content of all I compared). He gained a couple of pounds that year.

6

They use grains (in the form of gluten, which I still don’t trust), by-products, soy, artificial flavors, thickeners, salt, and some flavors have food color additives - things that cats don’t really need.

Have you tried Merrick canned? My cats love it, it’s made in the US from meat sources and my cats eat it up. It’s spendy and I have to travel a bit to find a store that carries it, but it’s better than throwing out food they won’t eat. I have a cat that turns up her nose at Wellness too, but she loves Merrick.

Otherwise, baby food (make sure it doesn’t have onion/onion powder) is something I’ve tried to get a cat to eat.

7

2nd on the baby food. Also, a little poached chicken is easy on the tummy, and most cats seem to like it. My vet has also recommended canned pumpkin (not pumpkin pie filling, just canned pumpkin).

Hope the kitty gets better soon!

8

I never get this. In the state of nature cats eat the entire animal. Bones, fur, skin and tail. It is not healthy for cats to subsist on a diet of muscle meat only.

9

True, but the nutritional content of by products is variable, so I never choose a food that has the majority of ingredients in the form by-products.

10

Of course not. But the presence of byproducts somewhere on down the list of ingredients is no reason to say a food should not be fed or is unhealthy. There is a huge range from Super-premium to total crap in the realm of cat food. The middle-to-upper middle range of that scale (the brands I listed) include byproducts as an ingredient, but not the main ingredient, and IMHO they are perfectly acceptable.

11

It may not be ideal (though I think you may be being overly critical of its nutritional value), but she’s not going to starve to death or become ill eating only Fancy Feast. There are millions of cats who are living their entire lives on it. If she’ll eat it and not throw up, just feed it to her already.

Maybe try her on a more acceptable brand every few months and see if she’ll eat it.

12

There’s definitely no current oral ulcers or tooth problems? I have a cat that most likely had calici as a kitten (and maybe all the other URI’s, too). She developed lymphoytic plasmacytic stomatitis. Basically her teeth were acting as foreign bodies and causing a continuous inflammatory response. I recently had the last of her teeth removed because she had a large ulcer on her chin that wouldn’t heal. The ulcer and a large tumor-like area of inflammatory tissue was right under one of her canine teeth. We removed the growth as well. She’s been healing up fine. She even tries to eat dry food with no teeth but she really likes 9 Lives canned food and the generic Fancy Feast. I’ve tried other varieties and even Hills brand prescription foods and she likes what she likes. My feelings are that ideally she should be eating the best quality food but since she won’t eat that the next best thing is whatever she will eat. As long as it’s not total crap discount bin stuff it should be okay, after all lots of other cats thrive on that food.

13

The only thing our cats like even better than Wellness is Innova Evo. And - have you tried warming it up a little? Sometimes that helps them get interested enough to try it. Or, putting a little bit in their mouth, so they can get a taste.

Good luck with her…

14

For me, personally, the by-products down the list isn’t a deal breaker. Other additives, however, are. Fancy Feast does include things that I’d rather not feed my cats.

15

I’m glad to hear that she could be OK on the Fancy Feast if it comes to that. Maybe it’s more my problem than hers, but looking at the label just makes me uncomfortable. First ingredient in Fancy Feast: “Meat by-products.” First ingredient in Wellness: “Beef.”

When she had the follow up after her dental, the vet showed me that she has swollen areas above both of her top canine teeth, similar to what you described. He didn’t think the teeth needed to be removed or that the swelling was causing her pain (he poked her with Q-Tips and didn’t get any pain responses). He took photos and said she should get regular check ups to keep an eye on the swelling in case it got worse. He pulled two of her “chewing” teeth because of decay, but she seems to have healed from that.

I don’t think the current refusal to eat has anything directly to do with pain (though it’s certainly possible). She went back to nibbling on dry food all on her own, without me having to wet it down or anything. She just doesn’t eat much of it. And when she does eat the wet food she doesn’t cry or hesitate. The only time she cries is right sometimes before she throws up, a little pre-hork yowl.

And just to be clear (as this seemed to be the thing the vets I spoke to never understood), she never throws up after she eats. In other words, she doesn’t throw up food. If she eats, she doesn’t barf. She barfs if she doesn’t eat.

What do you think about mixing foods? Like if I put a little bit of Wellness in with the Fancy Feast and gradually increase the amount of Wellness until she’s just eating that? I always hear about doing that sort of thing with dry food - is there any reason to think it wouldn’t work with wet food too?

Update: I put a fresh can of Fancy Feast is in the bowl. Cat walks into kitchen, sniffs bowl, leaves kitchen. We’ll see how the rest of the night goes.

16

Nutrimalt (by the dudes who make Petromalt) Once they get a taste (and many have to be coaxed with forcing a bit into their mouth) many cats love to lick it off your finger. It adds important vit.amins and has a high fat content. It also seems to act as a appetite stimulant

17

Honestly I think it is more your problem then hers. I have a very ancient mog who has become entirely too fussy about food for my liking. One day she loves this brand/flavour the next day she can’t stand it…actually not even the next day, just later the same day! Supermarketing has become more about what the frigging cat may eat then what the people will eat! If the cat will eat it then that’s what it gets.

A question please? Do you scrutinise the labels of your own food as closely?

18

Yes, actually.

19

In that case ignore me and my cat. We eat what tastes good (and manage to stay in good health)

20

Is she sleeping normally? I know that personally I can be fine without much food or without much sleep, but if I don’t get much sleep and I haven’t eaten in a while I will spend a good 20 minutes kneeling over the toilet vomiting bile. She may be the same way. I know that I am a person and she is a kitty but I figure it can’t hurt to point out the possibility that it might not just be a food issue.