My best friend’s cat, Margarita, won’t eat. My friend says she thinks it’s been about a month! A week ago, she took Margarita to the vet, who said that her liver is feeling the affects.
The vet said that he didn’t see anything else wrong with her. She stayed at the vet for a week with a feeding tube, then my friend went to pick her up yesterday. The vet says that there are three alternatives if she doesn’t start eating.[list=1][li]Permanent feeding tube, through which my friend would have to feed her.[/li][li]Let her die on her own.[/li][li]Put her to sleep.[/li][/list=1]Obviously, the hope is that she will start eating. So far she has tried all of Margarita’s favorites: tuna, various cat foods including a few with gravy, etc. She won’t eat.
Last night, I told her that I’d ask you guys… If anyone has an idea the vet hasn’t thought of, it would be you.
Idea: new vet? Seriously, there’s got to be something wrong. A cat doesn’t just stop eating for no reason. I don’t know how long a cat can go without food, but a month seems excessive.
Did the vet check for an intestinal blockage of some type?
Margarita might want to try puréeing some of the cat’s favorite foods, since liquids would be considerably easier for the cat to handle than solids. Perhaps she should give chicken broth a shot as well—make sure it’s an okay temperature (not hot enough to burn the cat’s mouth) and dilute it with water to reduce the level of sodium.
When my mom’s cat was dying, she also wouldn’t eat much. My mom found that she could get her to eat babyfood off of her fingers. During this time she was also receiving IV’s to help her failing kidneys. She wasn’t in any pain though. When she did begin to experience pain and have trouble walking, my mom put her to sleep.
As long as she can get her to eat something and she isn’t in pain, I would try to find a way to keep her going. Otherwise, I think the best thing she can do is let her go and put her to sleep.
I’m with booklover on this one. Go to another vet and get a second opinion and perhaps, if the situation merits it, an X-ray to see what’s causing her not to eat.
Has the vet checked her teeth? Maybe a bad cavity or abscess is making it hard to eat.
Sadly, though, the cat may be on the way out. You don’t give its age, but when my cat started experiencing the effects of congestive heart failure, she stopped eating.
My sister’s cat wouldn’t eat and just lay around all the time. It turned out “Morris” was diabetic. They now have to give him shots every day. But he’s eating, gained the weight back and is doing fine.
I second the guess that the cat is having kidney problems or is diabetic. Has your friend noticed any change in the cat’s litterbox habits (peeing more often, drinking more water, etc.)? When animals have kidney problems, sometimes their stomachs are upset and they won’t eat. Another vet visit is definitely in order.
My Ivan dog is starting to be this way. He’s always been a picky eater (we joke that he was a cat in a previous life), but lately it’s getting worse. He doesn’t like the special kidney diet food much, so I sometimes I cook for him and my other geriatric dog. He likes people food, so I cook him hamburgers and eggs, and sometimes feed him by hand.
If nothing she can do gets the cat to start eating, the cat may be telling her it’s time to let her go…
Hold on a minute. If the cat hasn’t eaten for a month it should be pretty skinny. That ought to be noticable, even to a layman.
Is the cat an outdoor-indoor cat? If so it is possible that cat is also living with someone else and eating there. Cats will occasionally have two or more places they go.
There was one case, reported as an amusing anecdote in the newspapers, about the people who decided to put their name and home address on a collar on their cat. The next day an irate man and crying little girl showed up accusing them of trying to steal “their cat.” The cat had made itself at home in both places.
First: get a new vet. Trust me when I say there are a lot of complete idiots who have managed to get through vet school. (Same in any profession. Every class in every discipline has someone who graduated dead last and then couldn’t get hired for a year.)
Two: Yeah, the cat’s liver sure is “feeling the effects.” It’s called fatty liver and it’s what happens to cats who don’t eat regularly or at all. Cats usually die from fatty liver. Sometimes it drags on for weeks or months and then they die. It’s not pretty. It’s a slow and painful death.
Three: Cats don’t stop eating for more than a day unles they are sick.
Four: Cats can be sick a long time before it shows or they stop eating. They as a species are very skilled at hiding their pain and suffering.
It could be any number of things, from easy-to-fix to fatal disease. But if Liz’s vet can’t find anything and essentially has given up, she should find another vet. Are there any teaching hospitals there? Any major university’s vet school? They usually have the best quality of care.
A couple of years ago my mother (who does cat rescue) got a 7 year old female cat from a local impound. Cat had been overweight, but when the owner’s brought it in she stopped eating. Because she had been overweight she was in real danger of having her liver fail (I don’t understand exactly how it works, but it is harder on overweight cats to stop eating then cats who are a normal weight.).
My mother went with the feeding tube route, the cat had it in for about a month. The vet would not have left it in longer than that, if she hadn’t started eating they would have put her down. She is doing great now, she’s been adopted to a nice older couple, and she isn’t fussy about what she eats (she’s on diet food now the poor old fart).
That’s a success story, that is the only time a feeding tube has worked for her. She has tried it 4 other times, and each time the cat did not start eating again, and was put down. I think the reaon it worked in the first case was the cat did not have another medical issue, she had just stopped eating because of stress. Long winded point is she needs to find a vet who can figure out why this cat is not eating, because you can force it all you want, but it won’t help if the cat is sick.
Another thing I haven’t seen mentioned is that a cat won’t eat what it can’t smell…how’s Margarita’s sniffer? Has Liz tried giving her really strong-smelling food?
Her ex-boyfriend had drenched the cat in flea-spray–he’d almost literally drowned it. The vet said the flea spray had seeped into the cat’s bloodstream, and that was all he could taste, so he refused to eat. Fortunately, my sister was able to nurse him back to health, and one of the things she did was smear his favorite foods (tuna, ice cream, and so on) on his nose she he’d have to lick it off.
Like some other posters, my cat started doing the same thing about a year ago and was diagnosed with some sort of acquired pancreatic diabetes. He had to stay at the hospital for a couple of days with an IV. I had to fluidate him via IV for about a week as well as give him insulin shots twice daily, then take him in for another checkup… special food, more shots, and I was supposed to keep a close eye on his eating and drinking habits, base my insulin doses on what I saw, and bring him in for blood tests once every week or 10 days. After about 2 months of this (10 weeks or so since the symptoms first manifested), he was suddenly and mysteriously better. Since then he’s been eating better and looking healthier than he had in a long time. He just turned 14 last month.
So anyway, yeah. Have your friend get a second opinion.
I think you should find another vet. I’m having extreme difficulties with getting my elderly beast to eat but my vet, instead of suggesting the cat be put to sleep, will be giving her an appetite stimulant along with a few other medications she needs for her IBD.