My Hunger Strike Cat

Ok, if you've read some of my blogs you know Vicktor will eat anything, my Ginger on the other hand is just the opposite. She's tiny and finicky, and as she is getting older it's getting worse. It may be her sense of smell that's not up to par, but we are working on it. It's making me nervous for her health.

She stopped eating for a day last week and we thought maybe she's too hot (it was 90 degrees outside), then it cooled off and she still didn't eat. This is a problem because she's a really small cat to begin with. At her biggest she was 6 lbs.

Uh-oh time for a vet visit. We are trying to rule out any pain or sickness. They did a physical exam and couldn't find anything wrong except that she's dehydrated. We went with the conservative route and had them give her an appetite stimulant and inject her with fluids. It's the saddest thing to see such a tiny cat with fluids, she looks like the Hunchback of Notre Dame, and NO I didn't take a picture that's cruel and embarrassing for her.

So now we wait. She normally eats a little wet food and dry food with a crushed Lysine table in the wet food, for her eye lesions, twice a day. We rotate foods around so she doesn't get too picky, but this is very stressful.

Here's the checklist of food for when Ginger doesn't eat (this has happened before):

1. Maybe she doesn't like the cat food, so we've been trying others. She gobbled up some Fancy Feast shrimp, but only for a day. She's over that now.

2. Maybe she wants the cat food heated, so we tried that. She doesn't like that.

3. We thought maybe she doesn't like the plate the food is on, so we changed that. From ceramic to plastic saucers. Eh, this didn't make much difference.

4. We were giving her a ground up Lysine tablet in her wet food, we thought maybe she could taste it, so we stopped doing that. She still won't touch the wet cat food.

5. We cooked up some chicken and shredded it for her. She's not interested. (Note: Make sure if you give your cat people food it's not exclusive. They need nutrients that cat food can provide. This goes for #6, #8 & #9)

6. You can try tuna fish/ tuna juice. Ginger never liked it, they say it works for some cats.

7. To get her to eat anything I gave her some cat treats. She ate those. You're not supposed to give them that many, but at this point she's eating something, so that's good.

8. We tried some meat flavored baby food. She ate some of it.

9. I made her runny eggs which are her favorite. She didn't even look at them.

I really hope this doesn't lead to kidney or liver problems. My Ginger is my baby. I guess we are lucky to have Vicktor. He'll be happy to eat her leftovers.