Hello All!

I am SOOO glad I found your message board. I am having serious problems with my cat! I've had him since he was 4 months old (in 1997) and he has just recently stopped eating! In late January I took him to the vet to be boarded while my fiance and I went on vacation. At that time, Jake weighed 21-22 pounds.

In early March, I noticed he had lost some weight, and he had been coughing a lot, so I took him to the vet for a check up. After taking Xrays to check for heart inflammation or signs of asthma, they diagnosed him with a resperatory infection and put him on antibiotics for 2 weeks. At this time, he weighed 16 pounds. During his second week of treatment, he started throwing up every time he was given medicine.The vet advised me to stop gicing him the medicine and bring him in again. His cough was gone, and when I was finally able to get him in to the doctor, they said his respiratory infection had cleared up, but he only weighed 14 pounds. I knew he hadn't been eating, though he acted normal otherwise, so I had them test him for FIV. When they called with those results a few weeks later, they said he tested negative, and I should bring him in for more tests. We ran a WHOLE bunch of tests on him, and a week later they called and said his blood sugar was 458 - an indication that he was diabetic. So I took him in to learn how to give him insulin. When we were there for insulin lessons, he weighed 12 pounds and his blood sugar tested at 101, on the low end of normal for a cat. This killed their diabetic theory. They checked his teeth to make sure there were no problems with them, and they said they looked normal for a 7 year old cat. They said his abdomen felt slightly abnormal, but it could have been because he wasn't eating. I was instructed to bring him home and observe him carefully for a week.

So I'm almost finished with this observation week, and I've noticed a few things:

1. He won't eat his prescription Urinary Tract Infection Prevention food.

2. He WILL eat dog food. (dry Purina Puppy Chow for large dogs)

3. He will eat regular (Meow Mix - the same thing he ate his whole life until he was put on the prescription food) dry cat food for about 30 seconds before walking away from it.

3. He has started to try to eat MY food - I made a sandwich and he nibbled at my bread while I was putting things away; I ate pizza and he nearly clawed my legs off trying to get to it; I ate ice cream and he forced his way into my lap and attempted to force his head into my bowl.

4. He will eat canned cat food forever if I would allow it.

He used to sit by me and watch me eat, but I rarely fed him people food, so he never tried to eat it unless I offered it to him. Now he's going after my food like he's starving, but when I put him beside his food dish, he won't eat at all.

Tonight I mixed some canned food in with his prescription food, and he ate all of the canned food and some of the dry, but he only chewed about every other bite of dry food. Some pieces he was eating whole, and some pieces he simply dropped out of his mouth. When he did chew, he seemed to be making a LOT of noise. He is usually a noisy eater, but he was making noises that sounded to me like he was chewing with his tongue or something (sorry I can't explain it better!)

Around the same time as his initial sickness, he lost a fight with the other male cat in our house. The two of them have been battling for the past year, since my fiance and I moved in together. Usually Jake won all of the fights and was able to intimidate the other male cat, and when I noticed him losing the fight and getting pushed around more by the other male, I attributed it to him being sick. I don't know if it is stress that keeps him from eating, or a combination of stress and an illness or what the problem is!

I need advice!

Has anyone here had similar experiences?

- Jake's Mommy

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