Learn how to get your cat back to food after your cat wont eat or drink. We managed to get our cat eating already, which is great as our obese cat would die from fatty liver when she stops eating.

What you need to know about cat health

You can measure your cat’s health by it eating habits. Or better: you know that something is wrong with the health of your cat when she stops eating. This can be anything from a simple cold, bowel problems, stress or being bitten by another cat and having a bacterial infection.

Miracle cat food

When my cat wont eat nor drink, I straight go to the vet and get myself Hills A/D prescription cat diet food. Hills AD prescription diet has been formulated for the nutritional management of pets recovering from serious illness, accidents and surgery.

So far, even since he was a kitten, Hills A/D prescription cat diet food brought Tiger’s appetite back. He stopped eating:

• when he was a kitten: Siamese kittens need special cat care when it comes to their food in their first year of life
• after he came back from a cat hotel where he got bitten by another cat
• after he jumped from a 4 stories high balcony and broke 3 of his legs

Cat health to worry about

If there is no logical reason why your cat would be stressed or sick, make sure to take your cat to the vet and test for CRF (Chronic Renal Failure or Kidney Disease)? The vet would have done a urinalysis.

Also ask for a separate blood test for hyperthyroidism.

If your cat is obese like mine, then don’t think he can go without food for long.

What happens is that your cat will start breaking down his fat in his liver to get energy. This will be fatal for your cat as she will develop hepatic lipidosis – also called fatty liver disease.

Forced syringe feeding obese cats that wont eat or drink is a must! Again “miracle food” Hills A/D prescription cat diet food is so finely grinded that it can be used for syringe feeding.

How to force feed your cat

Cats have sharp claws and will resist being forced fed…

We always handle our cat with 2:

• wrap him in a large towel and place him between one person’s legs sitting on the floor.
• the other person holds the syringe and squeezes a small amount of slurry into the side of your cat’s mouth.
• wait for your cat to swallow before squeezing in a little more.
• continue until you have fed him all of the slurry.

Do this three times a day until your cat is eating on his own again.

If you tried all of the above and your cat still wont eat or drink, go to the vet immediately!

Learn what to do when your kitten wont eat or drink and understand why it is happening in the first place.

Why your kitten wont eat or drink

Although there are many reasons why your kitten wont eat or drink, the solutions to get it eating are all the same. But let’s think kitty for now:

• some kittens just are fuzzy, our Siamese kitten was in particular
• some kittens are stressed out after been “kidnapped” away from their mother, stressed cats nor kittens have appetite
• some kittens only touch the food their previous owner was giving to them
• some kittens don’t know what food is, especially the ones that are taken away from the mother too early

What to do when your kitten wont eat or drink

When you just got your kitten, try to make it at least stressed as possible. Give your kitten a room to herself shut off from the rest of the house with food and water and a litter box.

• Find out from the previous owner what they were feeding your kitten.
• Mostly kittens prefer wet food to dry food, so if you only have wet food, then make it mushy adding some water.
• Some kittens you need to teach what food is. Mix the wet food with a little bit of water and try putting a little bit in his mouth by the gum. Try putting a bit of canned food on his nose and see if he licks it off. After tasting the food, your kitten might want more.
• Some kittens will be ok when you bottle feed them wet food with water.
• Buy some kitten milk from your pet shop when your kitten is not weaned properly yet.
• Try getting Purina Kitten Chow in the yellow bag. Some people call it kitty candy. Try softening some in a little warm water until soft. Leave in the water so it will have a crunchy flavor.

Your last resort: try Hills A/D wet prescription diet, I call it cat miracle food.

What not to do when your kitten wont eat or drink

If your kitten is less than 6 months old: don’t feed it any dairy products, don’t feed your kitten regular milk: it is really bad for your kitten’s digestive system.

Kitten wont eat or drink summarized

Most kittens won’t eat for the first 24 hours when you bring them home. They are stressed and trying to learn the new environment. If your kitten wont eat or drink after 2 days, call your vet or an experienced kitten lover.

My advice when your cat wont eat or drink based on what happened with my cat. When I came back from holiday and picked up my cat from the pet care hotel, my cat didn’t want to eat nor drink anymore. We all know that cats don’t drink that much, but when an obese cat like mine stops eating, it’s twice alarming for her cat health:

1. because any time your cat stops eating, something is wrong
2. fat cats start using up their fat when not eating, which leads to death of fatty liver disease.

First we thought our cat was healthy but only grumpy because we dropped her of at the pet hotel for 2 weeks. So we gave her some extra loving care but nothing changed.

• We noticed our cat going into hiding mode, only to pretend very healthy when a family member dropped by. This is typical cat behavior: they retreat when they are sick but when they are spotted, they will pretend that they are as healthy as ever as a surviving tactic not to get attacked by other predators.
• We also noticed that her fur looked a but strange and that she had a little wound on top of her head.

So we took our cat to the vet.

Luckily our vet is a real cat lover, so she noticed on the spot that the wound was a bite-mark of another cat.

After more examination, the vet found some critters in our cat’s fur and our cat’s skin was reacting in an allergic manner to the critters.

She prescribed antibiotics and gave us a can of Hills A/D prescription diet food.

As usual, our cat couldn’t resist the A/D food but for sure we are not going to put our cat at that particular pet care hotel anymore.

We will post more tips and tricks on this site how to intervene when your cat wont eat or drink.