Saturday, April 16, 2011

Assisted Feeding

You will probably have times when your cat refuses to eat. Naturally, you must try to address all possible causes of in appetance, such as stomach acid, mouth ulcers and nausea  the suggestions from last two post to make the food seem more appetising. But if all else fails, there are a couple of other things you can try.

Company While Eating


Many pawrents found this way it's helpful. they would sit by cat encouraging us to eat, praising each mouthful. It does work for some cats.

Feeding by Hand


This is the next stage, where you lift the food out of the bowl and encourage your cat to lick it off your finger or a spoon. It can take hours, and your cat will probably drop lots of the food, but many pawrents found this really helped persuade cat to eat.

Syringe (Assisted or Force) Feeding


Finally, you can try what many people refer to as force feeding, but what I prefer to call assisted feeding. This entails placing your cat's food into a syringe and syringing it gently into the cat's mouth. In particular can be made into a mush with water and syringed in easily. Alternatively, you can puree tinned food (prescription or standard food) using a mixer or blender, add water to make it more liquidy (otherwise it is hard to squeeze out of the syringe), then draw it up into a syringe. Using warm water can make the food more attractive to your cat.

The size syringe you should choose depends upon how strong your hands are - the smaller and weaker your hands are, the harder it is to push a larger syringe.

1 comment:

Bryan said...

I have had great success using a syringe before. When Lil' Bit got an URI she stopped eating, worse yet stopped drinking. For being the smallest she normally drinks twice as much as the others, also 3 times as active. On the second day I started giving her water, on the third I started mixing food in with it. Eventually I had to take her to the vet for an overnight stay with an IV solution. She started eating the day after that. I believe if I had not taken the action I did she would have died. Today, 1 1/2 year later she is as active as ever. It wasn't pleasant, she fought the whole time, but she is still alive and healthy.