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Cats and eating disorders
Mar. 20th, 2022 01:20 pmEver since the first lockdown in March 2020, we've been trying to limit our grocery expeditions to once every two weeks, an early-morning trip on alternate Mondays.
Two years ago, our cat was content with almost any flavour of minced Hills Science Diet canned food, with a particular fondness for the seafood varieties. As the Science Diet food was unavailable from the grocery store, that meant doing curbside pickup at our local PetSmart, buying two or three cases at a time. We got into the new routine and everything was tickety-boo... for a while.
But then a few months into the pandemic, just after one of our stocking-up excursions, she suddenly decided that the food she'd been perfectly OK with thus far would just.not.do at all.
I was worried, particularly remembering our previous resident feline who had been rather overweight until she suddenly stopped eating and subsequently, despite our and our vet's care and attention, succumbed to end-state liver disease.
The pandemic complicated things, of course. We didn't want to order a whole caseload of some other food, only to discover that she would find the new food equally unappealing. And if she became ill enough to need veterinary attention, that too was much more complicated with pandemic protocols in place. We would be unable to enter the veterinary clinic with her; instead, we would have to wait in the parking lot with an increasingly antsy cat in her carrier until a clinic staff member was available to take her inside.
Our solution, if you can call it that, was to buy a selection of the types of food that the grocery store does stock, and see which ones she would eat. She's now on a diet of Fancy Feast Petites, salmon or ocean whitefish in broth. It may not be the highest-quality catfood going, but at least she'll eat it!
There've been other behavioural changes in her over the course of the pandemic too. She's more clingy, more affectionate, in need of human reassurance. As we start going out more, there's going to be an adjustment period - for all of us.
Two years ago, our cat was content with almost any flavour of minced Hills Science Diet canned food, with a particular fondness for the seafood varieties. As the Science Diet food was unavailable from the grocery store, that meant doing curbside pickup at our local PetSmart, buying two or three cases at a time. We got into the new routine and everything was tickety-boo... for a while.
But then a few months into the pandemic, just after one of our stocking-up excursions, she suddenly decided that the food she'd been perfectly OK with thus far would just.not.do at all.
I was worried, particularly remembering our previous resident feline who had been rather overweight until she suddenly stopped eating and subsequently, despite our and our vet's care and attention, succumbed to end-state liver disease.
The pandemic complicated things, of course. We didn't want to order a whole caseload of some other food, only to discover that she would find the new food equally unappealing. And if she became ill enough to need veterinary attention, that too was much more complicated with pandemic protocols in place. We would be unable to enter the veterinary clinic with her; instead, we would have to wait in the parking lot with an increasingly antsy cat in her carrier until a clinic staff member was available to take her inside.
Our solution, if you can call it that, was to buy a selection of the types of food that the grocery store does stock, and see which ones she would eat. She's now on a diet of Fancy Feast Petites, salmon or ocean whitefish in broth. It may not be the highest-quality catfood going, but at least she'll eat it!
There've been other behavioural changes in her over the course of the pandemic too. She's more clingy, more affectionate, in need of human reassurance. As we start going out more, there's going to be an adjustment period - for all of us.
