When your cat won’t eat, it’s a worrying time. What should you do? Is it a time to panic or is it safe to watch and wait?
With the huge variety of people around, everyone has a different view point, most of which is more about you and your fears. So this article aims to create an objective and balanced view.
Three Common Reasons Cats Won’t Eat
The Diet
Anyone who has ever had the pleasure of living with cats knows well that they are finicky, fussy eaters. And there’s a very good reason for this.
Commercial cat food is made on the cheap, whatever you pay for it. It’s high in plant based food, substandard, low quality meat (often from a rendering plant) and chemicals to preserve, flavour, mask the poor quality, entice, colour, etc.
Yet cats are carnivores. TRUE CARNIVORES. Carnivores have no ability to digest or assimilate plant based food. Number one failure of the commercial cat food industry.
True carnivores are not carrion feeders (dogs are omnivores at the carnivore end of the scale). True carnivores kill and immediately eat their kill. Or within a short time, if they have to drag it away to a safe place where competitors can’t steal it from them.
Commercial cat food sources its raw materials from the rejects of the human meat industry, dead or diseased animals, road kill, etc. In fact all the animal products that end up in rendering plants, all decaying. Number two failure of the commercial cat food industry.
All members of the cat, or feline family are highly sensitives beings. This means they are badly affected by the synthetic chemicals used in commercial cat food. Much more so than the average human. Number three failure of the commercial cat food industry.
There is more, but you probably have the gist of the idea by now.
A Health Issue – Either Acute or Chronic
A cat won’t eat when they have a medium to serious health issue. Digestion takes up a huge amount of energy, and when there is a health issue, that energy is needed elsewhere.
In an acute (or short lived) condition, this lack of appetite may last a day or two. Cats have wonderful healing abilities given the right conditions. They like peace and quiet, where they’ll sleep for long periods and emerge just fine.
In chronic (lasts for life) health conditions, cats are more likely to have a reduced appetite and to be more fussy. They can’t fast forever, so just reduce the amount.
Ingested Poison
Cats do need to have grass and some herbs available which they use as medicine. When they’re not well, they’ll eat the grass or herb, then vomit it up. After that, they’ll feel much better.
When grass or herbs are not available to cats, they are likely to graze on any green plant in the hope of some relief. This is when they can make matters worse by ingesting a poisonous plant. So the motto here is always have, at the very least, some grass available for your cat, which will also need care and attention.
When a cat has ingested poison such as rat poison or perhaps been exposed to the deadly agricultural poison, glyphosate, this is an emergency. Rat poison causes internal bleeding, leading to death. Both vets and homeopaths can treat rat poison well as long as it isn’t well developed.
Glyphosate is a different matter and only homeopaths may have success with this.
Holistic Solutions When A Cat Won’t Eat
Number one priority is to get the diet right for their species. For many cats, this is embraced fully and enthusiastically, with an air of ‘what took you so long’, despite a short (and often worrying) de-tox period that inevitably follows.
For other cats, they can be more stubborn, refusing to give up the addictive but non nutritious dry cat food. Whether this has more to do with the human’s reluctance to change than the cat’s stubbornness is up for debate, but there seems to be a strong correlation. Help may be needed here.
Just feeding a quality, balanced raw diet can have a profound and beneficial effect on the health of your cat. Poor health slips away, never to return.
However, there are times when extra help is needed. When you’re sure that no poison has been ingested, then a watch and wait period can be helpful. Leave your cat in peace. Allow them to sleep, but keep an eye out. One vet I had respect for (I don’t for many) suggested four days as the maximum time to leave any animal. If they don’t recover in that time, then help is needed.
Instead of using a vet, who has been well trained by the pharmaceutical industry, it’s better to use an holistic health care system such as homeopathy. With good homeopathic treatment, the body is supported instead of suppressed.
The combination of a species specific diet and the holistic health care of homeopathy is, in the author’s opinion, unbeatable in true, lasting good health. It’s efficient, elegant, very affordable and doesn’t involve any trauma or forced procedures.
When your cat won’t eat, don’t panic. They can go a long time without food, and come to no harm. Despite vets claim to the contrary. Instead, take an objective view and try to work out the reasons, which will offer you the best solutions.
