Coaxing a cat with a sore mouth to eat?

January 9, 2016 7:46 PM

So this was me, but unfortunately I don't think I will have to worry about his long term companion. My surviving cat was *also* diagnosed with a different cancer. His was operable, and the healing process is okay, but he doesn't want to eat. I have 48 hours to get him eating normally before we go to a feeding tube. You are not my vet. My vet sees him so often he is officially sick of both of us, but maybe you have been successful in a similar case? Details inside.

tl;dr: 13 year old cat recovering from extensive oral surgery. He has some swelling from the healing process, and it's making eating painful with anything except mush. He doesn't like mush. We're in risky territory if he goes on not eating. Any tips for helping tempt him?

At the time my other cat died, we had been monitoring the old guy for what looked like an infected tooth. He has a long history of gingivitis/stomatitis and I brush his teeth daily. The vet had been in to see it a number of times, was of the opinion it was healing, but we were keeping an eye on it in case it caused him pain.

However, it didn't heal, and when we took a look at it right before Christmas it was clearly getting worse. They took out the tooth and did a biopsy of the surrounding tissue since it looked suspiciously infected. Diagnosis of SCC, caught very early.

They got the whole tumor in the biopsy, with clean but narrow margins. However, because SCC is so locally aggressive, my vets recommended that we operate more aggressively, to clear a 1cm margin around the site. Given his age, I agonised over the choices, but my vet sincerely believed that this was the best solution and would buy him at least some pain free months. So he was operated on last Monday to remove three more teeth and a piece of his jaw. The surgery went well, and he was home the same day.

Initially the healing process was smooth and he started eating again on his own. Unfortunately on Thursday there was extensive swelling at the site. At first they thought he lost a stitch but it seems this is not the case. He may have banged his jaw into something in an effort to get rid of the cone. He ate on Thursday. On Friday I could only coax him to eat a few bites, and those were clearly painful. The vet came over last night (they do house calls, which is wonderful!) and gave him a shot of Metacam to see if they could bring down the swelling (I know. But if he lives long enough to have CRF issues, then we'll deal with it then. Last panel showed his kidneys are fine.) Last night after the shot he ate a decent amount of the A/D, but this morning he's turning up his nose at everything again.

He's also currently taking Buprenorphine.

He loves tuna, doesn't care for chicken. The biggest issue is he really doesn't like wet food, but because of his jaw he can't have dry food for another few weeks. The pain seems to be less if I food process everything, but then he doesn't like it. I can tell he's still hungry from the way he was begging for greenies, but wet food just isn't interesting. I can syringe feed him to a limited degree, but it isn't really a long term solution. Any ideas for what might tempt him?

(By the way, before anyone suggests putting him down, he is a generally healthy cat and even now has a good quality of life. As he recovers from the surgery he is drinking, cuddling and playing. He just finds it too painful to eat.)

posted by frumiousb to Pets & Animals (32 answers total)

Best answer: Have you tried just feeding him canned tuna? Or turkey baby food (the ingredients should be just ground turkey and water, nothing else)? Neither is nutritionally complete for cats in the long-term, but it's fine if it will get him to eat for a while.

If that doesn't work, nutri-cal is better than nothing.
posted by Violet Hour at 8:02 PM on January 9, 2016 [3 favorites]

Best answer: How about a delicious tuna steak? My cats have been delighted with both raw tuna and lightly seared tuna, I'd cube it in tiny cubes and perhaps warm it up to make it extra stinky.

The stinkier the better. You could even drizzle sardine juice over the tuna (and if your cat and your household haven't been introduced to the aromatic delight which is slightly warmed canned sardines, this may be a winning proposition as well). Sometimes sticking it in the microwave for 10 seconds helps? And perhaps a new location that he doesn't associate with the recent battles over eating?

I'm so, so sorry to hear of your second cat falling ill - we lost our beloved FIV+ cat this summer to lymphoma and don't know what I'd have done without our other puffball.
posted by arnicae at 8:09 PM on January 9, 2016 [2 favorites]

Definitely please try canned tuna. One of our cats (who we lost this week, actually, and are still very much grieving) would go NUTS any time my husband opened a can of tuna. She often got it as a special treat.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:26 PM on January 9, 2016 [2 favorites]

Have you tried hydrating the dry food into a mush? I know you said he doesn't like wet food but this would at least smell like what he's used to eating.

Turkey baby food was our go to with a very ill cat with few teeth. Also really gross stinky soft cat treats you get from the grocery store. You could crumble those up.

Also when we were desperate I would hand feed them and they'd lick the food off my fingers. I think they associated food from our hands as treats and would always be more receptive. Good luck.
posted by oneear at 8:30 PM on January 9, 2016 [2 favorites]

Baby food, sometimes licked off my finger, was what worked for my old cat after her oral surgery. Some flavors were a no-go, but we kept trying and eventually found a few that she liked -- including, surprisingly, some meat/veggie combos.
posted by peakcomm at 9:01 PM on January 9, 2016

Best answer: This webpage, which has a great deal of information about persuading cats to eat, might be helpful.

If you try baby food, check the label to make sure their is no onion in the ingredients.

Also -- I know you are asking for suggestions that do not involve calling the vet, but it might be worth it to ask if he could prescribe an appetite stimulant, like cyproheptadine or mirtazapine. The mirtazapine especially can cause agitation (which is why some cat owners call it "meowzapine") but boy does it work to get cats to eat. With two of our cats who needed appetite stimulant medication for brief periods, we started with a very low dose, to minimize the agitation. It still worked well to stimulate the appetite.
posted by merejane at 9:06 PM on January 9, 2016 [6 favorites]

Dress his A/d with a bit of clam juice. In my grocery store it is with the cocktail mixers.
posted by Pleased_As_Punch at 9:24 PM on January 9, 2016 [1 favorite]

Best answer: If I were desperate, I might try:

- mushed up tuna, so it was similar in texture to high-quality moist food (the paté style), but was entirely tuna;

- mushed up crab, which is very easy to mash and might be delightful to him (only if I were pretty desperate, if he's never ever had it before, just in case he had some kind of weird food allergy)

- cream.
posted by amtho at 9:36 PM on January 9, 2016 [2 favorites]

Deli meat, as awful as it is, got my cat eating during a course of antibiotics. I've also had luck with getting a non-wet-cat-good-eater to eat Weruva cat food, the shredded chicken kind. Tucks into it.
posted by Nyx at 9:37 PM on January 9, 2016

If it were me, I'd make the mush smell as feline-appealing as possible. Strong smelling fish juice, that sort of thing. Two of my cats have horrible issues with their teeth (well, not any more since they've had them all taken out) but I'm pretty confident it's screwed with their sense of smell -- their sinus cavity isn't too far away.
posted by cgg at 9:39 PM on January 9, 2016

Also -- one other trick... smear the mush on his paws. Hopefully his desire to clean himself will give him a taste and he'll go back for more.
posted by cgg at 9:43 PM on January 9, 2016 [2 favorites]

Heavy whipping cream. Three tablespoons at a time. Plain Greek yogurt, see if kitty will try that. Raw egg stirred up, half an egg at a time. Canned mackerel is oilier than tuna, more silky.
posted by Oyéah at 9:49 PM on January 9, 2016 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Friskies canned tuna cat food blended fine. Fancy Feast broths. He may be so hungry that you'll need to syringe feed him for a day or two to get him back to eating on his own.
posted by irisclara at 10:05 PM on January 9, 2016

When my 13 year old cat had tooth infection, it was wet food + Nutrical + water + a syringe for days. I also smeared it on his paws but he was pretty out of it from pain and just got it all over himself/the floor.

I was worried he would starve to death but force feeding for a week got him on the mend enough to eat on his own.
posted by tippy at 10:48 PM on January 9, 2016

Would he go for pulverized/ground-up dry food? Add a tiny bit of water so it'll stick together enough to get into him, and the taste/texture should be close to his old preferred food.

My sister did this for her grief-stricken cat, after two or three weeks of finger-feeding him baby food. She also gave him shredded bits of deli meat, and all the tuna juice he'd consume. And the first week of "no seriously it's time for solid dry food" was still him eating soft treats rather than his regular kibble.
posted by SMPA at 10:56 PM on January 9, 2016

Also -- I know you are asking for suggestions that do not involve calling the vet, but it might be worth it to ask if he could prescribe an appetite stimulant, like cyproheptadine or mirtazapine. The mirtazapine especially can cause agitation (which is why some cat owners call it "meowzapine") but boy does it work to get cats to eat. With two of our cats who needed appetite stimulant medication for brief periods, we started with a very low dose, to minimize the agitation. It still worked well to stimulate the appetite.

Same with my cat back in the day.

I'd strongly suggest call the vet and pick up some appetite stimulants, if Operation Tuna doesn't work.
posted by sebastienbailard at 11:33 PM on January 9, 2016 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Thanks for the answers so far. I'll ask them about the mirtazapine. I suspect that the reason they don't prescribe it is that he actually does want to eat-- it's just that it hurts him. But it's a good suggestion, and I'll ask in the morning. I think I actually still have some from my other cat.

I've tried a few of the suggestions-- chopping up canned tuna finely was a winner, and I guess he ate 1/4-1/3 of a can. I'm a little bit wary of the very high salt content given all the knocks his kidney has had lately with the anaesthesia and all, but if it must, it must.

Unfortunately, I couldn't get him interested in other food this evening, so I fell back on syringe feeding and the a/d. I tried cream and greek yogurt and only got outraged expressions for my trouble. (He's never eaten dairy). I'll keep feeding him the a/d tonight. It hurts him, and I hate to do it. But it hurts him less than a feeding tube will, I suspect.
posted by frumiousb at 2:25 AM on January 10, 2016

Response by poster: (Though I am now extremely unpopular in the house.)
posted by frumiousb at 2:26 AM on January 10, 2016 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Nutrical doesn't seem to be available in Hong Kong, by the way. What do you think about kitten food as a substitute?
posted by frumiousb at 2:30 AM on January 10, 2016

My cat had surgery (a perineal urethrostomy) a few months ago and we needed to immediately switch from dry food to a prescription wet diet. We were having similar problems with him not eating. At best, he'd take a few licks of wet food blended with a tablespoon of water when it was on my finger or smeared on his paw.

I found out about Purina FortiFlora, which is a powdered supplement for cats with diarrhea. It is a probiotic with animal digest to make it palatable to cats. Lots of dry cat food and cat treats like Tempations also have animal digest as an ingredient. The treats can be crushed and sprinkled on food to transition a cat from dry to wet food.

With my cat, the first few days were spent having him lick wet food (with sprinkled Tempations) off my finger, then we graduated with him licking the food off a teaspoon. I basically spent a week focused on feeding my cat this way. After the second week, he started eating the prescription wet food from a bowl without a problem. But he didn't have a sore mouth, just cranky after surgery and not getting his favorite dry cat food.

Good luck and hope this helps!
posted by bCat at 3:49 AM on January 10, 2016 [1 favorite]

Is there low salt tuna? Or tuna in spring water?

Good luck with your kitty! He's a beauty!
posted by persona au gratin at 3:50 AM on January 10, 2016 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Is kitten milk replacement available where you are? It's pretty calorie dense; you can serve it as a liquid or just put the powder directly into the tuna.
posted by jeather at 5:46 AM on January 10, 2016 [3 favorites]

My vet-tech kid says it may help to increase potential food novelty if every hour or so you put the tuna and other special kitty treats in different places around the house. She says because cats are weird they can form a negative association that food in a certain place equals pain and not want to eat in that place.

Mixing up the location of the food can help and also depending on how your cat reacts, getting them slightly stoned on catnip is a good idea. She also suggests a calming collar to reduce cat anxiety.
posted by yes I said yes I will Yes at 6:49 AM on January 10, 2016 [3 favorites]

Full fat Greek yogurt was the only thing my Zoe would eat when her mouth was hurting. If you can find Fage brand, it's the creamiest.
posted by MexicanYenta at 7:16 AM on January 10, 2016

Best answer: I know you said he doesn't like wet food but have you tried … everything? Seriously, when Flip had to switch to an exclusively wet diet after crystals in his urine, we had to spend like a month trying different wet foods on both him and his sister until we found something they'd both eat. We went to every fancy pet store in town, it felt like, and we bought two cans of everything grain free so we had extra data points (and if a food appeared promising we'd then go buy a few more cans to see how regular feeding worked). And yeah, it turned out at least one of them didn't like chicken, and whenever one cat would stop eating, the other would too. This led to a different, and much worse, health problem, because we didn't notice Flip wasn't eating until it was too late (hepatic lipidosis, tube feeding for a month, etc).

And also they literally seem to get bored. The folklore says cats will happily eat the same food for every meal, but ours won't, so we have two different foods we alternate on a schedule. Now they get four meals of beef & chicken (which is fine even though chicken alone isn't), followed by one meal of tuna, which doesn't even come in the same size can, and they'll eat the minced but not the chopped, but hey I did a spreadsheet of serving sizes and calorie counts and two years after the tube feeding Flip is still healthy.

In conclusion, cats are a land of contrasts, and you should try basically every decent wet food you can get your hands on and maybe don't be afraid to present different foods to prevent boredom/complacency/whatever.
posted by fedward at 8:19 AM on January 10, 2016 [3 favorites]

Could you buy uncooked tuna, cook it yourself, then mush it up? Then you could control the salt content.

(Salt is sometimes used to get cats to drink more, though. Of course you can add water to the tuna too.)
posted by amtho at 8:53 AM on January 10, 2016

Best answer: It hurts him, and I hate to do it. But it hurts him less than a feeding tube will, I suspect.

I just want to say, a feeding tube wouldn't actually be the worst thing, not by a long shot. My kitty has one down her nose for a few days after she stopped eating and it didn't bother her at all. The doctor at the vet hospital said that's almost always the way of things. If she hasn't started eating on her own, we were definitely ready to have them place a tube in her neck for long-term health. I think it's easy to get caught up on how much feeding tubes suck for humans and are often associated with end-of-life care, and that's just not what they mean for cats.
posted by teremala at 10:05 AM on January 10, 2016 [4 favorites]

Just chiming in to second what teremala said, about feeding tubes not being all that bad. It's a fair amount of work, time-wise, for the human, because you need to get the food into the tube slowly. But that might not be much worse than syringe feeding, and might even be easier. In any case, it would totally eliminate the painful eating, since the mouth is bypassed altogether. I have had one cat on a feeding tube (for four months!) and he had no problem with it at all.
posted by merejane at 12:15 PM on January 10, 2016 [2 favorites]

What do you think about kitten food as a substitute?

Kitten food is more calorically dense than regular cat food but less than nutrical. If he'll eat it, great, just feed him kitten food.
posted by Violet Hour at 12:57 PM on January 10, 2016

Response by poster: Well, I've gotten 45 grams of tuna, 1 foil pack of Almo Nature Jelly (big hit!), and some Whiskas down him. And then I supplemented that with 1/3-1/2 can of A/D. I'm a little bit afraid to give him too much too fast.

Regarding the tube, it's not the tube itself I'm worried about, it's the vet. He is not a very good cat, and any visit to the vet is horribly traumatic for him. He has to be sedated, heavily, before they can do anything (turns into an angry 16+ pounds of NO) and because he's so violent he has to be given ketamine rather than one of the lighter sedatives. (Completely seriously violent-- a few years ago, he was at the vet doing a miserable teddy bear imitation in his cage. Despite my warning, the new vet assistant tried to help him by putting her finger in his cage to pet him and he nearly removed the tip of her thumb.) It takes him days to recover from a vet trip, and since he's already weak, I'd like to avoid it.
posted by frumiousb at 3:37 PM on January 10, 2016 [4 favorites]

When ours was experiencing fatty liver disease, we were syringe feeding at home for weeks. Cat wrapped in towel, other person fed the a/d. We would put out the fun stuff like warm turkey and tuna for him to choose if he wanted, but he was guaranteed to get filled up by syringe regularly. It worked and he ultimately began eating again of his own volition. I think our method worked partially because we didn't force the tastes he LIKED into him; only the nasty a/d "soup" went in.
Stringing also allows you to get the meds in relatively easily.
Wil be thinking of you, it is a tough run.
posted by NorthernAutumn at 9:21 PM on January 10, 2016 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: In case anyone is following this still, he's now eating enough on his own to avoid fatty liver disease so I have stopped syringe feeding. Thanks to all the suggestions; they really helped. In case anyone else is looking for suggestions, the bff Best Feline Friend food pouches prove to be the biggest hit in the kitty household. He was willing to eat those even when it hurt. Specifically, tuna/lamb luvya flavor.
posted by frumiousb at 9:06 PM on January 12, 2016 [6 favorites]