My cat has an eating disorder…

Posted on May 21 in Animals & Pets, personal storiesby TalinaPrint

Jack, the cat that was voted off the island and then welcomed back last summer after he came home with some traumatic injuries is really wearing on our last nerves again. He seriously has some food issues going on. I promise, I am not just being dramatic about it either.

He insists on being the first one in at feeding time and he scarfs tons of food, doesn’t chew it at all and then promptly vomits it all back up about 75-80% of the time. It has been an ongoing issue that we’ve tried to resolve in a number of ways.

First we eliminated dye from the food we give them, which wasn’t an easy feat because almost all food manufactures insist on making food yellow, orange and red instead of the real color of the processed grains that fill the crap food… Plain ole brown. This resulted in nice neutral colored puke to clean up, the bonus was it didn’t stain the carpets but the puking continued.

We then figured the filler dense grain foods were the culprit since cats (and dogs for that matter) are carnivores by nature and commercial pet food is not. We forked out some good money to get purely grain free, all natural food that had no dye in it either. They all went on food strike and left it sitting uneaten until they couldn’t take it anymore. Then Jack scarfed some and still puked.

We’ve also tried a combo of wet and dry food in case the puking was due to improper chewing… You know those wet foods are all shreds or purees anyway, possibly more easily digestible right?

Nope! Both wet food mixed with dry and also purely wet food served without dry food results in the same puking result from the damn cat. Nothing works.

I should also add that feeding time isn’t a eat it or lose it time. The cats are fed once a day but the food sits and lasts them all day so they can graze as they wish, when Jacks isn’t scarfing and barfing it all.

Now I’ve resulted to some more creative trials to test theories. Tonight Jack was not allowed to be the first one in to scarf the food at feeding time. Usually he eats more than his fair share anyway and the pukes it up, making it all go to waste.

This means the other two cats have less food for themselves after Jack’s binge and purge fest and of course since Jack didn’t get to keep anything down the first round he will go back for round two to scarf the remaining food, presumably leaving the other two cats high and dry when they go back to snack later. Did I mention Jack is the biggest cat in the house weighing in at about 22+ lbs? He isn’t starving to death, that is for sure.

Tonight all the cats were beaten off the food bowl as I went in for feeding time. I let the two other cats have free access to the food bowls but only gave Jack a small helping of food, for now. In about and hour or so he will get a bit more and the idea is to slowly get food in his belly while allowing enough time for the presumably unchewed food to digest and settle before we add more food to the tummy. Seems to work too, no barf yet!

Simple concept right? But holy hell is this ridiculous! Who has time to provide hourly snacking sessions to one cat while two other cats reside in the house and get full access to the dispersed food 24/7? I do have humans and chickens and rabbits, a dog and a bird to also care for. My only focus in life is NOT spoon feeding one cat with eating issues.

Can you believe cats have eating disorders? It is true, some are classified with eating disorders by vets. I guess it makes sense but it is also quite ridiculous at the same time… It seems cats that were once left in the wild to fend for themselves (both Jack and Guy were cats we took in off the street at kittens) become programed with this “eat now, eat it all” mentality because in the wild they wont know when or where their next meal will come from.

Somehow they carry this to domestic life with them despite the fact that once they were taken in they’ve never gone hungry. So that is probably where we are with Jack today. Joy! NOPE.

Okay, enough blogging. Off to give Jack a bit more food now while I curse the situation under my breath.