Pita!!!

[want4rain]

i spend MORE time feeding ONE cat than i do all 4 of my other furry pets AND my fish combined!!!!

will he eventually get hungry enough to work on eating enough if i just let him fend for himself??

right now if i just toss 4 bowls on the floor he will sit in a corner and sulk for whatever stupid Shadow reason he can think of.

currently i am wrestling him into a room he doesnt want to be in (until he gets in there and starts eating) and i mean WRESTLE!!! him in there... he is runnign out the door befor ei can get to it and shut him in there. my only other alternative is to jjust let him get hungry. ive seen him go up to 3 days with only a few bites before i decided to lock him up to eat.

he either refuses or pukes up everything but chicken meat, sometimes liver/hearts will go down but he is picky and he likes eggs...

honestly?? i think the stupid head would starve himself rather than make any sort of reasonable move towards feeding himself. what ever happened to self preservation?!?!

can i just expect him to eventually get over whatever silly little inhibitions he has and just eat if he gets hungry enough??? i cant take much more of this jumping through hoops to get him TO EAT TO STAY ALIVE!!! im abotu ready to tell him if he wants to die that bad WHO AM I TO FORCE FEED HIM!!! this has been MONTHS of me and my husband agonizing over this stupid cats... issues. i can almost hear the other cats say "dude... you dont want it?? ill eat it... scoot on over and give me some room."

UG!!!

he has had crystals before so kibble (which is what he wants and has NOT had in more than 4 months) is out of the question. to him, raw and homemade and wet are all as evil. i can say this, if he wants to eat kibble that bad he will starve himself to death over it, fine. ill feed him kibble but i REFUSE to take care of a stupid crystals bill. if he wants to die of the most agonizing peeing death ever FINE!!! since he knows SOOOOOO MUCH BETTER than i do..... DEATH BY PAINFUL PEEING IT IS!!!

am i seeing this too black and white?? is 4 months not long enough of wrestling with him to get him to see raw is the only kind of food he is ever ever going to get again?? am i missing somethign here?? is kibble a reasonable alternative? where do you draw the line and say you are a stinkin slave to your pet?? did i mention this is the same cat who randomly crawls up my back with all 16 of his MAGNIFICENT claws?? i had a vested interest in him loosing weight. i feel like ive been fighting a war with him for ever. he wants OUT. i spend at least twice a month outside half the night calling for him because he has to run as far as he can as quickly as possible. which is why i only feed them RIGHT before bed.... i just dont know what to do with him. he has been a royal pain in the butt, as contrary as a member of this family can be. im half minded to give him what he wants if he knows so much. *sigh*

im going to bed in abotu 10 minutes... after i let him out of his room sothe other cats can eat the 50% of his food he didnt eat.

-ash

[rainbow]

Is this another one of your weird sense of humour posts? Because I really can't see how anyone can feel this way about one of their pets.

[chico2]

I think W4R is just frustrated and worried since the cat won't eat,her bark worse than her bite
I would not insist this cat has to eat homemade food,cats can starve themselves and become sick.
Could he possibly feel your stress and be less likely to eat??
I know Chico is a little stressed at feedingtime,worried Vinnie will come and eat his food,so I sit with Chico on the floor,kind of protecting him and it works.
He does not eat much at one time,but keeps coming back for more,as log as I rescue the dish from Vinnies roving eyes

[clm]

Is there any canned cat food that he will eat....even the more questionable ones, like Fancy Feast. It's all my cats will eat, that and friskies wet, I don't argue with them, they get Orijen dry and the canned food they'll eat.
Now for the dry food....not a good thing for male cats especially anyway, but maybe as a little treat on the side of his can of food would help.

Cindy

[want4rain]

thanks Chico, its morning and im not quite so mad but i had nightmares about Shadow wasting away like Stephen Kings- Thinner book.

i just dont know what to do about him. he has had crystals before. everything ive ever read about it says kibble is the worse thing you can feed them. on top of that he had a totally unfixable weight problem when on kibble.

id have to say 3 of 7 days in a week he eats without needing to go in the other room. the other 4 he just sits there and looks at the commotion of eating with total distain. its exactly the same thing he ate yesterday... the day before that and all other days. it started out with him beign that way and then i owuld coax him into the front hallway to eat because i figured he was just too shy to spend the time eating it with Baby Girl and Frances, both are quiter pro active about eating!! he would spend 15 to 20 minutes eating roughly 50% of his food along with a good long drink of the juices. i was happy with that!

then it turned into coaxing wouldnt get him into the hall. so i would pick him up, sit with him, pet him for a bit as an apology and he would eat a bit of his food and be done.

THEN it turned into him running from me when i would go get him to eat. so i would ahve to chase him UP stairs to get him to go eat his own food.

i spent a week just putting his food down to eat and locking Frances and Baby Girl up but after an hour he wouldnt touch it and if his food isnt PERFECTLY fresh he wont eat it either. of 7 days he only ate every other one. he didnt mind drinking his juices though.

there are a few other phases of feeding needs with the other cats which have all resolved themselves. im convinced Shadow would rather starve than eat this. which i dont even think he has a problem with the FOOD really... im not sure what gives me the impression he likes it?? ive tried all sorts of ways to prepare it, he does NOT like it cold so i warm them all up, he doesnt like it unless its FRESH FRESH FRESH!! so we prepare everything the day we get it and freeze it.

Baby Girl and Frances are both very active in eating. they wont hesitate to go steal the other cats foods which is a total reverse of what Baby Girl ate like when we use to feed kibble. Hunter and Shadow stole her food all the time.

now Shadow wont hesitate to chase Mister off... which he isnt allowed into where they eat while they eat often but once or twice he has managed to weasel in there.

anyways, we have tried every trick in the book, jumped through every hoop... will he really starve himself rather than eat this? i mean, for fear of sounding cruel, Frances came to us STARVED and will practically eat anythign that hits the floor. will Shadow eventually get hungry enough to get over this silliness?? or will he really starve himself to death over it? am i putting too much weight on the crystals issue?? if i start feeding kibble will he die of crystals issues?? id hate to regress back to something like Hills because hes fat, has crystals and refuses to eat healthy food.

when a kid refuses to eat whats for dinner, you dont beg, plead and coax them into eating. you send them to bed hungry. they wake up the next mornign starving, eat a good breakfast and go on their merry way. that evening they know they have a choice to face, eating what mom made for dinner or go to bed hungry.

will Shadow eventually get that lesson?!! does he really only need a little bit off food? he isnt TOO thin but he is pretty thin compared to what he was 2 years ago. he sleeps a fair bit but probably less than he did 2 years ago.

its hard not having a vets support with raw.

after a 50yo's birthday party.... a 2yo's birthday party, wrangling Jeffreys teething, Cailyns 500 million questions, pulling 5 splinters, feeling guilty over leaving Mister up a fair bit of the day(which means compensating by spending what time i could outside with him), folding 6 loads of laundry on TOP of all of the daily usuals like finding out i didnt thaw food for the cats (which means saving energy and thawing on the counter for 3 hours OR wasting hot water by soaking it in the sink) and then having Shadow snub food after all but begging him to eat was just that one straw too many.

-ash

[want4rain]

Originally Posted by clm

Is there any canned cat food that he will eat....even the more questionable ones, like Fancy Feast. It's all my cats will eat, that and friskies wet, I don't argue with them, they get Orijen dry and the canned food they'll eat.

nope, we ahve tried several different kinds and really... after 5 different brands, 20 different flavors i think they are all just as bad to him. aside from that, its a difference between spending $0.45 on raw per cat and $2.00 for canned. we have also tried the home made thing, no go there either.

Now for the dry food....not a good thing for male cats especially anyway, but maybe as a little treat on the side of his can of food would help.

Cindy

what can i say, he is a dork. i tried that and he went on a total hunger strike. we ahve taken ALL of the dry food out of the house other than what we were trying with Mister for a bit there. Shadow was chasing Mister off from his bowl to eat his food

one thing we havent tried is feeding the same yuck we feed Mister, who gets a bowl of oatmeal, yogurt and other leftovers from the fridge (chopped up carrots, cucumbers, broccoli and lettuce, apples and other fruits and veggies cooked really well.) who knows, maybe his body is so use to eating thigns besides meat?? he still gets cereal from Jeffrey throwing on the floor. i give him lettuce at least every other day and peas but really not enough to make much of an impact on his HUNGER.

i dont know, managing a house of 9 free roaming life forms.... to have one of them refuse to eat whats good for him.... *sigh*

-ash

[Jim Hall]

I feel your pain I ve been there with a few cats before

Have u tried feeding shadow first? or feeding him only hwen he begs for it ?

Also try another kind of dish and make sure the area and bowl are very clean

I has a kit a few years ago that had to have a spotless place to eat and a very very clean bowl.
i dont think that a cat will starve itself but he may get sick from not eating enough.
I dont know what else to say except, gee arent fish a
lot easier?

[Jim Hall]

Originally Posted by rainbow

Is this another one of your weird sense of humour posts? Because I really can't see how anyone can feel this way about one of their pets.

Oh I can i've been there with a few cats

[want4rain]

when Jeffrey was only a few months old he had a sleeping problem. as in he had a issue with WHEN. i remember he woke up (again) at 2am (you know, just enough time to fall asleep??) and my poor exhausted husband got up with him that time..... through the monitor i heard him up stairs asking rather frusteratedly 'what the hell did you eat?! what did i do in a past life time to deserve this kind of treatment!!! do you HATE ME OR SOMETHING?!'

i politely told him when he came back down that i appreciated him gettign up with Jeffrey but if he really felt the need to say mean things, say it sweetly. come to find out he pooped EVERYWHERE so Chris has to not only clean him up but pull all of the sheets off, sanitize the bed... replace the sheets (which is difficult at best).... 90 minutes later he came back to bed.


we have 4 different types of bowls/plates(hand me downs!!), i mop the floor daily (because we ahve one who drags his food around) and im not sure what feeding him first woudl accomplish. by feeding everyone at the same time, the other 3 are occupied for a few minutes before they go roaming to find HIS food. i also tried just feeding off the floor for a few weeks which didnt have any sort of impact.

thanks again Jim, it feels like im a terrible pet abuser sometimes. you know, like jumping through hoops should be a pleasure when you are exhausted instead of the headache it often feels like. like smiling while im doing it isnt enough if im really screaming in frustration in my head. maybe i should FEEL the smile too?? am i really one of those people who 'should never have pets' because i get frustrated?! how do other multi pet house holds deal with thigns like this?? do they just not have kids? other responsibilities?

-ashley

[Jim Hall]

You are about as far from being a pet abuser as you can get

I am sure anyone here that reads your posts will agree.

Pet children husbands and life in general can get frustrating sometimes so you vent and rant, Don't worry about it you get it out of your system and that's healthy for you.

[want4rain]

*laughs* maybe i should go back to bashing chickens up??

-ash

[Jim Hall]

Originally Posted by want4rain

*laughs* maybe i should go back to bashing chickens up??

-ash

ahh there ya go

[chico2]

W4R,none of my cats will eat the sliced or chunky catfood,only pate-type,maybe your boy is the same,nor will they eat anything out of the fridge,even though I would warm it up.
Chico eats the least canned,but I don't worry too much,he also eats Orijen dry and drinks plenty of water.
I also remember,a long time ago,the vet gave me some fishy-tasting gel for one of my cats prone to crystals,I cannot remember the name,but he just licked it up off my finger.

[Love4himies]

I feel your pain, I too have a kitty that won't eat very much and she only likes her food fresh, piled up high, not too much water added and must be warm to the touch and a pinch of freeze dried salmon sprinkled on top.

BUT.... how do we know when they are ready to eat so they can have the fresh, warm food and no distubances and gobbling up of her food from the other critters?

I too have put down her food and said "If you want to starve yourself go ahead..., I have done all I can for you!" hour later I am warming up her food for her

[want4rain]

i know, thats the hard thing, where do you draw the line?? i think if i were to put up BG and F on and off through out the day i woudl ahve two other cats who hate be for confining them. i was feeding them twice a day for a while there but it got to the point where they conditioned themselves to create a commotion every time some came in the kitchen cause food came in the morning too!!! YAYAYAYAYA LETS GO EAT AGAIN!! as is, we start the tripping commotion around 730ish and the get fed at 10.

the only reason i get away with feeding Shadow in another room is i occupy BG and F while i move Shadow to his own room. otherwise i would have to chase OUT two cats to keep one in or confine two cats to keep one out.... and thats nto even taking into account what Hunter woujld do about it. i usually have Chris' help but the last several months he is logged onto work until we go to bed and sometimes even AFTER that. remote working is a mixed blessing i think... F is SO hunger driven.

hey, you know that scene in Jurassic Park where all of the dino's are running throught the fields and they are under the log??? thats what its like going into my kitchen any time after 7pm!!! 3 cats leap the gate as im opening it and F somehow squeezes between the bars! lol!

i dont know, i DO know there is no way i can reliably spend more time on this. having several feedings a day is not ABLE to happen more than once or twice a week let alone daily. maybe some day we can afford a grinder but as is, there is no way under the sun we can afford a $250 meat grinder. aside from that, pasty foods...... i dont think thats it either. he doesnt like wellness cat food either which most are pretty pasty.

we are workin listing Frances and the girl who wants BG has been asking about her for a few weeks now. i think if the boys had less competition for their food, these thigns would iron themsevles out. if i could leave their food out for the night, im sure Shadow would eat whatever he was going to. the girl who wants BG lives about 20 minutes away, her parents feed their dogs raw, she feeds a combo of kibble and wet but is willing to make the change to raw if her current cat (7yo) is willing. she lives in an apartment and already has 3 litter boxes (for her one cat). she never wants kids (which i know is subject to change) and doesnt party.

for now we will keep wrestling through the evenings to get him to eat but frankly, i dont have much more energy for this. if something doesnt give soon, im just feeling like a fool letting my cat walk all over me. if the front hall way isnt good enough for him, he can figure out a better way himself.

whats up with appetite stimulators? how expensive are they? do they work?

-ash

[Love4himies]

The only appetite stimulators I know of are steroids which shouldn't be given to a cat unless absolutely necessary.

When I fix a special dinner (their fav is wild goose!) for my 7 foster kittens (they will eat anything meat and the bloodier, the better!!!) my kitchen turns into one of those cat houses you see on the news. Can't keep them off the counter or under my feet. I put one on the floor, another jumps up, I put that one on the floor, then the first one jumps back up again, etc. They move with me where ever I go in the kitchen so I am constantly stepping on them! Then when I pick up their dishes to go to their room it is like a stampede lol. Wish my other cats would eat meat like these guys. To watch them eat real meat it is like they are starving, rather then their last meal only a few hours before.

[Jim Hall]

when i was having tourble with DU the vet gave me some cyproheptadine
which is for humans a antihistamine

The good news is it turned her into a little eating machine and also a love bug .

The bad news is from what i can find out, it works a lttle like coacaine works in humans by releasing endorphines so your gonna have a bit of a crash and it certainly is not a long term solution.

[ancientgirl]

Oksana is a picky eater, but not that picky. She'll sometimes snub what I give her, and I'll find her sneaking into the kitchen eating bits of it, along with some kibble.

I can only imagine that when Shadow gets hungry enough she'll eat. Heck, she can't be that nuts.

I say just give her the wet food she does like, even if its the same thing every day. Maybe after a while you can start sneaking in other stuff into that food.

I don't know. It's like having a picky kid. My friend has a little girl who won't eat anything but grilled cheese sandwiches, on a certain roll and it has to be certain cheese. Oy, that alone would drive me nuts, but you can somewhat negotiate with a kid, its harder to do that with a cat.

[want4rain]

i think if i coudl leave food out for him all the time it would be a different story but as is.... we not only have 3 other cats but also a dog and two kids. leaving out raw meat is just *not* an option. i think i will go talk to the vet abotu the stimulant you talk about Jim.

oh AND one of the cats is a compulsive eater. Frances would eat dirt if i served it on a plate. ive often wondered how much food she would actually pack away in a 24 hour period of we let her. she is *quite* fat!

another thing i was thinking, maybe i coudl leave his food in the bathroom upstairs and lock him in there away from the rest of the cats. i dont know how much they roam around but the only drawback with that would be he would wake up Cailyn if he wanted out.... that or rip the carpet to bits.

-ash

[chico2]

My Chico,sometimes eats maybe only 3 bites of his canned food,but I am not concerned,he seems to like his kibbles more,not what I wanted,but he is a good water-drinker and weighs a good 16lb's without beeing fat.
Anyone of my cats would be too stressed out to eat,were I ever to shut them in the bathroom..
Is yours beeing picked on by the others??

[want4rain]

so the really abbreviated version of it all is this-

we got the boys from the shelter @ 7 weeks old. we fed them Iams kitten for the first year but even by 10 months old they were over weight weighing in at 13 lbs-ish. at 2 years old (or thereabouts) they were already to 16 lbs fed Iams Weight Management free range. we decided to limit their food so we were feeding 2X daily the weight reducing amount. they were pushing 18lbs a year later (we were slowly reducing what we were feeding all that time). we THEN put them on Eukanuba Weight Management and feeding TWO TABLESPOONS of food a day and they hovered at 18lbs for 6 months. Baby Girl HATED kibble. she never weighed more than 10-11lbs. somewhere in the last end of that we got Mister and he had the exploda-butt so we were looking into alternative food at that point. put them on a rather hefty home made cooked diet and they dropped 1lb in a month each. while Baby Girl gained a few ounces.

NOW i have them on the raw diet, they poop 3x a week, pee so much we are changing out(ie emptying ALL contents and replacing them with totally new fresh) the 5 litter boxes twice a week where as they use to pee so little we only had to totally gut the boxes and replace it every 2 weeks. the boys have lost (from the beginning of the home made diet to NOW) 5-6lbs each. Baby Girl has gained 4lbs and Frances went from 3lbs to a rather FAT 10lbs (healthy for her would 8lbs i think). Baby Girl and Frances are both go getters when it comes to food. if there is ANY left over they both will come back until its done. Shadow isnt going to bother them for his own food and he isnt gong to come back as quick as the girls do. Hunter eats what he needs to in one setting. both of the girls will hover over Shadow until he leaves. when he is so inclined, he will nibble all of his food away in the front hall for over an hour.

the front hall is shut often since thats where the litter boxes are and a dog AND a baby both think they are fun to play in. its a long hall so im not feeding him by his litter boxes. so its not like if i were to shut a door thats not ever shut... you know?? also the cats all know how to tell us to open the door, if he wanted out he would let me know and he knows that.

-ash