After losing his dinner a few nights ago, our younger cat began acting strangely – for him. Instead of sitting on the windowsill, mewing to be taken out or played with, he spent all day huddled with the older cat by the heating vent. He wouldn’t touch his food, either.
As I’ve learned through my writing, any behavioral change means a cat should be checked by a vet, so we took him to the animal hospital. I learned a few things in the process:
1. You can’t tell a cat’s body temperature by touch. Ours didn’t feel hot, but the vet’s thermometer showed he had a fever. And, of course, that means infection.
2. “Lethargic” doesn’t necessarily mean “easier to get into the carrier”. Once, about 30 years ago, I saw a listless cat get packed into a carrier without a fight. Most other sick cats, ours included, will spring to life and claw fiercely to avoid going in.
3. Eating mice or birds can make a cat sick. One of the first questions the vet asked – just after asking if the cat ever went outside – was whether it was possible he could’ve eaten a mouse or a bird. (Since he goes outside only on a leash, I thought someone would’ve noticed.) Though prey is most of a cat’s natural diet, it’s not guaranteed to go down easily, any more than “natural” food is guaranteed not to give humans heartburn.
4. If a cat is dehydrated, fixing that will go a long way toward making it feel better. The vet found ours was – maybe his stomach trouble had made him unwilling to drink — and treated it with an injection. The results were almost instantaneous. As soon as we got him home, he went to his food bowl for the first time in two days.
The cat is back to his old self now, though still on antibiotics for a few days. His blood tests came back normal, and everything should be all right for now.
