My 9-year-old cat has been on hunger strike off and on since January. She is not completely not eating, she’s doing it in fits and bursts. She has been to the vet three times. She has had an ultrasound, an X-ray, two rounds of bloodwork, and a urinalysis. Everything has come back clean. Apart from the imaging, the vet also has felt her all over for tumors. There are no tumors I can feel either. No fever. And her teeth are also fine.

She has always been an incredibly anxious cat and her anxiety seems to be getting worse. The event that seems to have triggered the initial anxiety this time was we got the windows in our house replaced in November. The week we got the windows replaced, she started going in her litter box a bunch more. She has a history of bladder stones and had surgery in 2024, so when she started going in the box more, we took her to the vet. Urinalysis, ultrasound, no stones, no crystals. She was on special urinary food at that time. She continued to use the box a lot over the next two months, so we took her again in January and they did more thorough testing. Again, no stones, no crystals, no infection. Every time the vet noted that she has an abnormally small bladder. She’s passing a normal amount of urine per day (and passes something every time she goes in the box—no blockages), just in frequent small visits. After the second time, they gave her an anti-inflammatory, reckoning that the stress of the windows had caused an inflamed bladder, and combined with the fact that her bladder is already tiny, that’s all it was.

The anti-inflammatory helped the peeing situation, but after the second vet visit is when she went on hunger strike. First she stopped eating the urinary food. She’s been through two different kinds of “regular” food since then. Both of them she’ll start out eating them fine, then eventually taper off. She’s always been nuts for Friskies treats and always wanted them even when she wasn’t supposed to have them. As she’s been rejecting the food, she was eating only treats, then started rejecting those as well.

After she went for a period of a day or two where she hadn’t eaten anything at all as far as I could tell, I took her to the vet. The vet said they thought it was anxiety, but then when they saw how much weight she’d lost (about 4 pounds in 2 months—she’d been 16lbs and was down to 12.2) they quickly ran the full monte of tests to make sure it wasn’t her kidneys or anything else. They also checked to make sure she hadn’t developed fatty liver from that weight loss, which she hadn’t. After those came back clean, they completely dropped the treatment for anxiety. They gave her an appetite stimulant but basically were like 🤷‍♀️ about anything else.

It has been about six weeks since the vet visit. On the appetite stimulant, she was eating again, but she is afraid of the appetite stimulant. It’s that stuff you put in the ears. To give you background on this cat, when we gave her flea treatment for the first time when she was young (the liquid kind that you put on the back of their neck), we thought she was having a seizure from how she reacted to it. She like blinks one eye at a time and her ears start going back and forth and she squints her eyes almost totally closed and starts like spitting like she’s trying to get something out of her mouth. It turned out though that this was her having a panic attack about the wet sensation on the back of her neck. So every time I’ve given her the appetite stimulant, she’s reacted like this. She freaks out, she tries to escape me, and if she even smells it she starts flapping her ears and her eyes rolling up in her head and stuff with her panic attack. She even saw a remote control on the nightstand that she thought was the medicine box and reacted that way until I let her sniff it and she realized it was nothing.

Over the last month, she has just gotten more and more anxious. She looks over her shoulder constantly. If she sees me and thinks I’m up to something, she either hides under the bed altogether or goes and stands at the edge of it like in case she needs to make a quick dive. She is also now afraid of the other cat, who has gotten aggressive about pushing her out of the way when we give this cat treats. (They previously were a bonded pair, but this cat was the dominant one. They still do stuff together, but now she’s submissive and the other cat is dominant.) I had been feeding her in some of her hidey holes and one time the other cat pushed her out of the way to see what she was getting. Ants have also found their way to her food both in its usual place and in her hidey holes, which has also made her afraid. Now whenever I offer her food or treats, she looks over her shoulder like she’s afraid something is going to happen, be it the other cat or ants or me doing something to her or taking her to the vet or whatever.

I have Feliway diffusers in several rooms. I don’t think they’re making any difference.

She is drinking normally. She is having solid stools and pooping regularly. She’s still peeing the same way she’s been. No straining or crying in the litter box. She grooms normally. She is playful, especially in the morning. She uses her scratching post, runs up and down the stairs, sings her morning opera like usual, wants to be in everyone’s business (as long as I’m not acting suspiciously), and wants to have her nightly bonding with my mom on the recliner. I do think she may be nauseous because she occasionally will have a hairball or spit up, but it’s not constant. Apart from that, the food aversion, and the anxiety, she is acting normal in every way.

But she’s not eating enough, I know that. When they first gave her the mirtazapine, she gained a pound in about a week. After that, she’s steadily gone back down. The last time she let me weigh her, she was back to 12.2. I think she’s below that now but guess what? I haven’t been able to weigh her in a couple weeks because when she sees me bring out the scale she dives under a piece of furniture. Just from guessing, I would think she’s maybe 11-something now, so not as drastic of a drop as before. She looks like a slim cat but not an emaciated one, yet at least.

The last two times I gave her mirtazapine, she has not eaten anything after. Yesterday I gave it to her and I thought she was okay because she acted normal after, but last night when I took her to bed (she likes to stay in my sister’s old bedroom overnight for security [my sister got married in 2023, but before that they’d been bonded, so that was “her” room—and yes, my sister getting married was the thing that stressed her out so much that it gave her the bladder problems that led to her needing surgery in 2024]) she thought I was going to do something to her again and she had the same freakout she does for flea treatment: squinting, weird blinking, cringing away from me, running in panicked circles, flapping her ear over and over and over, and she got so worked up actually wound up throwing up a little bit of spit. I left her alone and this morning she was banging the door to be let out like usual and acting like nothing had happened, but once again, she hadn’t eaten anything.

Before I took her to the vet in March, I force fed her a Churu, so I did that again today. Both times, being force fed the Churu seemed to settle her stomach a little and she ate some after. But obviously not enough. She never drains her bowl anymore. She’s eating probably a few teaspoons of food per day on good days. On bad days, 3-4 Friskies treats once or twice a day.

Oh, and I should also add that she is an INCREDIBLY picky eater. She will not eat wet food of ANY kind. Yes, i know that’s bad for them. No, nothing we have ever done in 9 years of having her has made a difference. Our other cat eats wet food, and all our previous cats have eaten wet food. She won’t eat any flavor from any brand. We have tried them all. She won’t eat chicken. She won’t eat tuna. She won’t eat human food of any kind. She won’t eat soft treats. She won’t eat dry food if it’s been softened. She won’t voluntarily eat Churu (even though I think she actually likes the taste of it since she swallows it when I cram it down her and she doesn’t act traumatized after I force her to eat one the way she does after medication). She won’t drink broth either. She does drink water well from fountains, of which we have several around the house.

I don’t want to take her back to the vet if I can avoid it because it triggers her anxiety so hard, and the anxiety seems to be what’s caused this spiral. I saw that nausea can cause the mirtazapine to not work, and I have thought she may be nauseous because she always seems like she’s worse about eating when she’s needing to have a hairball. Should I try asking the vet on Monday for an anti-nausea? They had also talked about giving her gabapentin but then wound up not doing so. Anything I can try at home without needing to bring her back in and cause further trauma. The last time she went in, she freaked out in her cat carrier so bad that she ripped one of her claws out.

As I type this, she just strolled past me to get a drink from the fountain, but she keeps looking over her shoulder at me between sips to make sure I’m not up to something 🙃