Exploring the Causes, Diagnostics and Treatments of Feline Inappetence

Cats are the masters of disguise and they have very subtle signs of illness. Often the first thing that an unwell cat demonstrates is varying degrees of inappetence; resulting in decreased consumption of daily calories. Clients often don’t notice that their cat has decreased their food consumption unless they have an abrupt decrease or cessation of food intake, which is referred to as anorexia. Cats most often show inappetence by consuming less calories in a day and being finicky about what they eat. These are often the first clinical signs of an illness, but they often go unnoticed by the cat family for quite sometime. So, lets look at what inappetence looks like in our feline patient. How do we recognize the condition in our history taking and physical examination? What commonly causes inappetence in a cat? What supportive measures can we as a veterinary team initiate to support calorie intake while treating an illness? How do we educate our cat clients to recognize inappetence for early disease detection and treatment in the feline? Practical solutions to these and other questions will be answered. As always, feline medicine requires the whole team to understand the cat and the cat client and as such, this talk will be directed towards all team members.