Louise and Chorniy’s SYRINGE FEEDING FAQ rev B

Caveat/Disclaimer: I am not a vet. Lack of appetite is a symptom that your cat is not well. Your vet is the one with the professional training and should be consulted if your cat stops eating.

Kitties stop eating for various reasons.  If a cat does not eat, s/he can get some thing called "fatty liver" which can be fatal (for more on fatty liver, click here: http://www.animalclinic.com/fatliver.htm).   So any hunger strike that lasts over a day MUST be seen to. Which is what you’re attempting to do by syringe feeding.

I've been syringe feeding (sounds better than force-feeding) my kitty on and off since November, when he had a terrible URI (cold).

Here’s my method:

1) Obtain several 5cc syringes. You can get these from your pharmacy. Ask them for several (four) of the syringes one uses to give liquid medicine to small children.

2) Check the syringes to make sure the plungers move well. If they don’t my trick is to put a LITTLE vegetable oil in a jar cap, suck a little up in the syringe, run the plunger up and down a while, and voila! The plunger will not stick. This is important, as you want to be able to give your kitty food gradually so s/he won't choke.

3) Take some of the kitty food they normally eat and put it through a screen-mesh sieve. The mesh should be about the same as window-screen mesh. If it's home made food, put it in a blender first or you won't get it through the sieve. I use kitty’s normal food, because you know they used to like it, at least, and it will disturb them least. You can also use meat-only baby food (make SURE it contains no onion).

4) Thin this with water (can be bottled water) or Whiskas Cat Milk (this has taurine and other vitamins in it). It should be about the thickness of heavy cream to start out. You'll get a feel for how thick you’ll need as you progress.

5) Push the syringe plunger all the way down. Immerse the tip in the food and draw the food up. Turn the point up and tap it on something, then expel the air that has risen to the tip. Repeat until it's full. You may want to fill more than one at a time. I do not, because the filling time gives my cat time to lick his lips and swallow and be ready for more.

6) Acquire your cat from his/her hiding place. If kitty's likely to escape, close doors. Sit kitty on a washable floor in front of you, in the usual "pilling" hold position (his tail between your knees as you kneel behind kitty works well for me). Get help if required.

7) Put one hand on top of kitty's head, holding the upper jaw from either side with your thumb on one side and your fingers on the other. I find that holding the top jawbone keeps wiggling down. With the other hand, slip the syringe into the back of his mouth FROM THE SIDE. Don't go from the front or kitty will gag.

8) Squirt about one cc of food at a time on the back of his tongue. Don't squirt down the throat or it may go into kitty's lungs. Most cats will swallow what's on the back of their tongues. If you squirt too much, they can spit it out (thus the warning to be on a cleanable floor!)

9) Give kitty time to swallow, repeat. I don't release the jaw until the entire syringeful is down. Pause between syringes to let kitty consider matters, swallow, wash, glare at you, hiss, or get reassuring scritches and purr, etc.

Here's some additional tips from Terry and Punkin (GA):

After getting situated, put a dab of food on the cat's nose. Usually, the tongue will flick out to lick it off. When the tongue is out, start syringing food onto the tongue. Often, a reflex kicks in and the cat will keep licking as long as there is food on the tongue.

Keep syringing a little food onto the tongue each time it flicks out to lick. I would stop every few minutes and let the kitty rest and breathe for a minute or two and then we'd start again.

I found the best two foods for syringe feeding were all meat baby food (Beeches or Gerber) or Hills AD. AD is a very smooth, high calorie food especially formulated for anorexic cats, but it is only available through a vet. I found that even well-blended commercial cat food had bits of gristle that clogged the syringe.  TIP from Gorb: we use Wysong all meat flavor foods rather than baby food.

And a tip from Janet & Binky: if the food is too dense to draw into the syringe, pack it in from the top.  Of course test to make sure it moves through the syringe but if you pack it in from the top you can usually keep the food a little more dense, which some cats like.

You want to get AT LEAST 80 cc of food into a 10 lb. cat per day. The more you thin it, the more food you need to feed, so make it just thin enough to draw into the syringe. If you're doing this for a while, try to find a more calorie-dense food (Iams kitten food, for example - but it is stinky!) to make things easier. And make SURE you're getting vitamins into kitty too. You might be doing this for a while, until kitty realizes it's ok to eat again, recovers, or... whatever.

Note that many kitties who have stopped eating will eat tasty good-for-kitty foods like ground lamb with rice and veggies mixed in. I also offer the food I'm going to sieve, both before and after sieving, and between servings. Sometimes the first one or two syringefuls give kitty the idea, sort of like priming a pump.