Question:
My 8-year-old Tortie appears to have developed bulimia over the past year. She guzzles down her food and usually looks at guzzling down my other cats’ food as well whenever she gets the opportunity. She is the only one that begs at our dinner table and is a real greedy-guts. Then she vomits a couple of times per week after her meals. She’s titchy about too much patting, gets on with the other two most of the time, doesn’t like exercise and is overweight (the other two are not) and since I am diligent to not over-feed any of my cats, I’m puzzled over this. Any ideas on why this is so?
Answer:
The first thing you need to do is make sure this over eating is not a sign of a medical problem. With her age, two things come to mind – diabetes and an overactive thyroid gland. A trip to the vet is in order to take some blood and urine and do some tests to diagnose what is actually going on. While diabetes is more commonly associated with ravenous appetite and overweight cats, the skittish behaviour and food obsession could point to a thyroid problem. Luckily both of these diseases are treatable with medication, but your vet will rule out other things and give her a good check up. If all is normal you might be dealing with a behavioural cause for that begging and that’s a whole other story your vet can tell you about!
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