Q: I just am in the middle of switching one of my cats over to Spots Stew dry food. My cat’s name is Nipper and he was a stray, I took him in almost two years ago (he’s probably about 5-6 years old) and he seems to have an obsessive anxious disorder. My vet wants to put him on Prozac (he was checked and the vet didn’t find anything physiologically wrong with him). Nipper tends to lick his fur off, his ears flicker, he gets very nervous at times and goes into almost a seizure like state at times. It breaks my heart to see him like this. He is overweight and I’m trying to get him to lose weight by exercising and playing. The vet recommended a high protein, no grain diet and I have had Nipper on Evo, the ancestral diet for cats, but so far no luck with weight loss or losing the anxiety–and I do not even feed him the amount recommended on the bag!

Are their any vitamins or supplements that you can recommend for him that might help with the anxiety or his compulsive behavior of eating his fur off? He is very loving and seems very comfortable around my dog and the other cats. He gets very jumpy hearing neighbor’s dogs bark, people walking by the house, any noises that are unfamiliar to him, make him nervous.

A: Thanks for your questions–lets address the weight first. The first thing that is crucial for weight loss, is to determine your cat’s ideal body weight. If you don’t know how to do this, ask your vet to help you. For most domestic shorthair cats, this is between 9 and 10 pounds. Then you have to calculate the amount of calories they need at their ideal weight and only feed 75% of those calories each day. Please read my article Weight Loss Tips for more specific information and calculations. Following this program, I have been successful getting hundreds of sedentary overweight indoor cats to lose weight!

As far as Nipper’s anxiety, there is one specific medical condition that comes to mind. It is called Feline Hyperesthesia Syndrome and Nipper has many classic features of this disorder. It often requires a neurologic evaluation by a specialist to characterize it fully and decide upon the best course of treatment. You can read more about it here Feline Hyperesthesia (FHS).

It is also possible that Nipper may just be a very anxious cat. I would recommend a vitamin B supplement for Nipper as it tends to help calm the nerves. Halo’s Vitamin Mineral Mix is a raw food rich in B vitamins that may really help.

Good Luck and keep us posted.
Dr. Donna Spector

This entry was posted on Monday, August 17th, 2009 at 10:00 am and is filed under Ask a Vet, Dr Donna Spector, Pet Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.