Whisker Stress - What is it?

Whisker Stress - what is it? Well I know I had whisker stress when my whiskers were burned off in our nasty fire a few years ago but I don't think that's what the V E T is talking about.

See? No whiskers....

Do you or have you seen a kitty that doesn’t want to eat their kibble in their bowl, preferring to pull it out one piece at a time with their paw, then eating it off the counter or floor? Or maybe a kitty that only seems to like to eat the top layer of food out of his (or her) bowl, acting like he needs to get a refill, even when there is still plenty of morsels left on the bottom of his dish? You may be witnessing Whisker Stress! Mom always thought I did this because I was afraid brofur Cosmo was going to eat all the food but I still do it. I even did it when I was the only kitty in the house after Cosmo passed away and before mom adopted Mia. Mom isn't particularly fond of my need to drag food all over the floor to eat rather than eat from the dish but I am spoiled so I get to do what I want. 

Anyway, back to the topic at hand. Many cats suffer from whisker stress daily, and your kitty might too. Domesticated cats that live and eat indoors don’t have the luxury of eating their food anywhere they’d like.  A feral cat can hunt down her prey, and consume it wherever she pleases. Circumstances are much different in a domestic environment where the human is in charge of when, where, and how the kitty will eat (we'll pretend the human thinks they are in charge for arguments sake!). So how do a cat’s whiskers play into all of this?

The role that whiskers play in cats is mainly to augment their short-distance vision.  A kitty has approximately 8 to 12 of these whiskers on each side of their face, arranged in horizontal rows that fan out sideways on each side of the upper lip, plus some tufts of shorter whiskers above their eyes, on their chin, and even on the back of their forelegs, just above the paw!  

It took a couple of months for all my whiskers to grow back. This pic is 3 months post fire and you can easily see my whiskers have returned! 

Whiskers are deeply-rooted, and rich in blood vessels and nerve endings that provide your kitty with information about surrounding objects and even air movement.  This exceptionally sensitive tool assists kitty's in many forms of navigation.  Each whisker functions as a mechanical transmitter, conveying pressure applied along the shaft to receptors in the follicle at the whisker base. So imagine what forcing those delicate instruments into a food dish must feel like. Ouch! The good news is that cat-friendly designers have come up with lots of beautiful flat feline feeding dishes to help your kitty avoid whisker stress. They look like elegant serving platters, wide and shallow, with plenty of room for your kitty to pick up the food with their mouth, without their whiskers touching anything. I am not sure why mom hasn't bought sisfur Mia and I those elegant serving platters, uh mom????

In short, making sure that your cat has an adequately sized food bowl could make a tremendous difference in how comfortable he (or she) is when he’s eating his food. It’s amazing what you will learn when you take the time to OBSERVE your kitty's!

How does your kitty prefer to eat?  Do they behave strangely sometimes when eating?  Do they stop and start again? Do they refuse to eat when they seemed hungry just minutes earlier?  Your kitty just might be trying to tell you that they have whisker stress and a new food bowl is a necessity! I'm wondering when mom will get the hint... to be fair, she has changed how she feeds us our dinner (on a saucer instead of from a bowl). Mom also knows that I prefer to drink water off the floor rather than from a bowl so she will sometimes intentionally spill the water on the floor so I can lap it up. The sink is a good option for water too!

Do my pals have any strange eating or drinking habits I wonder? Is it whisker stress or are they just spoiled like me?

You're Feeding Your Cat All Wrong!

Uh Oh, mom found this article about free-feeding and she wants to share it! We are free-feeding kitties, but maybe not after mom read this article. Read for yourselves and tell us what you think in the comments below.

Reposted from http://www.petsadviser.com/food/free-feeding-cats/.

By T.J. Banks on January 19, 2015 

Free feeding could mean weight gain and possibly diabetes.

I brought Cheshire and Dervie in for their checkups the other day. The brothers are big boys. For the past year, I’ve been trying to get their weight down by putting less food out.

Alas, both boys had gained weight. Apparently, portion control doesn’t work for cats. Cheshire, our former runt, had morphed into a striped barrel with short legs, and we couldn’t figure out how it had happened.

My veterinarian could. Cheshire was a grazer, he said.

The Lowdown on Grazing

For cats, grazing is basically nibbling at their food off and on all day. It’s not exactly normal to them.

“The types of animals that graze are herbivores: goats, cows, horses, sheep and so on,” remarks writer JaneA Kelley. “They graze because their bodies are built to chew, digest, regurgitate, chew again and digest again…. Cats, on the other hand, are carnivores. Their stomachs are not designed for grazing.”

At first, free feeding — another term for grazing — seems like the best answer. If you work all day or have to be away for any length of time, there’s an ever-ready bowl of dry food available, and your feline will be fine until you get home.

It also makes life a little easier in a household with more than one cat. Most of my pet-sitting clients have more than one cat. Some of the cats get canned food, some of them don’t, but all of them have some kibble nearby. At one home, each of the five cats has her own bowl of dry food.

 WHEN A CAT GOES CRAZY FOR FOOD

Getting a never-ending bowl of food is “like a human moving his recliner to a Las Vegas buffet.”

The problem with free feeding, explains Dr. Thomas Morganti, DVM, of the Avon Veterinary Clinic in Connecticut, is that every time your cat goes for that kibble, there’s an insulin spike. The pancreas can’t handle the long-term overload, and eventually you’re looking at a cat with diabetes.

Dr. Debora Lichtenberg, VMD, has explained here at Pets Adviser that offering all-day dry food is especially problematic: “Cats conditioned to the never-ending dry buffet are at risk for developing obesity, urinary problems and kidney failure, to name just a few of the top feline health risks of a dry food diet. It would be like a human moving his recliner to a Las Vegas buffet.”

That said, it really doesn’t matter what you feed your buddy: It’s the frequent feeding, not the type of food, that appears to be the problem.

This video from Jackson Galaxy helps explain the differences in feeding for cats:

Meal Feeding

Meal feeding is the solution, says the Cat Hospital of Chicago. “Start by picking up the food when you leave for the day,” the hospital advises, “and putting it down when you return. The cat(s) start to realize that the food will not always be available.”

With meal feeding, each cat receives “a measured portion of food, usually two or more times a day. He or she eats the food immediately in a meal fashion, as opposed to grazing on food all day. Each cat has his or her own dish, and sometimes his or her own eating area.”

A Counter Story

In February 2014, UPI published an article that seemed to contradict all this. “Fat cats can slim by ‘grazing’ their kibble all day,” claimed the headline.

At the University of Illinois College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Science (ACES), researcher Kelly Swanson and his assistants found that upping “the frequency of meals fed per day, as well as offering meals that contained added dietary water, promoted more physical activity among cats.”

The felines in the four study groups all received the same amount of food; the only variable was thenumber of meals. Activity apparently increased two hours before each meal. “If they know they are going to get fed, that’s when they are really active, if they can anticipate it,” Swanson commented.

The point is, the cats were getting meals. Grazing had nothing to do with it. So, the headline turned out to be totally misleading.

Other Solutions

Cheshire. By: Mette Meyer

• Put your cat’s dry food in “a rolling puzzle ball so he has to work for his meals,” says Kelley. “But just don’t load up a huge bowl of kibble and go about your merry way.”
• Play with your cat. He’ll get a light workout, and you’ll have some quality bonding time.
• No “extreme” diets. News flash: They don’t work for anybody. In fact, they can “produce serious abnormalities that may jeopardize the cat’s life,” according to The Cornell Book of Cats.

I’m taking a moderate approach. The food bowls go down early in the morning and stay down for a few hours; they reappear in the late afternoon, then disappear at bedtime.

Cheshire’s still looking anxious, but I assure him it’s worth it. Stay tuned for the before and after pictures.

Do you let your cat graze all day? In the comments below, tell us if you plan to change your cat’s feeding ritual. Why or why not? Also, if you enjoyed this article, you’ll love Pets Adviser’s email newsletter. It’s free to sign up, and you’ll be among the first to get alerts about major pet food recalls. New subscribers get instant access to our 40-page ebook — which has “secrets every cat and dog lover should know.” Learn more here.

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So... what do you think? Should kitties be allowed to graze (free-feeders)? or should they have scheduled feeding times? Mom works full-time and volunteers quite a bit on top of work so she thinks she will probably stick with free-feeding since it would be hard to be consistent with a feeding schedule. We kitties are happy about that! What do you kitties think? Will your humans allow you to free-feed or do they feed you on a schedule?