A puzzled cat owner gets her pet cat to the vet for an ultrasound as the fur baby refused to feed for three days. The diagnosis: No health problems.
According to cat owners' experiences, cats, including domesticated pets and wild Bengal tigers, have a strong focus on food. Cats will go to great lengths to satisfy their hunger.
When a cat's owner became worried when the cat stopped eating, the furbaby was taken to the vet, only to find out that the sneaky puss had been stealing food from the neighbors.
Posting to the r/cats subreddit on July 4, Reddit user u/Mysticstorms shared a photo showing her pet cat with its stomach shaved. The white and ginger pet cat was taken to the veterinarian for an ultrasound, hence the shaved belly, after refusing to eat for three straigght days. Much to the surprise of the fur parent, the vet said that that the cat had no health problems but they did find food in the cat's belly.
Reddit Popular Kitty
Mysticstorms shared that her cat did not eat for 3 days. However, when they went to the vet for an ultrasound, they found only a belly full of the neighbor's cat's food. Her post had more than 45,000 upvotes at the time of publication.
A 2020 study suggested that feline behavior is dictated by the manner it is fed. In the study, feral cats are described as "generalist predators," that can survive in multiple environments, adapting to various food sources.
Cats have been observed to consume a wide variety of foods when not being fed by people, including fish, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and rodents.
Pet cats, however, don't automatically lose this urge to hunt just because they are domesticated. This implies that a pet cat's mental and physical health can be improved by providing food sources that mimic the hunting experience.
Researchers advise feeding cats several small meals a day, as well as providing them with food puzzles and other "foraging" toys. The puzzle must, however, be challenging enough for the cat to handle.
Love from the Internet
Reddit users called the cat, among other things, a "sneaky little monkey" in the post's comment section. Although jokingly, some comments also included phrases like "little jerk" and "scammers." Others poked fun at the cat's expression of having no regrets and the fact that the neighbor's cat was starving. Others cracked jokes about what the cat might be thinking, such as that it looks ridiculous with a shaved belly but is still full.
Mysticstorms revealed in the comments that he had spoken to the neighbors and discovered their pet was stealing. The neighbors clarified that the cunning cat isn't intentionally fed.
Everyone thought it was hilarious that the cat had duped its owner into paying for an expensive vet visit over shady snacks after Mysticstorms spoke with the neighbor, who has a cat door that is always open for their cat. His cat has probably just been sneaking in at night to steal their food, Newsweek reports.
A second Reddit user added to the discussion, claiming that the can made the pet owner spend several hundred dollars at the veterinarian because the neighbor has better food. Mysticstorms is not the only pet owner to spend money on a pointless trip to the vet's office. A cat mom recently paid $410 for a "dramatic" elderly cat he thought was about to die, only to learn the cat only had a toothache.
The No-Joke Part
Pet owners should take immediate action if they have noticed that their pets suddenly stopped eating. According to Hillcrest Hospital, cats can survive for a maximum of about two weeks without eating.