Animals with eating disorders? Who knew?
July 1, 2008 by angelique
Filed under Women's Health
After today’s poem, I thought I’d do a little investigating on the web. I wanted to see if pets ever were diagnosed with eating disorders.
Lo and behold, I found this article in which the author blames obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) for cats’ eating disorders. Now, granted, the type of EDs this writer discusses are quite feline-oriented, but they do share traits common human EDs.
Check it out and tell me if you’ve ever known of a cat or dog (or horse or hamster or guinea pig or…) with an eating disorder.
Thank you so much for running my poem on your site. I am not surprised to hear that you found an article about feline eating disorders…. why not ?
My cat was diagnosed by the vet with OCD before he was a year old. He has this problem of repeatedly chewing his fur off in certain areas. It flares up when I leave for over a day or so, or we move apartments or he has to stay overnight at the vet. They suggested Prozac but I told them I would not even take that myself, let alone give it to my cat.
It’s been better lately and his fur is growing in places I’ve never seen it before. I just thought it was kind of funny but sad – me and my neurotic cat.
Alice:
I suppose you’re right! Why not expect pets to have EDs? And why be surprised?
Thank YOU for allowing me to reprint your piece!
Angelique
DPG:
Oh, how I understand. We have a neurotic kitty, too. Terribly OCD — she once started biting all the fur off her paws. She was practically bald on her front legs before we introduced her to what we called “kitty Prozac”.
It wasn’t the “real stuff”, but it worked and she’s been free of it for years. Strange, isn’t it?
Angelique -
How good to hear that stuff worked for your cat. I am worried about mine, because I’m moving from our current apartment to a house in a couple months. He is so terrible with moves. I would hate to see all his new fur disappear.
When I originally moved out on my own after living with my parents, he hid in his litter box for two days and then wouldn’t leave my side every night as soon as it got dark. Poor thing!
its quite interesting to note that animals suffer also from OCD.