Hi, I have found this wonderful forum today whilst surfung the net desperately trying to find some advice regarding my lovely cat. He is a beautiful 15 year old Birman and my baby. He has always erred on the thin side and been a rather fussy eater, but never to the extent of now.

To cut a very long story short, he was attacked by 2 cats who came onto the road about 5 weeks ago-they damn near ripped his throat open, just missing his jugular. He ended up with a massive abcess and was on antibiotics for 2 weeks-it was slow to heal and wearing the collar wasn't very popular! His appetite was actually pretty good whilst on the antibiotic, given in a long term injected form. The last 7 days or so however, he seems depressed. He won't go out anymore due to these two predatory cats (neither will my other cat, a black silver tabby.) They are both pretty terrified-these cats are Bengals , and seem to 'hunt in a pack' ie attack together. I have spoken to their owner about the fact they are out 24 hrs a day,asking if there was a time we could agree when she would keep them in so mine could go out, but she just laughed at me.

My Birman has virtually stopped eating now. I have tried all his favourites, different dishes, places to feed, temperature of food. All to no avail. He is skin and bone. He is also peeing small amounts frequently. I am thinking maybe kidney disease? A wee sample grew nothing. I have seen 2 vets this week (one at the PDSA as I am entitled to free treatment-off work after having cancer myself), who each said his bladder is emptying ok, maybe he has kidney disease-niether sees any value on having a blood test as it would be very stressful for him and would only result in attention to diet-at the moment he isn't eating hardly anything anyway. They each said to return in 2weeks to have him reweighed and just try to tempt him in the meantime. The PDSA vet today started him on amoxil twice day, just in case he has a low grade infection somwehere-but told me NOT to give them on an empty stomach-after I had spent several minutes explaining he won't eat!

Today, all he has done is sleep really-when I call him loudly he will respond and his eyes look bright etc, but he no longer has any interest in coming on to my lap and it has been weeks-since before his attack-that I have heard him purr.

Today, he has had maybe a mouthful of tuna, a few licks off the top of a 'gourmet' tin (he was last week eating small amounts of this-but only from the tin ) and a small strip of ham. I have cooked him fresh chicken-no interest whatsover. The other cat thinks it's banquet time as he is getting all the leftovers!

I read up on syringe feeding today and wondered what you all thought? I only have a very small 2 ml syringe in the house at the moment, and I watered down some potted salmon that he would usually love and skirted probably 10ml into his mouth. He wasn't happy about this, did swallow some of it but hasn't even bothered licking around his mouth to remove the residue My poor little boy!

Does anyone have any advice? Must I just accept that he is going to starve himself to death?

Thankyou so much for reading this far!