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Anxiety in your cat

Help alleviate their anxiety and prevent complications with a special diet

Concerned your cat may be stressed or anxious? It’s completely normal to feel worried, after all, you want kitty to live a happy, carefree life. With a diet formulated to help control the response to chronic stress and anxiety, you can help your cat feel better, both physically and mentally.

Get veterinary advice from your Globalvet team on feline stress and anxiety and how to feed your cat a special diet designed to help improve their condition.

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Stress and anxiety: Normal but potentially problematic reactions

In all mammals, stress is a normal physiological response to a troubling situation.

Reacting to a stressor or potential threat allows your cat to adapt their behaviour to the perceived threat and to their surroundings.

Your cat may also experience fear, which is, at-times, an overwhelming emotional response in the presence of danger. But what about anxiety? Anxiety is a psychological state that continues over time despite the absence of any real danger. It’s kind of like being afraid of being afraid.

What can actually trigger fear, stress, or anxiety in your cat? Depending on your cat’s personality, it can be any number of things, including:

  • Any change in environment:
    • A new house
    • A new baby
    • A new fur baby
    • A family member moving out
    • New furniture
    • A kennel stay
  • Any change of habit or routine:
    • Vacation
    • Going back to school
    • Sleep schedule
    • Meal times
    • Visitors
    • Vet clinic visit
    • Loneliness
    • Living with multiple cats and/or dogs
    • Unusual noises
    • Bad weather (e.g., thunderstorms)
    • And many more

Experiencing mild fear or stress isn’t necessarily a bad thing for domestic cats: it can help them get out of a potentially dangerous situation. Severe or prolonged stress or anxiety, on the other hand, could be detrimental and affect your cat’s long-term physical and mental health.

Chronic stress and anxiety can cause your cat to develop behavioural problems such as:

  • Excessive vocalization
  • Excessive grooming
  • Hypervigilance
  • Accidents in the house
  • Destructive behaviour

Stress and anxiety in your cat are accompanied by a complex neurological and hormonal response with short-term physical repercussions, causing:

  • Their heart and breathing rate to speed up
  • Their blood pressure to go up

Depending on how long the stress and anxiety last and how severe they are, your cat may develop other physical signs like:

  • Diarrhea
  • Vomiting
  • Urinary problems

When your cat suffers from severe stress or anxiety, it can greatly diminish their quality of life (and yours).

Want to help your stressed-out feline friend feel better? It’s best to adopt a multimodal approach (a plan that combines several treatment methods, e.g., environmental management, medication, and dietary changes). Feeding your fretful feline a therapeutic food for anxiety can help relieve their physical and behavioural symptoms.

Pretty sure your cat is stressed or anxious? Talk to your veterinarian about it. They can help you figure out what’s going on and give you tools to make it better.

If you know there are changes in store that are likely to upset your cat’s mental balance, ask your vet if a specialized food could help them through the transition and prevent possible complications.

Help mitigate your cat’s anxiety with a specialized diet: How and why

Quality of life
Risk reduction

Improve your anxious cat’s quality of life

Veterinary diets are balanced and complete, delivering the energy and nutrients cats need for a healthy body, and, as a good pet owner, you know your kitty’s mental wellbeing is just as important as their physical health.

That’s why foods formulated for feline anxiety contain sufficient quantities of ingredients like alpha-casozepine and l-tryptophan (known to act on neurotransmitters in the brain to create a calming effect) for your cat to feel the effects.

Combined with behavioural therapy, a special diet can help improve your cat’s quality of life. That’s because these foods work to support kitty’s physical health and contribute to dampening the stress response at the same time, which has benefits for their mental health.

Basically, they can help your cat start feeling better—in body and mind.

Basically, they can help your cat start feeling better—in body and mind.

Help reduce the risk of complications from anxiety and stress

When your cat’s brain is under too much stress or anxiety for an extended period, their other bodily systems can suffer the consequences, which may result in diarrhea, constipation, and urinary problems.

To mitigate these reactions to prolonged stress or anxiety, veterinary foods indicated for anxious cats contain ingredients to support your cat’s bodily organs and systems. This can effectively reduce the risk of unpleasant and occasionally painful complications.

Specialized veterinary foods for anxiety include easy-to-digest carbohydrates and fats, and a range of dietary fibres to take some of the workload off your cat’s digestive system. This can help prevent stress-related vomiting and diarrhea.

The mineral levels of therapeutic foods are also adjusted to make sure the urine your cat produces is properly diluted and within a normal pH range to help prevent stress-related urinary disorders. Not to mention, these foods also contain ingredients that product calming effects, like casozepine and tryptophan, to which also help in the prevention of urinary disorders.

Find the right food to treat your cat’s anxiety in our stores

Every Globalvet clinic store carries different types of special cat food, including formulas indicated for stress and anxiety relief. Find the one your vet recommends to help alleviate your feline friend’s anxiety. Shop online or in store.

Need advice on pet food?

Contact your local clinic or visit our online store.

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