Cat can't swallow and isn't eating. What could be wrong?

[SoftKittyWarmKitty]

My 12 year old tabby boy has hardly eaten this weekend. He seems hungry - goes to the food cupboard and tries eating when I feed him - but seems to gag and make the same noise they make if there's a fur ball. He can't even manage Dreamies, which are his absolute favourite . Also tried him with some tuna earlier which he normally loves and he tried it but couldn't swallow that either.

Going to make a vet appointment ASAP tomorrow but just thought I'd try posting here in case anyone's cat had experienced similar. Don't think he has any other symptoms, although he seems to be sleeping a lot (and snoring!) but that could just be because he's spending more time indoors due to the time of year.

I would guess dental issues like an abscess

I was wondering if it might be his teeth. Tried to have a look but all I could see were that his teeth were still in there and I'm no expert anyway. I just hope it's nothing serious.

Could be a dental issue, and most likely it is. It could be something more sinister. One of mine had something similar and it turned out her jaw had somehow fused and she couldn't move it (I never did fully understand if it could be as a result of tetanus - do cats get that? - or something else). Either way she had to be put down.

Whatever it is, and hopefully it's nothing like that, he needs an emergency appointment tomorrow.

Sorry to hear about your cat . I'm concerned it's something awful as he's getting on a bit, but hoping it's easy to sort. Vet opens at 8am so going to ring first thing.

He's just managed to eat a little something, so that's good . I expect he was desperate though. He seemed to lean his head to the left side when chewing, so wondering if it's his teeth on the right that's the issue. Will tell vet all this tomorrow. At the moment he's curled up in his usual place on the landing. Will update tomorrow.

Certainly sounds like teeth, or perhaps a sore throat, which might also cause him to snore if he doesn't normally.

Cat's can get quite nasty sore throats and if it was worse on one side that might cause him to tilt his head.

Hope the vet sorts him out tomorrow and it's nothing serious.

Well I took him to the vet earlier and after a thorough checkup, he found a sore area on the back of his tongue on the right hand side which explains the head tilting. He's also lost quite a bit of weight since he was last weighed at the vets only a month ago (had to treat both cats for fleas last month) so it looks like he's been suffering for a few weeks . Vet said it could be just an infection from him biting his tongue or food getting stuck or something like that, or it could be something more sinister like a tumor but he couldn't know that without further investigation. Hopefully it's just an infection, so he had an antibiotic injection and a pain-killing anti-inflammatory injection, plus I've got pain-killing anti-inflammatory drops to give him each day.

I've got an appointment to take him back on Thursday if he's still not eating, but if he picks up I'm to change that to next Monday. The good news is the minute we got home and I let him out of the cat basket, he went straight to his bowl and ate quite a bit of food . So fingers crossed this will sort him out.

Glad to hear he's feeling a bit better and eating; the pain killing injections the vets give are like magic.

These things can be such a worry. I remember how I used to worry over mine if they seemed even the slightest bit off colour.

Wish him well.

Thank you pigs.