Pet cat: How to tell if your cat is dehydrated

Why is your cat dehydrated?

Adult cats, like most mammals, have 60% water in their body. Losing part of it puts your pet cat at a serious health risk since the physiological reactions could not be carried out. Dehydration goes through different states and not all of them require intravenous fluid therapy. The different degrees of dehydration are: 

• Mild: the loss of water represents 5% of the total. Therefore, it would only be necessary to try to feed the animal with wet food and offer it water.
• Moderate: loss of up to 10%. In this case, if the pet cat does not eat or drink on its own, a nasogastric tube could be used.
• Severe: the cat has lost more than 10% of its body water. Their life would be at risk and fluid therapy would be necessary.

There are multiple reasons why a pet cat can become dehydrated:

• Loss of large volumes of blood due to an accident.
• Internal bleeding caused by trauma or illness.
• Increase in environmental temperature and lack of water availability.
• Pathologies that present polyuria such as diabetes mellitus, diabetes insipidus, or chronic kidney disease.
• Diseases that affect the adrenal glands or the hypothalamus.
• Ailments that occur with vomiting or diarrhea.

Signs that your pet cat is dehydrated

A dehydrated pet cat is a sick animal. And, therefore, will present a general condition that can make us think that something is not right. If you think your cat is dehydrated, you can look at certain details and take some actions to help you determine it.

• Look at the elasticity of the skin. A hydrated animal has elastic skin. Also, if you pull a little it will quickly snap back into place. When a pet cat is dehydrated, if you take a pinch of skin between the scapulae, when you release it, it will very slowly return to its place.
• Capillary fill test. This method consists of pressing the cat’s gum with your finger. When you remove the finger you will see that the area is white but quickly –in less than two seconds– it turns to its pink tone. If this does not happen, the animal is dehydrated.
• A dehydrated cat has a different facial expression. The eyes appear sunken, the nose very marked and the whiskers drooping.
• The body temperature of the cat falls below normal – 37.8-39.2 ºC – when it is dehydrated.
• As the blood volume decreases, the heart rate increases.

Consequences of dehydration in cats

A dehydrated cat will present a general state of lethargy or fatigue. As a consequence, they will reject the food, because they will not feel like eating. For your domestic cats, not eating has fatal consequences for the liver. Also, it can develop liver lipidosis, which complicates the clinical picture of your pet cat. This puts their life in serious danger.

On the other hand, the use of fluid therapy, if the case has not been properly studied, can cause an enlargement of the heart, with its subsequent consequences. When a cat is dehydrated and you cannot make it eat or drink by itself, one of the best options is the use of nasogastric tubes, through which you can, little by little, rehydrate the pet cat.