- My cat disappeared thirteen days ago. I have already thought that it is dead, but it came back today and it was exhausted.
- If your cat has run away from home, don't worry; it'll be back to you. Cats can find the way back to home. However if there are no familiar reference points, if your cat has never been on walk or doesn't know the terrain, it'll be searching for you long.
The same is happening with dog's males. During the wedding period they follow females, forgetting everything, including their hosts. As males are lodged, they don't pay attention on landmarks. Quite often they run away too far and can't find the way back. Those, who return to the hosts after a long absence, are exhausted.
All the time, while the animal is looking for you, it not only has nothing to eat, but also has nothing to drink. In that case the organism of the animal will be exhausted and dehydrated. Here is the example: the young cat was absent for five days and when the cat returned, it had drunk the half-liter of water.
The hosts, seeing their pets, on pleasures give to cats the whole fish and the full bowl of porridge; the dogs can receive the bowl of porridge and the chunk of meat. However you mustn't do it, because the organism of an animal has changed.
The cells of a body both animal and man receive energy basically with glucose or directly from the digested nutrition, or from the liver, which is stocked by glycogen. The cells will use also energy, obtained during the process of oxidation of fatty acids. However nerve cells need only glucose.
The level of a glucose in a blood should be approximately identical so, that the cells of a nervous system were ensured by the enough quantity of energy. Hormones of insulin regulate this level.
The nervous cells are capable to occlude glucose without insulin, but other cells can't, insulin is necessary for them for transport of glucose through the outside membrane.
During the starvation the level of insulin in a blood falls so, that the glucose is accessible only to nervous cells, and others receive it at the expense of oxidation of fatty acids.
When the animal doesn't eat for a long time, it lives only at the expense of reserves of the organism: the organism spends the reserves of glycogen in liver and in muscles, reserves of Adeps in miscellaneous parts of body. If the starvation lasts too long, the organism begins to spend the proteins of muscles and other tissues.
The beasts can live for weeks without food and water. In one of experiments the raccoon for 60 days and the fox for 20 days did not receive nutrition. The dogs can live without the nutrition for 98 days. The cats, the homeless ones, can live without any nutrition for a long time too. But also you can see what price do they pay for it.
The long-lived starvation provokes in the organism of the animal the dystrophy -the disease, which develops and is accompanied by serious disturbance of a metabolism with an atrophy and dystrophy of all organs. Mammals and birds, which didn't eat for a long time, are exhausted and have no hypodermic fatty tissue. They have low temperature, infrequent heartbeats and the flabby muscles.
When the animal has no capability not only to eat, but also to drink, it can be the reason of the water exhausting. Originally poor ingress of water into the organism provokes only the decreasing of the diurnal quantity of the urine. But later the part of water from the cells starts to pass into the exocellular space. Then the volume of an exocellular fluid and the volume of the blood through the kidneys are decreasing.
In reply the organism of an animal begins to work out the enzyme "rennin". It goes into blood and begins to synthesize biologically active material - angiotensin, which, firstly, supports normal blood pressure, and consequently, regulates blood circulation and, secondly, provokes thirst. The animal begins to search for water. The loss of water (at about 10-20 % of weight of body) is lethal for a mammal.
You can give enough of water to cats and dogs, which have come back home after a long absence. The same you must do if your pet was absent for some days. The only thing, which can harm your pet, is acute gastric disease. The cause of it is the overloading of stomach by food.
Some animal, despite of offered full dinner, are doing the following: drink and go to sleep. It is the best way to protect the organism from the acute gastric disease. Probably feeling of a self-preservation, and also fatigue are dominating. In addition to all, the animal, at last, is relaxed: all the time while it was out of home, it was under the stress.
For the following day and later the nutrition of the animal should be valuable, vitamin-rich, but fractional: it you 'd better feed your animal by small portions five or seven times per day.