Lethargy – Sleeping All Day

Sleeping is as normal as eating for cats as well as for humans. In general, cats sleep for about 13 to 18 hours or more a day. It varies with age and cats’ personality. However, sometimes cats may sleep for unusually long hours and this happens perpetually. This may be a sign for lethargy that we cannot ignore. Lethargy is a name we use for sleeping disorder, as with anorexia for eating disorder, as mentioned in “How to help a cat which won’t eat”.

Cats’ Normal Sleep Pattern

Before we look at cats lethargy, let us first look at cats’ normal sleep pattern.

Cats’ normal sleep pattern usually takes place in two modes. One mode is the light sleep mode which takes about 75% of all sleeping time. In light sleep mode, otherwise known as short naps, cats look as if they are not fully asleep and their eyelids may be slightly open. They can awaken very quickly and respond readily to any environmental change. This may be the joint result of genetic heritage and/or evolutionary programming for the cats to protect themselves from predators or intruders in nature.

The remaining 25% of the sleeping time takes place as deep sleep mode. They may have dreams in this mode, and their paws and faces may twitch. Cats, especially the wild ones, usually use huge amount of energy for hunting, and they need to sleep to conserve energy before they go for another round of hunting. The longer they sleep, the more energy can be conserved.

Unlike wild cats, domestic cats do not need to hunt, but their genetic programming seems to keep their kinetic functions for their running and jumping activities alive. Also, kittens tend to sleep as much as adult cats mainly because the growth hormone is only released during sleep. Hormone secretion also takes some amount of energy.

However, it would be useful to note that new-born kittens spend most of their time sleeping. This is the case not only because they need huge amount of growth hormone for them to grow up, but also because their silence protects their delicate bodies, especially when their mothers are not around to protect them. This may takes around a week or so for the new-born kittens to gradually adjust their sleeping hours to that of the adults.

Moreover, cats are carnivores. Their meat diet means that they need more energy to digest the food. Feeling sleepy is as normal as humans do after lunch. After all, they use very little energy to maintain basic internal bodily activities, such as breathing, heart beat and metabolism.

The number of sleeping hours for cats mentioned above is a general reference. The point is that we can take better care of our cats if we are familiar with their normal sleeping hours, and that we can notice readily and take action soon enough if we find that our cats sleep unusually longer than their normal hours, for some period of time.

Lethargic Pattern and Remedies

Unlike normal long-sleeping-hour pattern in which cats can turn immediately from the deep sleep mode to the fully awake and fully responsive mode, cats that show the signs of lethargy are in a state of drowsiness, inactivity, or indifference in their surrounding. Their responses to external stimuli, such as sound, sight or touch, are delayed.

Instead of a disease itself, lethargy is a sign of some other underlying bodily illness. In principle, it should be fine if cats with lethargic symptoms return to normal within a day, and we should not ignore in case the lethargic symptoms persist for more than one day.

The causes of lethargy can be exhaustive. They can be disorders of anywhere from the blood (including anemia), heart and vessels, respiratory system, endocrine system, digestive system, urinary tract, immune system, nervous system, skeletal system, or the skin. They can also be disorders in nutrition, behaviours, issues with drug or medication, or chronic infection or inflammation, or even cancer.

Lethargy usually comes with one or more of the following symptoms, namely listlessness, reluctance to move (including running, playing, exercise and other normal activities they have), hiding and avoiding interaction with people or other pets (not for newly adopted stray cats, see “Why is a Cat Hiding?“), decrease in appetite (see “How to help a cat which won’t eat”.), vomiting (see “Cat vomiting – Causes and Treatments”), fever, decreased grooming, and poor hair coat.

If one or more of these symptoms are found in cats who sleep for unusually long hours with abnormal inactivity, we need to seek professional help from veterinarians. They will run some tests to diagnose the cats’ real health issue and give proper treatments.

What we can do to co-operate with the veterinarians in cats’ recovery is to follow the medical prescriptions as directed, observe the cats’ general activity pattern and appetite, and notify the veterinarian for any progress or deteriorating changes.