Helen is now young adult female squirrel. I found her when she was 4 weeks old, having just one eye open. Her mother had been run over.
Recently her appetite has diminished substantially. She gets fed three times a day 20+ grams of at least four different foods during each meal. It is all presented in one dish. She will eat her favorites, and maybe one bite or two of another item and then is done. This means she usually has eaten less than a quarter of what was in her dish.
The last two days her urine output appears to have diminished substantially, unless she is going somewhere new. Today I saw two light spots, no puddles. That was it. Poop output is down, some of which is hard and small. It is pretty much black in color.
In the previous few days she has pretty much declined water when offered. (She always has a shallow dish which gets emptied, cleaned and refilled every day. It is always placed in the same location.)
A typical meal might include microwaved sweet potato as the main course, then a few small pieces of fruit, a few chips of avocado, some organic, cold pressed coconut oil shavings, a dozen chips of organic oatmeal (raw), sometimes Greek, whole milk yogurt mixed with unsweetened applesauce, a piece of cooked squash, a few small chunks of very low sugar, homemade desert. I vary the contents to keep her interest.
So, she gets a substantial amount of her hydration from her food.
She used to love apples but that disappeared a while ago. Any interest in any particular fruit quickly looses its novelty. (Fruit generally has water content north of 80%.)
She is given deer antlers and oak branches to gnaw on. Most of the day she freely roams the house. There is the occasional crash. She is never caged, sometimes she is left in my bedroom so that I can readily go in out of the house.
I have multiple theories about her loss of appetite.
1) She is depressed. (She wants to be outside. I am building her a house, which has turned into a rather complicated wood working project, but I figure I can substantially improve her life expectancy with a secure, dry and warm house.) She is mad at me. (Once every two weeks I leave her after breakfast and return before sunset.)
2) She ate something which disagrees with her. (I have found her browsing through some old garden seeds on a shelf which is dusty and has dead bugs. I removed these today and cleaned the shelf.) She may have eaten a dead stink bunk. I think she is trying to be independent of me and feed herself. No healthy choices there, but that doesn't seem to have stopped her from trying.
3) Not eating is a bargaining strategy to get more of her treats, such as avocado, nuts and unsweetened banana chips with no sulfur. I would say that such a strategy has met with some success. (Avocado is the only one that has any water to speak of.)
4) I was peeling a butternut squash to dice and cook and she showed an interest in the peelings. I figured I would trust her sense of smell and judgement. She ate quite a bit and some raw bits as well. She has never eaten uncooked squash before. The peelings of the shell may be sitting like a stone and she may have decided not to eat any more, including sweet potato, which is similar in the same category. I don't know.
However, her appetite has never been this poor. If she really isn't peeing, organ failure is a distinct possibility.
I do not have central air conditioning. Temps inside are in the low 80's with high humidity.
She remains active. I don't think there is a noticeable change in her activity level.
How do I bring her appetite and thirst back? Has anybody else experienced anything similar?