Hi,

I've been lurking here for a while and have always meant to post before now, but now I actually need help so I guess I'll speak up.

I have a male ball python. He lives in a 30 gallon long tank with clay pots to hide in, fake plants and branches and other things to climb on, fresh water to drink (pic). It's about 87-88 on the warm side and 74-76 on the cool side. The humidity is generally around 55-60%, though sometimes it dips down to 40% if I haven't misted the tank in a couple of days, but he always has a warm damp spot to sit in if he needs it.

He is just over a year and a half old. For the first year of his life, he ate every piece of food I offered him (I fed live rats about once every 7-10 days, depending on his activity level; the rats are held by the tail with my fingers and by the scruff with hemostats so they are given the absolute minimal opportunity to bite him, and we have never had an 'incident'). Just after his first birthday, he broke about 700 grams.

Shortly afterwards, he stopped eating. That was last November. It was pretty sudden; he's usually very quick to strike, but he went from gleefully swallowing everything I offered him to turning up his nose and going back to bed. I assumed he was going off-feed for the winter (something he didn't do the previous winter) and decided not to feed him until the ice melted and the sun started coming up again.

February came by, then March. When April happened and he still wasn't eating, I got kind of worried. Near the beginning of May, he took one very very small rat, but then refused two more. I tried changing the color of rats (he's never been picky about color before; I get all my feeders from the local pet shop guy who produces feeders for a lot of local herp keepers), I tried pre-killing for him (something I never wanted to do before because I think it's important for my beliefs to let him do his own killing).

Then I realized that around the same time he stopped eating, my housemate adopted a kitten. The kitten quickly grew into a cat that had free-range of the entire house; I'd come home and find everything near my snake's tank knocked over. The cat's been around during failed feedings, being spastic and trying to jump on the tank, jump at the rat, jump at the snake, etc. So I decided that the cat was stressing him out, spooking him out of eating.

A few days ago, I moved the snake to my boyfriend's house, which is free of small, easily excitable and prey-driven creatures. Since we're moving in together over the summer anyway, I figured I might as well move the snake now and give him more time to get over the trauma of being harassed by a half-feral cat all day long.

I just tried feeding him now, and he still didn't seem interested in food. He pulls away from the rat, sometimes flinches a little. He doesn't ball up or try to tuck himself away in his hide or anything, just turns his face away whenever I bring the rat close.

My real concern now is that I'm worried he's getting too weak to eat. He's dropped to just under 600 grams, and I can feel his ribs when I hold him and his skin is loose. I've been keeping an eye on him for other health problems, but I haven't caught any signs of RI or mouth rot or scale rot or anything. He shed a couple weeks ago; perfect single piece of skin in one go. I don't want to try an assist feed unless I'm convinced he'd too weak to eat otherwise, and he did eat something a couple weeks ago.

Is he going to starve himself to death? Do ball pythons really get so neurotic when they feel threatened that they'll just refuse to eat until they waste away? I really wish I noticed the cat problem much sooner, but I just didn't think of it until I noticed that he's dropped over 10% of his body weight. Up until a couple weeks ago, I just thought he was still off-feed from the winter (it was an especially rough one this year, not that he should know that because his tank temperatures were pretty stable).

Any help, suggestions, moral support if I'm just being impatient, etc. would be greatly appreciated.