Eating/Chewing/Swallowing Issue 5 year old British blue

Hi Vets, Looking for some advice on an ongoing issue with my 5 year old british blue. Around 2 months ago my cat started being sick on a daily basis - she was taken to the vet and provided a hairball treatment to see if that would help which it did not. After around 2 weeks she stopped being sick as much but I noticed she started to have problems either chewing or swallowing her food with kibble dropping from her mouth and a real inability to chew the chunks in wet food. I went back to the vets and she had a blood test which came back fine as well as put under anesthetic for a full oral examination as well as a scale/polish but the vets said they could see nothing that would be causing this eating issue. I have been advised that the next stage is to go to a cat dental specialist to x-ray the gums. I have attached a video of this ongoing issue with her eating. Alongside the symptoms I have noticed that any time she tries to eat or lick her food she shakes her head and licks her lips frantically - throwing her tongue out of her mouth for a couple of minutes during and after eating. I'm worried as she is starting to not want to touch her food and at times, runs away when i try to give her it. Just looking to see if anyone has seen this in their cat before. She has not had any scans for potential ingestion of a foreign object like string or an elastic band which is a potential worry of mine. Here is the video to stream for reference https://youtu.be/DS9bcz_zC3Q Many thanks for your time  

https://youtu.be/DS9bcz_zC3Q  

Hello - and thankyou for your question and the video.  Of course, this could always be behavioural (in that your cat just isn't as hungry as you think they should be), but why would this suddenly develop? - it could certainly prove worthwhile looking deeper.   Bear in mind that I don't know what tests have already been done, I wonder whether pancreatitis has been ruled out, which can cause both sickness and nausea in cats, and doesn't show up on many common in-house blood-tests.  Most vets have to send a sample off to a lab in order to diagnose pancreatitis and while older vets use pancreatic lipase as an indicator to check further, it has been shown that lipase isn't as reliable as it was once thought.

You mention that actively swallowing seems to be a problem and there are neurological tests that can be done around this.  Again, your vet may have already done them.  I'm not certain from your description whether nausea (sicky feelings) or a physical problem with eating appears to be the main issue.  Another question for your vets is whether more tests or a referral to a medical specialist would be worthwhile in order to 'work up' the case.

If this happens, please do let us know what is found! - as we agree that this behaviour doesn't sound normal.

I think its worth adding to this, that dropping and discarding food, licking lips etc are all signs associated with nausea in cats, but may also be associated with neurological conditions (eg malfuctioning of nerve tissue), which is why, depending on the work-up so far, further tests may be useful.