6 month old kitten diarrhea

Tori, the big danger with constant diarrhoea is that your kitten will quickly become dehydrated unless he is also taking in plenty of water. At six months, he is fairly robust but taking him back to the vet is a good idea. If Hills Science Diet for Kittens is dry food/kibble, then you should gently switch to a wet canned food — dry food will only help to make the dehydration worse as it will suck more water out of his system, whereas wet canned food has a large proportion of water in it. (In addition, in some male cats, feeding only dry food eventually causes crystals to form in their bladder which can be life-threatening and is very expensive.) Choose a good quality brand, it doesn’t have to be expensive but the first ingredient on the list of ingredients should be meat of some kind. I will add some links for diarrhea, but yes, the vet is a very good idea, that would be my first stop. He can’t carry on like this for more than a day or so. Best of luck.

This is the tent test, to test for dehydration when your kitten has bad vomiting or diarrhoea problems:

Tent test: pick up a good pinch of kitten’s skin at the neck and let go.If it snaps back immediately, she’s hydrated okay. If it takes a little time to go back down, or, worse, it stays up in a ‘tent’ shape, she needs fluids, such as pedialyte (from the supermarket, children’s aisle) or home-made pedialyte below.

Note, in the United Kingdom, pedialyte is called Dioralyte. Also known as rehydration salts.

Home-made pedialyte recipe:

(from World Health Organization)…no preservatives so short life-span

* 1 cup water (boiled then cooled)

* 2 tsp sugar

* 1/8 tsp salt

* 1/8 tsp baking soda

(this Pedialyte formula gives needed electrolytes & some sugar for energy)

Combine all ingredients and warm slightly.

Make new after 24 hours.

Tori, also click the pink tag diarrhea for more advice and threads on this subject.

You’re very welcome. Another thing to look for is goats milk (in the baking section of Walmart or the chiller of your supermarket), it can be a little rich for them, so watch out that it doesn’t make his diarrhea worse but it has lots of probiotics and lyseine in it, which are good for cats’ digestive systems. Best of luck, let us know how he goes.