Kitten with chronic diarrhea, vet no help!!!!!

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  • #49851
    Bri157
    Participant

    I adopted a kitten from a shelter approx. 6 weeks and Izzy is a sweet, cuddly girl with a great appetite and she LOVES to play!

    The only problem is her chronic diarrhea and it’s worrying me to no end!

    The vet switched her food twice(medi-cal gastro intestinal, then developmental)

    Ran a full fecal test and put her on a probiotic. The latest “cure” was to put her on the antibiotic metronidazole for 2 weeks which made Izzy’s stool like water and whenever she jumped or ran or played she would leave a watery poopy trail 🙁 I discontinued giving her the antibiotic and now I do not know what to do! I feel very lost and worried for my baby and I’ve lost faith in my vet! I have taken Izzy to the vet numerous times and nothing theyve prescribed has helped!

    Any advice? Anyone experience this?

    #715649
    Jeankit
    Participant

    Hi Bri, please click on upper right pink tags for more chats w/helpful info.

    #715650
    Jeankit
    Participant

    Bumping for more seasoned help from TDK kits!

    (Try giving him a smidge of plain, unsweetend, natural yogurt.)

    #715651
    lisaeylau
    Participant

    I feel your pain, having been down this road. My CJ (see Gravitar) had this as a kitten, and it finally cleared at six months. But all that time she gained weight and thrived. Today she is solid muscle and a healthy, happy girl. I wish the same outcome for you. My only advice is don’t panic. You will transfer your anxiety to your baby, and there are many options still to be tried. Bless you for loving your little one!

    #715652
    Jeankit
    Participant
    #715653
    Skyron
    Participant

    I have never known metronidazole not to work for diahrrea in kittens. The only other thing I would think of then is worms. Even if your vet did run stool tests, its possible that he ran a standard panel of tests, and in my experience with feral cats, they can sometimes have parasites that vets would not typically test for. I know your kitty isnt feral, but coming from a shelter, you cant be sure what her history is or what other cats she came into contact with. A good dewormer, that treats all kinds of parasites (here in SA I like milbemax, or drontal) instead of just certain bugs, wouldnt do your kitty any harm.

    You could also try giving her a bland diet of just plain boiled chicken and rice for a week or so, and see if it maybe makes a difference. Plain unflavoured yogurt would also help to settle any intestinal flora issues that might be going on.

    And then lastly, in my opinion, once you have lost faith in a vet, its time to find a new one. There’s no point in going back to the same person if you dont find them to be good and reliable in what they do. I find it very strange that he/she tried to treat your kitty, and having not found a cause, are just giving up? If my vet doesnt find answers with the first round of treatment/tests, he admits my cats to hospital untill he finds out whats going on.

    #715654
    Bri157
    Participant

    Thanks, I will give the yogurt a try and also try not to stress so much! I just want her to be healthy!

    #715655
    Bri157
    Participant

    The vet did give her a dewormer injection but I am

    Unsure of the name of the medication, I should have mentioned that.

    Is it possible the metronidazole is too high of a volume? Because it made her diarrhea MUCH worse

    #715656
    choyt11
    Participant

    we have dr. scZotka in binghamton, who treats only cats. i heard she was very good but i didn’t like her personality, so i found another vet.

    #715657
    CheetahBoysmommy
    Participant

    You can also try some plain cooked rice – sometimes that helps. But, after this long with no results from the vet you might want to try another vet.

    #715658
    Mo
    Participant

    Plain baby food – either chicken or turkey – is bland and Izzy could probably handle it. I wouldn’t mix it with rice, however, as rice is known to deplete taurine, and cats can’t begin to digest it.

    Or maybe Izzy could eat other more bland foods, such as Before Grain 96% chicken, turkey, or quail & chicken. They are a high quality canned cat food – much better than what most vets prescibe/sell.

    Try keeping her on the probiotic for a while, personally I prefer to not use FortiFlora (ingredients that I don’t like) but use Holistic Select probiotics instead. Those can typically be easily found, just sprinkle a tiny bit on the food, like it is “salt & pepper”, not the amount the bottle says! Keep up with that for a few weeks to help replace/replenish all the good bacteria that the antibiotics killed off.

    I had a cat with chronic diarrhea issues, here is her story and what helped:

    Wilda, one of my foster cats, had diarrhea worse than any of my others. She had diarrhea most of her life, and is nearly nine years old. It was caused by an intolerance towards the food she was eating at the shelter – mostly Kirkland (dry) and Taste of the Wild (dry). Eventually they isolated her and fed her Hills Prescription i/d and z/d – both at different times and for several weeks – with no change. She was then put on long rounds of antibiotics and dewormers, again not helping her problem, but instead aggravating it even more.

    Once she was in my care, I took her off of the antibiotics and dewormer, as well as taking away any dry food. She was an easy cat to switch over to canned food, though she did go through a “carb withdrawal” for about a week. Dry food is full of carbs, and that can be addicting to cats. The canned I was feeding her, “Before Grain 96%” was very low in carbs – so it was a hard switch for her. I also started her on probiotics to help replace the good bacteria that the antibiotics had killed off. She also was started on B12: something considered essential for cats with issues such as diarrhea. She still had issues with diarrhea – canned food wasn’t cutting it for her. I was hoping a high quality, low carb, grain free canned was all she needed, as it would be easier for her future adopters to feed. It wasn’t enough though, so I started transitioning her to a prey model raw diet.

    Her raw food was cut up into pencil eraser tip size pieces to make it easier for her to eat. She had no jaw strength, and actually is also missing several teeth. Slowly I switched her from all canned to all raw, and then I started to see the results I wanted. Normal raw fed cat stools – smell free, and only passing a small stool once every 2 to 3 days. That was a huge difference; for once I could clean her litter box without wondering if I should be wearing a hazmat suit 😉

    http://catcentric.org/raw-feeding/ http://rawfedcats.org/practicalguide.htm and http://ibdkitties.net/rawinstructions.html are good guides about raw feeding. You can either prepare it yourself (I do that way) or there are a number of premade brands available. “Rad Cat” is the best brand I have found so far – stores that carry it do typically have free one ounce samples to try out so you know if the cat likes it or not. Nature’s Variety is another one, but it should be fed along with another brand, as their food is to high in bone and can be constipating. Nature’s Variety also has a coupon for a free sample, I’ll try find it if you are interested.

    #715659
    FondaHonda
    Participant

    Why, oh why, did I know that your post would lead to ‘your cat won’t be ill if you raw feed’? Can you not be a little more compassionate?

    Please learn when it’s appropriate to post about raw feeding–I have no issue with you ‘spreading the word’ ;), but your timing could really use some improvement. IMHO, that is. . .

    #715660
    Mo
    Participant

    I can’t share what I had to do for poor Wilda to get over her diarrhea? Seriously, I know you hate me, I know you hate raw feeding, but hey it can help immensely.

    http://www.thecatsite.com/t/239771/this-is-going-to-be-one-for-the-books-transitioning-lucky-bugsy-and-hope-to-raw-challenges-galore is another thread, on a different forum, following the transition of three cats. One of the cats, Bugsy, is starting to have formed stools also now that he is off of commercial foods. It is just not one cat that has had great improvements…it is many. All of them couldn’t handle ‘normal’ food and all of them started having formed stools on raw food – be it premade or home prepared. So if it helps so much, and I have seen many instances of it helping, can’t I post those suggestions? Others are suggesting things as well and no one minds that 😉

    #715661
    FondaHonda
    Participant

    Hey, I don’t hate you, nor do I hate raw feeding. My only problem is learning when it’s appropriate to post about raw feeding. . .it would also be nice if some of your posts didn’t relate to cat nutrition. 😉

    #715662
    Skyron
    Participant

    Mo, the point of the rice with the boiled chicken is to help bind the loose stool. Not to have any nutritional value.

    #715663
    Bri157
    Participant

    I’m not ready to go the raw route… Plus she is teething right now so I can’t really give her something thats too hard to chew up, but thank you for that advice, I have read a lot about Raw making a huge difference in cats’ lives!

    I was reading some other posts on this site and one person posted with the EXACT same problems that Izzy has! She said Wellness core high protein did it for her kitty’s diarrhea! Any thoughts?

    I am currently slowly transitioning Izzy to boiled chicken and rice which she isn’t crazy about but after day 2 she is warming up to it a bit more…

    #715664
    Bri157
    Participant

    I also still have her on the probiotic Florentero.

    #715665
    Bri157
    Participant

    I have been doing a lot of reading and looking at links from your posts and I am starting to wonder if perhaps Izzy does have Coccidia and it just didn’t show up on the fecal test? I have brought her poo to the vets twice now but I’m thinking maybe I should talk to another vet about running a fecal test!

    #715666
    Jeankit
    Participant

    A second opionion may be worth the effort with positive results for Izzy’s sake!

    #715667
    Bri157
    Participant

    Spoke with a different vet, taking in some poo for another fecal test! Hopefully they find something that has a name so Izzy can start treatment! Almost 2 months of chronic diarrhea 🙁

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