Can anyone explain this strange behavior?

[emilybh]

Originally Posted by sparrowmint

Sorry that this doesn't directly answer your question. Are you sure you necessarily need to feed him the nasty prescription food? Is a canned food with a novel protein and limited ingredients not possible to try, like Natural Balance's Venison and Green Pea? Or a canned food with rabbit, like Nature's Variety? For research, if you go to petfooddirect.com and click the link for "cat > food", along the left hand side you'll see a bunch of links for "protein source," and so you can see what's all available for different proteins and research ingredients (and there are others out there not stocked by that site).

Hill's isn't a great company, and vets (who earn money by stocking and selling the stuff) are sometimes too quick to recommend the prescription food when there's a lot of commercial food varieties these days that will work for some cats with this kind of condition.

I agree with Sparrow. I'd read some good books about natural health for your cat (such as the Natural Cat by Anitra Frazier)for suggestions about remedies for the IBD and an upgraded natural diet or quality canned food with supplements.

Spots Stew by Halopet is good. I give it to my cat when I'm out of home prepared.

Slippery Elm is a great mucilaginous herb that normalizes the digestive tract. It tastes like Maple syrup. It is very healing for loose bowels as well as constipation or vomiting. It could be mixed in to the food with extra water added. I would want to try to get the cat back to where he enjoys meal time.

I know what it is like being torn between what the vet says about food for your cat and what your gut tells you though. I lost a cat choosing to listen to a well meaning vet about diet when I should have gone with my gut and continued what I'd been doing for my beloved first cat.

On my current cat I've taken the natural approach generally avoided vets except to get an occasional exam and blood work done or in an emergency ; used a Naturopath for my cat's other health concerns whose suggested all natural medicines and my cat is 17 and still going strong.