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My kitten has been eating exclusively wet food for a few weeks now. We slowly moved him from raw to met over a period of 1 month. He did really well and had no stomach issues. Now for the past week he has been having loose stool, not diarrhea. Well today he got diarrhea real bad. He probably went 2-3 times in the past few hours including once on my bed because he couldn’t make it to his box. We are feeding him high quality food (I think). Right now we are alternating between EVO 95% chicken and turkey and wellness core chicken and turkey. He also eats Before Grain Chicken and Before Grain Turkey (but hasn’t had any this week).
Well we called the vet and he has an appointment tomorrow but we actually talked to the vet and he said it’s probably because we are feeding him that food. He said we really need to get him on “the Cadillac of Cat foods” aka Science Diet. I told him that I did my research and was wanting to go grain free high quality and he said the grain free thing is all marketing and we need him on a formula specifically designed by scientists for cats and kittens and that what I'm feeding him is junk. Sigh…I feel so confused and upset with my vet. I think I may have lost faith.
Anyone have any suggestions on what could be causing my cat such problems? He was checked for worms about 1 month ago and was clear. Should I just stick with 1 food and not alternate brands? And what about what the vet said, how do you all take that?
When the topic of diarrhea comes up here, I always think of the dog forum, where canned pumpkin has been recommended many times to regulate the bowel, both for diarrhea and constipation. I'm just putting this out there in case anyone else has any thoughts on it, because I've never given it to a cat and I know they are different than dogs. And whether your cat would eat it or not would be an open question. And also, I don't know what amount would be appropriate. So this may well be a completely useless post but it's so highly recommended for dogs, I'd like to hear if anyone knows about its usefulness for cats, or if anyone knows if there are any potential problems with pumpkin for cats.
Anyway, I feel for you. It is so frustrating trying to figure out what to feed animals these days. And feeling like you've let your pet down if something doesn't work right. And not knowing who to trust or believe. I hope you can work something out for your little guy.
Hey, I bet he's not so little any more. Maybe we should see an updated photo?
It may be the food, but I don't like the idea of the vet parroting the whole Science Diet marketing gimmick. Yeah, to a certain degree "grain-free" and so on is a marketing gimmick, but so is just about everything about Science Diet. My cat ate Science Diet for a few years (and Iams before that, going back to kittenhood with Iams) but it was before I knew better and I wouldn't go that way again. Still, the cat needs to eat something that works well for him. The likelihood that it needs to be filler-filled Science Diet is small, though.
Are any of the foods you're feeding introduced more recently, like in the last week or two?
Any chance you would seek out a different vet, perhaps one with more interest in what actual foods make sense for a cat instead of the marketing info of a certain big corp (whose food he probably sells in his practice)? Might be worth considering.
Beyond that, though, I don't have a lot of suggestion. There are other high quality brands of food to try if you want to try that. It may be something else, though, after a week, assuming none of these are new foods. The brands you've chosen aren't awful perhaps but I've downgraded them below some others in my mind for various reasons, recalls and such. But mainly I have a cat that won't eat them due to texture.
Pumpkin is okay to feed cats; there's even pumpkin in at least one commercial food (a Soulistic variety available at Petco). I don't know its effect on diarrhea though. I really don't have much useful input on that specific problem, as I just mostly haven't had to deal with it. I can't remember Amber ever being sick with diarrhea.
He just started eating the EVO after the loose stools started and his meal before the bad incident this morning was wellness core. There is very little to nibble on in our house as I've went through a ton of effort to kittyproof. I'll take another look but I don't think it's an issue.
What kind of problem was happening when you put him on the raw food?
I've gone through 2 years of digestive problems with my cat, so I do understand your frustration.
I've also had vets try to push the Science Diet on me.
If he is having problems with every type of food you feed him- raw, canned, grain free, dry, etc., then I would think its something other than his food that is causing the problem.
In my cat's case, there has been definitive, quick, and very clear cut changes to his digestive problems as I switched him to different foods - that is the reason I've been confident its a food problem, in his case.
Pick a food and feed it that food for awhile. constantly changing the base product can cause problems. Going from wet to dry, dry to raw, raw to wet, this to that.... and it may not show up for a few days. So try going back to the food the cat ate before any problems occured and see what happens. That will be your best baseline for finding the cause of the problem.
what's the chance he could have developed colitis? I was dealing with that for a while with one of my oldest.. I tried a number of different foods, always reading the ingredients carefully since he has history of trouble with fish and that gets snuck in a lot. since the 'pudding poop' wasn't getting any better, I finally gave up with the food experiments and took him to the vet.
He said colitis can be caused by a couple of things and there's not really any good way to find out which, so to try one of the foods that work best. We started with Science wD (which he equated with a couple other store foods in case that worked) and it didn't make a difference. So we tried the iD (which equates with Purina One's sensitive stomach) and that did the trick very quickly!
he's been on it for a while and it may have now resolved the problem since he was snacking a little on other cats' food without any problem, and now with the diabetes he's getting mD exclusively and still is good. so... it could be food and you need one of the specialties to clear up whatever the issue is for a while.
All I'll say is Science Diet is far from the Cadillac of cat foods.
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but it's so highly recommended for dogs, I'd like to hear if anyone knows about its usefulness for cats, or if anyone knows if there are any potential problems with pumpkin for cats.
My cat ate Science Diet for a few years (and Iams before that, going back to kittenhood with Iams) but it was before I knew better and I wouldn't go that way again. Still, the cat needs to eat something that works well for him. The likelihood that it needs to be filler-filled Science Diet is small, though.
