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Has anyone any experience of dealing with and preferably, finding coping strategies for a young cat who is suffering from irritable bowel?
Tavish is about 14 months old and has increasingly been having gut issues; diarrhoea especially in occasional flare ups. They're becoming more frequent and severe; today he's looking miserable, in some obvious discomfort and so am I, after a lot of cleaning up. He's on dietary prednisolone, normally 3mg daily up to twice that today. Hills prescription diet is his main food and has been for recent months.
He was for months fine with normal cat food but isn't now; we are gradually trying Bella and Duke raw food now, added to his Hills food. Allegedly sometimes helps; we shall see.
The vet visits aren't really getting us any further forward, so far. Plenty of sensible advice but no clear solutions. We're being advised that it might take 6-8 weeks for diet changes to settle down.
We live on a farm; Tavish and his healthy sister are hunters and eat out daily.
Questions: has anyone got any advice for tactics that have worked with your suffering cat?
Has anyone had a cat grow out of this sort of thing?
There might be your answer - the cat might need to be restricted to indoors for a bit. We've had outdoor cats, and currently have 4 indoor cats with a restricted outdoor area (3 stupid pedigree cats and a rescue).
Your outdoor cat could be reactive to something on the farm as well, or critters it munches on.
My cat had similar signs and did very well being fed Purina HA - it’s a hydrolysed diet- I’m not sure if any of the Hills ones are.
it works best as a sole diet though so if he hunts then it might be a struggle (though my cat can tolerate some wet food along with the kibble but Dreamies upset him)
As above hydrolised diet as only source of food can work well, alternatively feed a single source protein to try and figure out which one he can tolerate. Does mean keeping him in with no access to any other food until you know what works. So chicken, turkey, white fish may work but you may need to go more novel sources such as venison, cottage cheese, ostrich etc Frozen supplies and batch cooking and freezing in meal sized portions makes this more manageable. Once you see improvement add a single source of carbohydrate (rice, potato, pasta etc). If that works you can try introducing a commercial cat food with the same protein source ( stick with 1 brand and type). If that works add a 2nd food, maybe the jelly version if the 1st one was gravy. With any hint of a flare up go back to original protein source that worked.
It is not an easy thing to do and is not guaranteed to work. I have seen some good results in slightly younger kittens with feeding cottage cheese only until the diarrhoea had settled and slowly moved them on to Hills ID (this was before hydrolised diets existed).
If diet trials not working then FMT (faecal microbiole transplant) may be worth considering:
https://vet.ed.ac.uk/news-events/2024/novel-treatment-proves-successful-in-cats-and-dogs
Good luck!
Allowing him to source his own food does seem to present obvious problems when you are trying to control his diet.
If Tavish is only 14 months old hunting might be a youthful phase which he will eventually grow out of, I have had cats that have been prolific hunters in their youth completely grow out of it as they have got older.
As you live on a farm am I right in assuming that most of his prey are rodents rather than birds? If so would it reduce the problem if you kept him in between dusk and dawn and only let him out during periods of bright daylight?
The occasional mouse which is presented to me almost always occurs at night time and very rarely during daylight.
Nothing to add here but to wish the cat and yourselves the best of luck.
Friends of mine have a cat that’s been really poorly recently, it’s been seen to by specialists, it’s had skin issues, stomach issues, and the poor thing does seem to be responding to treatment now, but thankfully their insurance has covered it, it’s cost around £6000!
I can't help with your issue beyond "good luck" but,
If you're considering making him housebound and feeding him a restrictive diet, please pay close attention to getting the right nutrients into him. Specifically, cats cannot synthesise taurine and without it their optic nerve will disintegrate. In the wild they get it from live prey; domestically cat food is fortified with it (which is why it's a bad idea to feed them dog food instead). If you're feeding him human food then this may not be the case (I don't know enough about meat to know what is or isn't suitable).
Also, cats are largely lactose intolerant. I may have to defer to superior knowledge here but cottage cheese doesn't sound like a great idea to me for a cat with IBS and the squits.
My ex-wifes cat had gut problems for ages and was on a vet-recommended Royal Canin diet.
When his health started to deteriorate as he was old I suggested that we feed him some raw chicken, as he wasn't liking his food. Just some fresh chicken breasts from the supermarket.
Boom, he now didn't have any toilet issues and also started to bulk up a bit and look healthier.
He still faded away and died in the end but at least he didn't have diarrhea.
I later fed my two cats on raw, they were doing great until they got TB - the company (Natural Instinct) took on another supplier as their raw venison was so popular, but that supplier was slack and wasn't checking their carcasses properly. Many cats wee affected by this and died. Mine had a cocktail of three antibiotics for quite some time before they were clear of TB.
I think the raw is a good option, but be careful with choosing the supplier.
Our cat suffered from the Brown Laser and poo-ing down his legs for a while after picking him up from the rescue centre. Probably a change of diet but the vet recommended Flora Complex 2 probiotic
https://inuvet.com/en/products/floracomplex-2
A little scoop in the food or a Lickie Stick worked wonders, he has settled down and no longer needs it.
Hope it works out!
Our cat is allergic to Dreamies cat treats. Vomitting and diarrhoea. The vet said it wasn't the first time she'd seen it.
If Tavish gets given treats it might be worth cutting them out.
He doesn't get any treats; we've tried chicken and are slightly suspicious of it as a main dietary component but after another flare up today, we're getting desperate for a solution. He has had chicken in the past and been fine with it; it might work, especially as they hunt so much. He eats everything he catches; a fieldfare yesterday, for example and ate pretty much all of it, bar the squawk. We'd started on Bella & Duke raw this last week and he seemed to be getting better on it, mixed 50/50 with Hills ID or Royal Canin, both foods that until recently he'd got on very well with. he's been losing weight, down from 4.7 to 4.2kg over the last three weeks. He also looks uncomfortable when sitting, is spending time just parked on the floors looking unhappy and isn't playing with his sister.
Living where we do, we need hunters and they've both been killing several times on most days, there's so much grub out there wandering around. All our previous cats have remained hunters until their very end. They simply could not be in a better place, in terms of quality of life but this alone isn't helping us; our quality of life is suffering significantly. Ideally we'd have them on the same diet but having to get prednisolone doses into him currently means we have to literally stand over them eating. When you get up in the morning, it can take an hour to clean floors, the place is a minefield and means that a night's sleep isn't restful, knowing what we might be faced with in the morning. Only a few weeks ago, he killed an adult hare that was larger than himself, then the two of them shared it over three days, without any gut issues for either. I cannot see him having that level of energy again any time soon. I'd like to try to persevere with the raw food supplier if we can, that would be a great solution as they can both eat the same stuff.
No one has mentioned their cat has managed to grow out of it.
Update: they've both been on 100% raw food from Bella & Duke since Hogmanay.
We're now at just under three weeks since the last flare up and he's putting weight back on, chasing his sister around the house, garden & fields. He's out now most of the time and can be found up to half a mile from the house; we took them out for a walk yesterday and they both bombed about the place like crazy things. He's back to being able to sprint 100m in one go when he gets the urge... no, not that urge, just a burst of energy...
So .. small steps. It's way too early to celebrate as yet. He's still taking 3mg Prednisolone, twice a day and one sachet of Forteflora. They both absolutely love the raw cat food. It's a it of hassle to stay ahead of defrosting it but compared to cleaning floors, this is great.
We have found that the feeding guide is a bit to modest for them both and we're giving them about 50% more at the moment. It is cold, they're young, still growing and very active, so I'm not surprised that they need (and want..) lots.