My cat has has had probems with occasionaly diarehha for most of this life but about a year ago it got worse. He’s been to the vet and is on a special diet, several different types of food have been tried and he’s had medication and a steroid shot and nothing has made much difference. He is otherwise healthy and happy and eats normally and he not lost weight. It’s a pain for me because he doesn’t always make it to the litter box but I can deal with that. A couple of times a day he’ll make a short sharp howl, which I assume is because he has discomfort, from gas or indegestion, but as soon as he goes he is fine.
From what I can find online I don’t think IBD will shorten his life, but I just wonder if this discomfort he has will get worse over time, or if things will stay the way they are.
Oh yeah. My malenka had it as a kitten. She got to 7. Medication helped a bit, but we had to keep her contained as she would just go when it hit her.
By the time stretch got ibd, the meds were better and he lived a bit longer than projected. About 2 years after diagnosis.
It can turn to bowel cancer, and that is what happened to stretch.
I adopted an elderly cat with intestinal issues that turned out to be a form of pancreatitis that medicine couldn’t help. He had horrifically stinky loose bowel movements, which he’d try to let go where he should, but in his muddled mind anything that looked vaguely litter-box-shaped would do, which meant small area rugs were targets.
I put down chux/puppy pads over all such rugs and he almost always used them if he didn’t use the box (I suspect he associated the litter box with pain when he defecated). It was a pain but it made cleanup way easier.
I also started adding a probiotic powder to his wet food, and that cut down the stench considerably, also somewhat firmed up his output. Fortiflora is a vet’s choice for that but there are other brands available too.
Greybeard didn’t live to his first anniversary of being adopted, but that was a matter of all his medical issues catching up with him. He was a sweet little old man, used to crawl under the covers to sleep snuggled up to me after he’d groomed my head.
Good luck!
Our cat Rocky had poopy issues all his life. We always fed him high-quality wet food, which helped, but the game changer was putting him on a raw diet. That, combined with probiotic powder, made his output close to normal. He lived to be almost 16. It was pancreatic cancer that got him in the end.
We still feed our cats raw food. We have to order it in bulk, but the cost works out to be about the same as buying quality canned food.
I’m looking at the picture of the chicken and it looks 4 pieces of raw chicken and other stuff that looks like wet food, is that right? I did try giving him boiled chicken for a couple of days but he would barely eat it.
I’m on the webpage and it says I can get 10 lbs of food for $15 and won’t be billed for another 12 weeks. I assume they will only send 1 or 2 packages at a time. I’ll give it a try, with the probiotic powder I am already giving him, which he likes.
One 2 lb package is partitioned into four 1/2 pound patties. It’s ground meat, and includes ground-up bones and whatnot that cats need.
We have two cats. I defrost a pound at a time, and keep it in a plastic container in the fridge. I give each cat a quarter of a patty, or 2 oz, for each meal. We feed them three times a day, though. Our vet says our cats should get about 6 oz a day, but YMMV, of course.
I get 20 lbs every 8 weeks. We have a fridge in the garage, so I can store it all in the freezer out there. I get chicken and turkey, and the bill comes to around $360 I think.
Thanks that helps as I only have a mini fridge but I can fit 10 lbs in. I’m assuming that once a lb. is defrosted it can last 2 -3 days
over the first hurdle, he really likes it. I guess for the first couple of days I’ll mix with the food he’s been eating, don’t know if it really matters as he already has diarreha. Maybe I should just give it to him straight with the probiotic powder, although I don’t know if he needs that, hasn’t made much of a differnce over the past month, guess it can’t hurt. Although it is possible that is causing problems.