Civvie starting the 'roids

Hi there,

We have a temporary kitty that we are taking care who I used to live with a long time ago. Jack's 12, and my ex, his owner, needed a place for him to stay as he is moving and Jack has diarrhea issues that my ex couldn't handle at this time.

So we went to the vet, all labs looked ok so far (CBC, Chem, liver panel, fecal float, abd x-ray). I asked her to run a lab for tritrichomonus, because the IBS symptoms aren't new and he was a stray when a kitten. Vet wanted us to try a high fiber diet and probiotic. We tried this with a massive increase in the frequency of stools (4-5 times a day). So I switched to natural balance venison LID to see if that would work. Vet wanted to test for lymphoma, but jack has had diarrhea issues for years and he's very healthy with no other symptoms and x-rays showed no masses. Owner said he wouldn't treat cancer aggressively anyway, only symptomatic control so we decided to forgo the tests for cancer.

Vet wants us to start 10mg/day prednisolone. I'm willing to try if it will get this current flare under control. My questions were - how soon do the steroid side effects happen? What dose was able to control your kitties if they have IBS? Were you able to come off the steroids? What foods were successful for your cats? Has anyone tested for and treated tritrichomonus?

Any other advice very welcome. Jack might not be able to go home unless the poops get a little under control.

 

I have successfully used budesonide as first choice over pred for IBD/IBS/. 1 mg once daily. I purchased 3 mg capsules fro Thriving pets and divided in in three and put the 1 mg in gel caps. Less expensive than getting 1 mg capsules.
I noted improvements in a week or two

 

Thanks, I was going to ask about the budesonide as I know in humans it has a lower side effect profile. Maybe I'll see if we can make the switch once he's controlled a little bit. I think the vet wanted the prednisolone cause it's a stronger steroid and probably what she's used to using for IBS.

You work for a vet? Have they every tested or treated for tritrichomonus? My vet said she's never actually tested any of the IBS cats, and she thought it was rare, but I was reading that it's probably a more common parasite than is known.

 

Hello,

Have you investigated food intolerance(s)?

 

So far it seems like kibble in general makes it worse, and it doesn't seem like he's digesting the kibble (stool looks like kibble soup). Wet food seems to be better, so I'm trying a novel protein food (venison) to see if that will help. I've only had him here for like a month, so we're still working on the food situation. When he was a kitten, I lived with him for about 3 years, and went through lots of different foods to try to prevent/treat flares and there didn't seem to be too much of a pattern that I could figure out. He was never this bad though.

 

Both Neko and my civie are on steroids for IBD/suspected SCL. Different reasons for not doing the biopsy (gold standard for diagnosis) or endoscopy. For Neko it's her heart. Neko is on budesonide so it doesn't impact her BG, but it's not as effective for SCL as pred. But she also can't have pred due to her heart. Civie is on pred. I tested his blood sugar a week ago - 59. Not all pred kitties get diabetes and you can reduce the dose if it still keeps the symptoms at bay. He had some initial sniffles that I treated with Lysine and a weak hind leg that may or may not have been caused by the pred. We weren't home when he might have injured it.

A couple of good sites for reading about feeding: http://www.ibdkitties.net/ and http://www.rawfeedingforibdcats.org/
There are a lot more protein options in raw, though I'm feeding some Natures Variety rabbit and duck and Ziwipeak which has a good selection of proteins.

 

we use budesonide 1 mg a day too!

 

Just wanted to chime in that my civvie is on pred for allergies and I had this discussion with the vet just last week, regarding long-term steroid use. She said that the steroids tend to bring on diabetes in kitties that are predisposed, but that short-term or low doses don't automatically mean a cat will develop diabetes if it's not already in their makeup. We test Ripley's BG every so often and he's been fine.