IBD kitty having diarrhea

My diabetic, IBD kitty Oscar has started having diarrhea this morning, and I'm wondering if there's anyone else out there with IBD kitty's who can offer any advice.

Before his diabetes dx (October 24th) he was eating pretty much an all grain free, dry food diet. It seemed as if both wet food and grain dry food gave him diarrhea. Upon getting his dx we switched his dry food over to Dr. Elsey's and started incorporating some wet food (originally FF, but didn't like, so ended up on Friskies Pate). This was going well until today when it seemingly backfired on us.

I don't want to take him off the wet food completely, as I know it's important, but with his IBD acting up again I'm not sure what else to do.

 

There are a couple of things I can suggest. First, get Chloe on a probiotic. For the diarrhea, S. boullardi is a great way to get the problem under control. I've purchased ReNew brand from Amazon. If you can't get it delivered quickly, I'm sure there are other brands around at a health food store, maybe even Whole Foods. Once the diarrhea is under control, you may want to use a probiotic on a routine basis.

One of the issues with IBD is that Chloe may need to be eating novel proteins. If you know for sure that this is IBD, you may want to try foods she's not previously eaten (e.g., rabbit, venison, lamb, pork). I feed my IBD kitty a raw diet of lamb or pork and she gets some canned venison -- I use ZiwiPeak since it doesn't contain any gums or carrageenan. Even if you don't want to use a raw food diet, this website has great information about IBD, supplements, how to control diarrhea, vomiting, etc.

 

My diabetic IBD kitty eats instinct original rabbit which is 6% carbs and it works great for her. There’s also a venison one that is okay for diabetics. They do contain pork though, so they wouldn’t be a good option if Oscar is sensitive to pork. It is NOT a cheap brand lol, but it’s not quite as expensive as Ziwipeak

 

Okay great, I'll look into everything you mentioned. Tonight he actually refused his wet food and would only eat dry, so I may have to just go ahead at least for now and remove the wet food from his diet.

I'm pretty sure it's IBD, but his vet in the past acted as if IBD was a condition that was diagnosed based solely on clinical symptoms, and no tests were actually ever ran. It is possible it's an intolerance of some kind and I plan on figuring this out with his new vet, he has an appointment on Tuesday. Basically he goes through these phases where he gets explosive diarrhea and obvious stomach pain. But when we changed his food a few years ago to grain free dry only, it went away, and didn't reappear until now...now that he's back on wet food. Either way, I think I will try a raw food diet, I have a feeling that would work for him.

Things were going well for a while, but I had a feeling this would happen soon. I'm certain it's just his stomach though and nothing else going on, but I plan to have blood work done on Tuesday just to put my mind at ease. But I've seen this before, and he has no other symptoms to indicate infection or anything (plus he had blood work just a little under a month ago and was fine then).

Thank you for your help. If you have any suggestions on tests I could ask the vet to run to clear things up for us, please let me know!

By the way, I'm Chloe, kitty is Oscar

 

I think he is okay with pork. Is the instinct rabbit a wet or dry? If wet, did your kitty have problems with other wet food in the past before switching to this?

 

It’s wet food. She was previously eating chicken fancy feast and then beef fancy feast and she had problems with both. She would do fine on it for a while but then it would cause a flare up (nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, no appetite). She’s been eating the instinct since probably May I think? And no problems so far

 

Sorry about getting the names switched!

Unless there's something else going on, blood work won't tell you if this is IBD. Often an ultrasound is done as a first diagnostic step. Ultimately, a surgical biopsy or endoscopy where they can get a tissue sample is the definitive means of making a diagnosis. The question is whether the problem is IBD or lymphoma. IBD is treated with steroids (prednisolone or budesonide) plus a diet of novel proteins (and often supplements such as probiotics, B12 shots) vs lymphoma which is treated with chemotherapy.

It's entirely possible that the chicken and/or beef in the canned food is aggravating the IBD.

 

Sorry if this is stupid, as I'm thinking in terms of humans here, but wouldn't there likely be signs of lymphoma on a CBC? It obviously wouldn't be diagnostic, but wouldn't you likely see something pointing towards that in the blood counts? The word lymphoma definitely just got my heart racing lol, but for what it's worth, these digestive issues he's been having, he's had them his whole life (since about 3 years old) so I'm hoping that's not something I have to worry about. When I talk to the vet on Tuesday, I'll ask them about doing an ultrasound. Thank you for your help!

 

Lymphoma in this case is small cell lymphoma, which is a slow growing disease. It's not a mass, but rather a thickening of the intestines. And no, there isn't any bloodwork that would point to differentiating SCL from IBD. To put you a bit at ease, the chemo for small cell lymphoma is quite mild, and if following the proper protocol, over 90% of the kitties go into remission.

An ultrasound is a good first step. Some vets will suggest trying the novel proteins and probiotics first, to see if that eliminates the problem.

 

The only thing I would caution against is that if the vet doesn't want to do a full diagnostic work-up, I wouldn't suggest starting steroids. Some vets will suggest a course of steroids. That's fine if the problem is, in fact IBD. If it's not IBD, it's the wrong treatment and at best, it will do nothing but at worst, it may complicate treatment for lymphoma. As Wendy suggested, if you want to try something first, novel proteins and probiotics will not complicate anything.

If you decide to go the raw food route, there are raw food providers (e.g., Hare Today), freeze dried or air dried raw, or you can make your own. If you opt to make your own, I found it easiest to buy a pre-mix. This is a dry product that you mix with water and add to your protein. It contains all of the necessary supplements to make sure your kitty is getting a nutritionally complete diet. Both Wendy and I use EZ Complete from FoodFurLife. Marje (Marje and Gracie) did a lot of research on pre-mixes and liked this one a lot. It's referenced on the Raw Feeding website I linked.

 

FWIW, Sophie only has “suspected” IBD/lymphoma and/or colitis. I paid somewhere between $600-$900 for the ultrasound and a rectal scrape and a few other things, which showed some bacteria and thickening of her colon and small intestine. She responded well to antibiotics but as soon as they were finished the symptoms returned. Her vet said we COULD do an endoscopy and aspirate her lymph nodes, but that those tests were very expensive and invasive and might come up as inconclusive anyway, so I opted not to. Her vet never even mentioned anything about trying a diet change, I took that upon myself based on what I noticed with her flare ups, but if I had to do it all over again I think I would have started with diet change first before paying all the money for diagnostics

 

You don't need to aspirate her lymph nodes as that doesn't differentiate SCL/IBD. Depending which part of the bowels are inflamed, an endoscopy does the job just fine and is not very invasive. Yes kitty needs anesthesia, but comes home the same day. For my civvie, the local travelling endoscopy specialist came to my vet's clinic. The small cell lymphoma group I'm on has most of the kitties diagnosed by endoscopy. Those kitties that have to have surgical biopsy need an overnight stay, but recover well. It does pay to have the work done by a skilled vet. I have noticed that the cost of endosopy varies a lot based on where you live.

Piling onto what Sienne said about steroids. They are part of the eventual treatment if SCL is present, but you don't want to start them until after the ultrasound or any further endoscopy/biopsy if you do it. Steroids can mask symptoms.

 

Okay I'll definitely keep that in mind when we go see his vet on Tuesday. So today when I woke up, I noticed Oscar's stools are starting to look a little bit more solid (yesterday they were liquid, today they are more like mush but a little more defined none the less). He ate less wet food last night, but he did eat a lot of it this morning so I'm wondering if it's going to get worse again...I'm trying to figure out if I should just completely remove the wet food he is currently eating until we can get him back to normal and try again with something new. I'm thinking, yes?

One thing that did have me concerned though, is that it looks green. Of course, I went looking online again, and now my new worry is pancreatitis. As I mentioned, all of this really isn't unusual for him with diet changes, but now with his diabetes dx everything is just making me overthink and I'm concerned now about other possibilities. He did just have blood work less than a month ago, is pancreatitis something that would typically show up in blood work? I called my vet, but I think they think I'm crazy at this point and they just told me that the vet would take a look and do more blood work on Tuesday but to not worry.

ETA: Thank you for the info on the raw food diet, I have been thinking about starting to make his food and I'll definitely take a look at the link you sent me and see if it's something I think I could actually do. I like the idea of using a premix like that. And I'm going to look for a probiotic to order him today.

 

The test for pancreatitis is a separate one. One test you might think about getting is the Texas AMU GI panel, or equivalent. It tests for pancreatitis, but also for cobalamin and folate, a couple other values that are often off in kitties with GI issues. It can tell you if you also need B12 supplementation.

If he's eating, chances are it's only mild pancreatitis if he has it. A Primer on Pancreatitis.

As for food, take a look at the proteins in the wet vs. dry food. Maybe he just needs another wet food with a different protein if it's IBD.

 

Okay I'll remember the name of that and ask the vet about it. He does still have a very big appetite, so that makes me feel better. I also plan on getting his records when I go back, I know they did more than basic blood work, they checked I know at least his thyroid, kidneys, liver etc. It was supposed to be a "full" blood work up, but again I don't know exactly what that entails and I want to make sure we didn't miss anything. Plus, when he went in they knew about his history with IBD so they said they were going to check into that- again, I don't know what that means though, so I suppose it is possible they did a GI panel. I need to find all of this out, when the vet called me he went over everything so quickly that I'm sure I missed some important things, and since then we've just been seeing techs. Which is nice, because we get to see them for free (no office visit cost or anything), but I'd like to talk to the vet again- hopefully I'll have more answers on Tuesday

As for the protein content in the food- would it be more protein that I'm looking for? Because I can only imagine his dry food probably has a considerable amount more, Dr. Elsey's, from what I read online is something like 59% protein, and I couldn't find a straight answer on how much is in his Friskies Pate, but I imagine it's quite a bit less. So look for wet food with more protein? I have found that grain free makes a difference for him. So maybe finding a wet food that is grain free will help too. I just hate changing his food around so much, but it's obviously got to happen at this point.

 

It’s the type of protein that is the issue, not quantity. Fish, chicken and beef are common allergens. With IBD kitties you have to try something new like rabbit, venison, lamb as examples. Most dry food has way less protein, or uses fillers like “vegetable protein”, such as peas in their protein count. You are looking for muscle meat. Fat and ca4bs are the other components, carbs are more likely in dry.

 

There is a wonderful IBD kitties chat and website. There is an emergency s broullardii protocol on IBD kitties.net. it helped my kitty. Also metronidazole helped. Sorry if these are already mentioned... Sending prayers

 

I have a question, if I fed air dried raw food...like for instance Ziwipeak, would that suffice for replacing a need for wet food all together? I personally don't have an issue feeding wet, and Oscar will usually eat it, but the past 11 years of his life, we haven't found one that doesn't give him diarrhea. We're going to go to the pet store tomorrow and we were going to pick up a new brand to once again, try, but if we could do air dried raw food instead, I think that would work out much better. Wet food is just so emphasized here, I know it's important, and I don't want to hurt him by not being able to feed him it. But if we just end up with diarrhea...I'd at least like to get him on that probiotic before we try a brand of wet food again. It was even worse today (brown now instead of green, but completely liquid, and it happened about 4 times today).

ETA: I'm honestly kind of overwhelmed with everything I've taken in recently, I don't want you to make decisions for me, but, if he was your cat, what would your next step be for his diet? He's currently on Friskies Pate (which he hasn't really been eating the past couple days because it's making things much worse) and Dr. Elsey's clean protein chicken, which seems to agree with him fine.

 

There are any number of people who feed their cat freeze/air dried raw. It’s fine.

 

I am a member of the IBD kitties Facebook chat. They also have an excellent website, IBDkitties.net. I suggest checking in with this group. They have a lot of experience and information.

I have a diabetic kitty who has IBD and has had diarrhea. The IBD kitties chat has a website with good information
about probiotics and diarrhea treatments to be include meds. www.ibdkitties.net

 

Hey thanks I'll check that out! We just took a trip to the pet store and switched him back to his old food, Crave, and got him some of those Instinct Raw Booster's, we will see how that goes

 

I have found a lot of helpful information and support for coping with IBD there.