Thread: Dry Food Problems & Diarrhea

I had problems with a couple of mine on the RC mainecoon also with RC sensible,same as you ok for a couple of days then diarrhoea everywhere,the rest of the cats no problem.I took it that it was just too rich a biscuit for the stomachs of some.Although I don't feed mine too much biscuit at all now their biggest percentage of diet is wet food I find that Hills Natures Best seems to suit them all , they have the Hills Oral to get the bigger kibble & the only RC they get fed is the hair & skin 33 with no problems.
I do wonder sometimes though that as you tend to leave dry food down for them that perhaps the old saying eyes larger than the stomach comes into play....! Then they suffer& so do you.
Keep feeding them with whatever you know suits....
Nothing worse than dirty drawers on a MC.

I agree that dried food is not a good diet for cats, however for some people it is the most convenient. So, you need to look at what is in your dried food and get the best quality one that you can.

I am not too sure what is available where you are but Orijen, Acana and Almo Nature are all very, very good dried foods without all the usual additives and fillers in them.

However, the very best option for you would be to put them on a completely wet food diet, as this is much better for them.

Do probiotics work for cats, has anyone had any good results with them and poorly tums? I am thinking about getting a tube to keep in just in case.

I can't get the rc maine coon... I'm still trying.
But atm I'm feeding gryfn and charlie brown a mix of biscuits which are available all the time, and the get half a sachet of wet food in the morning and raw at night.
they seem to do really well with this mix.

Hi Helen,I always have a probiotic in the animals first aid box,can be very handy for upset tums & does seem to calm things down even if it is due to the food rather than a bug,most essential though if it is an actual tummy bug,24 hours starvation & that will either sort things or you know you are on the way to the vets...I am still old fashioned though,I like to use Kaogel VP & dose with a syringe,I find it a lot easier than the tubes.The other thing I always have as well is a sachet of rehydration fluid,find that handy if they happen to be shooting at you from both ends because it doesn't take long for them to dehydrate especially if we are lucky enough to get a hot summer !
This sure is a smelly thread.....

I found that the kitten food set Sarah off and she settled down when she went onto the RC maine coon but she had already had that before I got her so may have been used to it. I do add some of the Hills dental which are large biscuits to her dry food


Zack has a bit of everybodies and it doesnt seem to affect him ( yet).
I think they are all different and whatever suits your cats is the right thing to do.

I have never heard of the other dry food so unsure whether you can get in Aus or NZ.

Simba is on Royal Canin MC at the moment because last time I went to get food it was buy one get one free. He seems fine on it and goes to poos about twice a day and they are nice and solid. He also has wet food once a day + what ever my kids feed him in left overs . He did get an diarrhoea when he was on kitten food but like Heather this got better once he went onto the MC adult.

I still give Harry the Royal canin 36 (kitten) I was told to keep him on this until he was a year old. He has this available to him all day and night and grazes on it. I also give him the wet pouches and he has about 3-4 per day. Occasionally I change this to cooked chicken or fish, but usually as a treat. I can honestly say he has never had diarrhoea (touch wood) but think that is luck rather than anything else.

OK--I amended my response as I didn't realize there was a dry Hills z/d...so you have actually tried two dry foods that do not work for your cats. Still not a very wide selection to conclude your cats have problems with all dry foods...

Dry foods vary tremendously in their ingredients, ranging from cheap dry that has relatively low levels of protein and much grain, to the expensive ones that are high protein and essentially all meat. Furthermore, even similar quality dry foods have different ingredients. Your particular cat appears to have a problem with some ingredient(s) in some particular dry foods. You should clearly stop trying to feed those foods to your cat. Frankly, there is no particular reason to prefer the Royal Canin food even though they market it for MCs. Our cats have not liked it, and other foods have "higher quality" ingredients.

I have seen cats that have problems with particular foods. One of our girls, if you let her eat more than just a tiny bit of the Fancy Feast florentine flavors will have terrible diarrhea. This does not happen to any of our other cats, and it is unlikely that it causes diarrhea in most cats or it would not sell. As for dry food in general causing diarrhea, well, our experience is the opposite: the more dry any one of our cats eats the stiffer its stools (due to its lower moisture content). Now you can find people claiming that all dry food causes diarrhea but if you look around on web you will see that dry food is generally associated with stiff stools and constipation. So it causes both constipation and diarrhea? That makes no sense, does it? Obviously this is an issue of what works or does not work for each particular cat. (Note: there are a very few high fiber dry cat foods that will have a tendency to cause diarrhea, just as such foods would in humans, but they are rare. Science Diet T/D for teeth is one such, and too much will give our cats diarrhea. It is 10% fiber as compared with 3% for typical dry.)

So if you want to try to continue to feed some dry, I would definitely try other brands. Go to a store with a variety and read the ingredients. The best quality dry foods will be at least 40% protein and have a real meat as their first ingredient--not meat by-products and certainly not grain. On the other hand, there is no reason you have to feed dry, except that many cats are "grazers" and like having dry out to nibble on during the day and night.

We have also found that probiotics such as Purina FortiFlora can help. Our girl that used to have a tendency toward diarrhea with several canned foods has not had any bouts since she was treated with this.

Finally, switching foods around too rapidly can certainly lead to diarrhea, so make changes gradually.