Thread: Stupid question about frequent diarrhea

I always used to feed my cats on raw and never ever had tummy upsets at all. Unfortunately, the company closed and when I switched over to a new supplier, all of my cats came down with sickness and diarrhoea, which I figured was from a type of food poisoning.

So, I decided to go down the commercial route and started them on Bozita wet food, as I have never liked biscuits. They all seemed permanantly starving so I fed them 3 times a day using 6 tetrapaks between 6 cats each day. They all had permanent diarrhoea - we had just brought another girl in so I thought she had brought something into the house. I went through months and months of testing and vet appointments and yet nothing showed up.

Anyway, to cut a long story short it turns out that I was massively overfeeding them, especially with all the wet food and when I re-introduced biscuit and gave them the guideline portions it all cleared up.

I always think that with most diarrhoea issues that food and diet has a huge role to play and you should always try and eliminate any dietary problems before you look at anything else.

[QUOTE=FreyjaRoMaine;6865]a breeder told me that a human could eat Applaws if they wanted to. It is made from human grade products and yes I have seen a pack eaten by a human! It was after the rep had been in and we had agreed to stock it at work, the guy on our team who buys food decided to give it a try and said it was really good and tasty! I declined his kind offer of a taste as did the rest of us. Thankfully my remit does not involve trying anything food related the closest I get to trying anything only goes as far as smelling stuff or trying out hand stuff soaps and hand gel mostly.

I agree that the applaws does look and smell like a yummy tin of tuna...can;t say I have ever been tempted though and I just take my cats empty bowls as proof that they like it!!

One of our girls has always tended toward the "soft side" and used to occasionally have brief bouts of diarrhea. I think you have gotten some good suggestions. Canned food has a very high water content so too much unbalanced by dry could be an issue (our girl will eat almost exclusively wet if allowed to). Our experience has always been that the more dry the cats eat, the stiffer their stools are (as long as they do not have an issue with the dry). We also found that there are particular foods that cause her problems and we have learned to stay away from them (e.g., Fancy Feast florentine flavors). However, when our youngest brought something in that gave everyone diarrhea, the vet gave us Purina Fortiflora, and this actually almost totally eliminated Allie's issues. So I definitely agree that probiotics are worth a shot, as it was unbelievable how much of a change it made. She has had almost no issues now for a year (and had more Fortiflora only once or twice more).

Thanks all, some very helpful info here. I am happy to report that bowel movements have returned to their normal (albeit soft) consistency.

I can't decide the best way to 'test' for what the cause of 'soft stool syndrome' is - do you think start with the kibble first, or re-introduce a small amount of whiskas? Anyone got any tips for how best do to that latter? Given that the poor little lamb's stomach is all over the shop I don't want to make things worse for her.

Probably the easiest thing to try is something like the Fortiflora probiotics. if the cat will just eat it. All we do for our youngest is mix a bit of water into it to form a paste and he licks every bit of it. Unfortunately the female that we would like to feed it to periodically has to have it syringed in, which is a big pain. I am sure you can get Fortiflora in UK, but others there have mentioned different probiotics, I believe. I of course can vouch only for the Fortiflora, but it almost immediately improved our female that used to often have soft stools. We originally bought it at the vet, but subsequently ordered online for much less.

Here is the Purina site for it:
Purina Veterinary Diets - FortiFlora - Feline Formula

Here it is on Amazon so you can see price (not sold by Amazon):
[ame="http://www.amazon.com/FortiFlora-FELINE-Box-gram-packets/dp/B00164YL22"]Amazon.com: FortiFlora FELINE - Box of 30 (1 gram packets): Kitchen & Dining@@AMEPARAM@@http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51IFIiB2EDL.@@AMEPARAM@@51IFIiB2EDL[/ame]

The next easiest is probably to experiment with the amount of wet being consumed and also try experimenting with different wet flavors. We quite rapidly found that every time our girl ate any Fancy Feast florentine flavor, her stools the next day would be much worse. So you would have to try feeding just one (or maybe two) flavors one day, and a completely different flavor the next day and keep track of what happens (may have to write down what you are doing if you find the days blend together, which sometimes happens to us). Not sure how easy changing flavors is for you from your post. Our cats rotate among about 20 different flavors of Fancy Feast so it was very easy for us.

I find experimenting with dry food to be the most difficult as changing seems to be the most likely by itself to cause upsets, and because you cannot just buy the equivalent of a couple of cans to try. Still, it would be worth trying some other brand to see if perhaps the current one just does agree with your girl. We did have one young MC that was very sensitive (we believe he had some food allergies) and we had to search for a dry that did not cause him problems. All the other MCs that we have had, though, have never had any issues with any of the half dozen or so dry foods that we have tried. The more dry vs. wet they eat in a day, the firmer their stools.

And of course pay attention to treats! Our youngest loves the Science Diet TD that we use as a treat, but if he eats more than 15-20 pieces in a day, even he will have "dire consequences" (as we say).

Thanks NCarver, I've found a couple of online stockists for the FortiFlora so I'll order a box and see how we get on.

It's interesting to hear that the dry can cause more problems than the wet. Over the last couple of weeks I've slowly phased her over to adult biscuits (Go Cat) and although the stools were soft before we changed the dry, I could restock on a small bag of RC Kitten 36 as that was what she was on when she first came home.

Thanks again. Feel better now I've got a course of action.

Originally Posted by FreyjaRoMaine

Thanks NCarver, I've found a couple of online stockists for the FortiFlora so I'll order a box and see how we get on.

It's interesting to hear that the dry can cause more problems than the wet. Over the last couple of weeks I've slowly phased her over to adult biscuits (Go Cat) and although the stools were soft before we changed the dry, I could restock on a small bag of RC Kitten 36 as that was what she was on when she first came home.

Thanks again. Feel better now I've got a course of action.

I hope the Fortiflora works as well for you as it did for us, but it certainly might not. Just to be clear on issues with dry...for all but one of our cats we have never had any issues from dry except when trying something totally new. I think they generally take in more actual protein from eating dry because the canned food is so high in water content. That is why I think you can see more issues from changing a dry food, so you should change over during the course of a week--not in one day. We have never noticed any similar issues from rotating among a very large number of flavors and even brands of canned. We have never had any diarrhea issues caused by any dry food that our cats have consistently eaten, except in the one cat that clearly had some sort of issue. I know that at least a couple of people on this group have claimed that they have had diarrhea in cats eating mainly dry, and they claim to have tried several dry foods and still had issues. This goes against our experience with 5 of 6 cats. What we see is the more dry each eats, the firmer the stools. Our girl Bella, who eats probably 80-90% dry clearly has the firmest stools of the group, for example. So in general I would advise a higher dry content for cats with soft stools, as long as it isn't the particular dry food that is causing the problems. I think you should definitely try a bag of one of the high protein (40%+) dry foods that has little/no grain. Also, some dry foods have more fiber than others, so check out the fiber percentage, as your girl clearly does not need a higher fiber diet. Every food has the potential to have something in it that doesn't agree with your cat. Read labels and look for something different to try. Incidentally, I looked at the Go Cat Complete Adult on the web, but could not find ingredients or nutritional info on the site, so hard to know much about it. Does not seem to be one of Purina's "high end" foods or there would be more info. Of course all my friends who own plain old cats, just feed whatever dry cat food is cheapest and claim they never have any issues.

Just to add the fortiflora is on sale in the uk so you should be able to get it from your vet or online.