Thread: Recent poops:Not very solid and well formed!

Originally Posted by Tomiam

T

Irishkitty, yours any better?

Tomiam: Now have him back on reduced tuna and cooked chicken for his 1 p.m meal. He only gets dry food for brekkie and evening meal!
This morning was the first day I noticed a big improvement in form. Nice firm shape to it today but I think I would prefer it to be a bit more solid!

Irishkity, How many days did it take before your kitties poop started looking better please?

Loki getting worse sadly. Poops very wet. Thankfully she is eating and drinking well and is very alert etc. Called the vet and asked for advice as the 'dry food only' obviously isnt working.

Woodside, your advice is pretty close to that advice I was given at the vets today. They said to starve loki for 12hrs, get her off the biscuits and go for a bland diet. They advised boiled chicken meat and boiled fish.

If it gets worse / continues like this then I will take her in to see the vet as well.

I have had a cat like this before so try not to worry too much. Unfortunately, when they have extended diarrhoea it can then cause colitis, an inflammation of the intestine, and this then causes diarrhoea in itself.

First of all, starve her until tomorrow morning. Ask your vet if they have the RC sensitive pouches as they are very bland but tasty enough to get your cat to eat. Do not give biscuits at all as this is probably making the problem worse.

If not then the best thing for her is raw as it takes longer to digest and isn't going to fly through her system like the normal food. You don't want her to go for more than 24 hours without eating though as this can then cause liver issues. Maybe get some tins of applaws chicken to mix with it as this is just chicken, rice and water and is nice and bland.

I would ask the vet for some prokolin or canakur too just to settle her tummy. Have you taken her to the vet at all? Sometimes they can have an infection and your vet will prescribe an antibiotic called stormagyl, which is fantastic and very quick acting too.

It might be worth getting a sample sent off, just in case as it could be a bacterial infection or it could just be nothing but always best to get these things checked out to be on the safe side.

Originally Posted by Tomiam

Loki getting worse sadly. Poops very wet. Thankfully she is eating and drinking well and is very alert etc. Called the vet and asked for advice as the 'dry food only' obviously isnt working.

Woodside, your advice is pretty close to that advice I was given at the vets today. They said to starve loki for 12hrs, get her off the biscuits and go for a bland diet. They advised boiled chicken meat and boiled fish.

If it gets worse / continues like this then I will take her in to see the vet as well.

Sorry to hear this, as I know from personal experience how upsetting this is with a kitten! I am still not certain whether she actually has diarrhea though, or whether it is just very soft. When they have true diarrhea, where it is liquid, you get like a pancake in clay litter (as it does not soak in like urine). If it is more of a pile, then our vet at least does not consider that to be "diarrhea." Standard vet advice we got for diarrhea is to withhold food for 12-24hrs then restart with bland low fat meat like boiled chicken. I would do this only if the cat actually has "diarrhea" though. If the stools are just very soft, I would try adjusting foods rather than fasting.

I would try to get a stool sample and take it in to vet to look for parasites and various bacteria. (You need to do that soon because withholding food should cause her to not go for a while.) It is true though that with our cats nothing was ever found, despite it being clear from the progression that they were passing something among themselves. It certainly is possible that she could have picked up a bug. Have you also thought about taking her temp to make certain she doesn't have a fever? It isn't the easiest thing to do, but if you get one of the newer 8-10sec digital thermometers it isn't that bad (with two people). The other thing our vet suggested was the FortiFlora, and it definitely put a stop to the diarrhea in the cats that ate it. I again suggest obtaining something like that.

As for raw food vs. dry...I personally would not be feeding raw food, whose bacterial content is unknown, to a cat that might be sick. I looked at the Food 4 Cats site and found no discussion at all about their food 's safety (e.g., do they do any bacterial testing??). Certainly humans in the US get diarrhea all the time from undercooked meat--besides occasionally dying. One of our breeders had a litter of kittens contract diarrhea from salmonella in raw food (they had to have a course of antibiotics). I would be really interested to know why people in the UK think their raw meat is safe.

We never picked up our dry food during our diarrhea issues because only one cat would be sick at a time. When they really felt bad they would not eat any, but as they felt better they would start taking a few pieces. We have never had any evidence of dry food contributing to soft stools. Our experience has always been exactly the opposite; the more dry they eat the stiffer their stools. Having said that, it is always possible that there is something in the particular dry food that is contributing to this problem (an ingredient Loki does not handle well). I would really wonder about this if removing wet food caused the stools to become softer--unless there is something else going on (like infection). Might be time to try a different dry food with her.

I have used food4-cats for a year now and many of my fellow breeders have used it for much longer without issue. All meat used in the preparation of this raw diet is of human grade and therefore very safe. Cats digestive systems are much stronger than ours which is why they can eat raw chicken etc without issue.

it is only in cats with a reduced immunity that I can see it being a problem, not just with a bit of diarrhoea.

I have weaned 4 litters of babies onto raw food without issue whatsoever and would be the first one to stop if I thought I was putting any of my kittens or cats at risk.

There is a huge amount of bacteria present in a bag of dry food that has been opened several days and most people wouldn't even think about that!

Just wanted to add that dry food would only cause the stools to be stiffer if the cat didn't have sufficient water intake and was therefore becoming dehydrated. A dry diet is not a natural diet for a carnivore, which the cat is. If you choose not to feed raw then you should feed the very best quality wet food that you can.

Let me try to respond in what I hope is a reasonable way to Woodside's post and then I will drop this, as we are unlikely to agree.

Originally Posted by WoodsideMaineCoons

I have used food4-cats for a year now and many of my fellow breeders have used it for much longer without issue. All meat used in the preparation of this raw diet is of human grade and therefore very safe. Cats digestive systems are much stronger than ours which is why they can eat raw chicken etc without issue.

Unfortunately "human grade" raw meat at least in the US is hardly what I would call safe. There are constant recalls of ground beef products, people sickened and even killed by undercooked meats, and testing shows relatively high levels of bacteria in food. E.g.: For its latest analysis, Consumer Reports had an outside lab test 382 chickens bought last spring from more than 100 supermarkets, gourmet- and natural-food stores, and mass merchandisers in 22 states. Among the findings:
• Campylobacter was in 62 percent of the chickens, salmonella was in 14 percent, and both bacteria were in 9 percent. Only 34 percent of the birds were clear of both pathogens.

Exactly what bacteria and what level of each bacteria is safe for cats? I have no idea and I do not know of a credible source for such information. I do know that cats (and dogs) cannot just eat anything without getting sick, so just saying their digestive systems are stronger than ours doesn't satisfy me (there are things we eat all the time that are fatal to them). If I could guarantee that my cats (and I) would not get sick from raw food, I would be interested in including it in their feeding. I do not find, however, that there is sufficient information for me to be able to be certain of this when human beings are sickened from raw meat in this country.

Originally Posted by WoodsideMaineCoons

There is a huge amount of bacteria present in a bag of dry food that has been opened several days and most people wouldn't even think about that!

There are bacteria that can make a cat sick? I would be very interested to see some proof that opened bags of dry food end up with bacteria capable of causing illness. Where does this bacteria appear from in a cooked food? People buy giant bags of cat food that sit around for months and it does not make their cats sick. Most dry foods contain ingredients that act as preservatives. The dry foods have sell-by dates like a year in the future, so they can sit for a year and be fine, but within a few days after opening they are somehow riddled with dangerous bacteria? Not very likely.

Originally Posted by WoodsideMaineCoons

Just wanted to add that dry food would only cause the stools to be stiffer if the cat didn't have sufficient water intake and was therefore becoming dehydrated.

That is not what we observe in our cats. They drink lots of water (each pees multiple times per day), yet the more dry they eat in a day, the firmer their stools. It is very predictable and repeatable. It is certainly related to amount of moisture in the foods, but there is a vast difference between eating dry food and having a firm stool and being "dehydrated." Our experience is consistent with everything that I have ever read about dry food vs. wet, so I find your comment very surprising. Do you have actual experience feeding dry food?

Originally Posted by WoodsideMaineCoons

A dry diet is not a natural diet for a carnivore, which the cat is. If you choose not to feed raw then you should feed the very best quality wet food that you can.

A dry diet is not what what cats would eat in the wild (obviously) but that alone does not make it bad. There are a host of problems with people trying to theorize about what domestic cats "evolved to eat.". I personally would not feed my cats an all dry diet, but I know many people that do, and there are certainly many thousands (millions?) of people in the US that do that. Most of these cats live nice long lives. How can that be if dry is so horrible?

The Wikipedia article on raw food mentions a number of the issues and I think makes it pretty clear how unsettled the key questions are: [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raw_feeding"]Raw feeding - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia@@AMEPARAM@@/wiki/File:Chien_mangeant_une_pintade.jpg" class="image"><img alt="" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/19/Chien_mangeant_une_pintade.jpg/220px-Chien_mangeant_une_pintade.jpg"@@AMEPARAM@@commons/thumb/1/19/Chien_mangeant_une_pintade.jpg/220px-Chien_mangeant_une_pintade.jpg[/ame].

I am sure most people on this list are trying to do the best for their cats that they can (within the confines of their money and time budgets). Unfortunately, there is simply not the kind of research that could definitively answer questions about what the absolute best diet is for our cats. I am certainly not opposed to raw food in principle and I agree it makes some sense. On the other hand, there is incontrovertible evidence of various disease causing bacteria in our meat supply, so I am not as sanguine about the safety of raw foods as some people on this site are. I do not feel that an all dry diet is probably best for cats, but I also recognize that huge numbers of cats eat such a diet and live long lives so my opinion on dry food is largely that--my opinion.

The issue of raw vs. dry came up here because of kittens with soft stools. Certainly it is possible for bacteria in raw meat to have caused this. Denying that is absurd when you have no idea what bacteria might have been in the meat and there are absolutely bacteria that cause diarrhea in cats. It is also certainly very possible the raw food had nothing to do with it and some ingredient in one of the dry or wet foods has caused this. Some cats simply do not handle certain foods well. All potential causes need to be investigated by gradually changing the diet, but also considering medical issues (it may have nothing to do with any of the foods). I hope that Tomiam can figure it out quickly.

I seriously do not have the time to go into all the research that I have done on this so I guess we have to agree to disagree.

All I am sure of is that our guidelines with regards to food over here are clearly very different and therefore feeding raw over here has taken off in a big way.

If there was an issue then it would be addressed but I have never, ever heard of a cat on raw food having diarrhoea in fact I always recommedn a raw diet to anyone who has an issue with diarrhoea in their cat and I can honestly say it has had a 100% success rate.

Raw Fed Cats You might want to take a look at this website though so you can see just how high quality the products are that go into commercial food.

And yes I do have experience feeding dry food - I have owned cats for many, many years and never thought anything of feeding dry food at all until 2 of my Maine Coons developed diarrhoea that I couldn';t clear up. I tried every kind of food, medication, holistic product out there and nothing worked until I put them on to raw. They didn't use the litter tray for 2 days and when they did it was completely solid and I have never looked back.

Dry food is not a natural diet - cats are hunters and carnivores who would not choose to eat dry biscuits in the wild. The best diet in fact is the prey diet, whole mice, chicks etc but the raw diet I have is much more convenient as it is already produced for me with the correct levels of everything they need, including heart meat for taurine. Dry food causes dental issues and dehydration in cats and they literally cannot take in enough water to compensate for the dry biscuit - the the wild, cats are traditionally desert animals who would get 90% of water from their diets.

Well.. Its more than 24 hours since we removed all dry food and went over to a 100% raw diet. As you predicted Woodside, the lamb was received very well by both Loki and Storvenn but the pork.. Storvenn was up on the counter chewing at the packet before it was opened!! Loki was more than happy to share a plate full with her brother. Might just be me, but they both seem to have more of an appetite for raw. Too early to say for sure, but its the first time Ive ever seen Loki be the last one at the plate eating and thats happened twice in the last 24hrs.

Kids and wife are off for the weekend, which is both good and bad. The good bit being that its me and me only that will be cleaning out the litter trays.

Current status is that Ive removed one 'normally formed' poop from the tray. WhooHooo!
Sadly I dont know whose it was. I did ask them both but all I got was blank stares back...

I shall continue to monitor the litter trays but its looking good, sans dry food, at the moment. **cross fingers.

Thanks to everyone for their feedback and advice.

ps: Did you spot I deliberately avoided the raw vs dry food stuff? I fact I didnt even bring it up in my post ..errr.. dammit. Never mind

I found this link to Lisa A. Pierson Cat info site to be very informative. For some reason the forum scrambles web links. To view the site, type the link into your browser omiting the spaces.

http:// w w w . catinfo . org/

*Roy