Switching foods for an IBD cat

Musiaka

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Musiaka is on a super low dose prednisolone due to possible ibd and his constant vomiting. Pred really works for him. I currently feed him Purina Pro Plan Delicate which is an upgrade from his regular store bought Purina and he tolerates it well, but I'm not the fan of the ingredients. It has animal byproducts that can be anything. The main protein, turkey, doesn't reach 25%.
I found James Wellbeloved Senior Pouches on zooplus, it's a grain free monoprotein food with good additives for older cats. The protein is either lamb or turkey (i went with lamb) and it's a much bigger %, also no animal byproducts. What's important, it seems tasty enough, has gravy and Musiaka liked it.

Introducing new food is difficult for Musiaka - after giving him some of the new food, I found a foamy yellow spot the next morning. He can have a full on vomiting attack with some foods (which he had when I tried him on Hills z/d). But I wonder if it's still worth continuing with the new food despite the reaction? Or does it immediately mean the food won't fit him? Maybe his stomach will settle? At least he didn't vomit a large amount, only some yellow stuff
 

wcalvertfc

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I have a kitty with possible IBD (I think he’s had it for many years now) and chronic constipation as of late in large part due to feeding bone-in raw rabbit and chicken. I’m struggling to find a commercial wet food he’ll eat at all, so in my book, if your kitty is eating with the prednisone, keep feeding him that! Byproducts or not, if he’s eating it and not vomiting more than twice a week, I say keep it going. A little foam here and there is nothing compared to daily vomiting. I totally know what you’ve been going through - it’s terrible! Just keep going with what works, and don’t worry about byproducts. If it’s a commercial diet, it has the ingredients it needs to keep your kitty healthy.
 

t c c

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Musiaka is on a super low dose prednisolone due to possible ibd and his constant vomiting. Pred really works for him. I currently feed him Purina Pro Plan Delicate which is an upgrade from his regular store bought Purina and he tolerates it well, but I'm not the fan of the ingredients. It has animal byproducts that can be anything. The main protein, turkey, doesn't reach 25%.
I found James Wellbeloved Senior Pouches on zooplus, it's a grain free monoprotein food with good additives for older cats. The protein is either lamb or turkey (i went with lamb) and it's a much bigger %, also no animal byproducts. What's important, it seems tasty enough, has gravy and Musiaka liked it.

Introducing new food is difficult for Musiaka - after giving him some of the new food, I found a foamy yellow spot the next morning. He can have a full on vomiting attack with some foods (which he had when I tried him on Hills z/d). But I wonder if it's still worth continuing with the new food despite the reaction? Or does it immediately mean the food won't fit him? Maybe his stomach will settle? At least he didn't vomit a large amount, only some yellow stuff
In case you aren't already aware, I would recommend 2 FB groups that are very helpful & active: "Cats With IBD" and "Raw Feeding for IBD Cats." And I think we may have already conversed, but there are a lot of interactions, so I'm not sure. So sorry if I already mentioned this to you: steroids can cause heart damage (it did in my cat), so just make sure the vet keeps checking your kitty's heart.
 

t c c

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I have a kitty with possible IBD (I think he’s had it for many years now) and chronic constipation as of late in large part due to feeding bone-in raw rabbit and chicken. I’m struggling to find a commercial wet food he’ll eat at all, so in my book, if your kitty is eating with the prednisone, keep feeding him that! Byproducts or not, if he’s eating it and not vomiting more than twice a week, I say keep it going. A little foam here and there is nothing compared to daily vomiting. I totally know what you’ve been going through - it’s terrible! Just keep going with what works, and don’t worry about byproducts. If it’s a commercial diet, it has the ingredients it needs to keep your kitty healthy.
In case you aren't already aware, I would recommend 2 FB groups that are very helpful & active: "Cats With IBD" and "Raw Feeding for IBD Cats."
 

wcalvertfc

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In case you aren't already aware, I would recommend 2 FB groups that are very helpful & active: "Cats With IBD" and "Raw Feeding for IBD Cats."
Thank you! I’ve requested to join “raw feeding for IBD cats.” My kitty stopped vomiting every other day once he was back on raw food - which, at the time, I thought was a miracle - but he couldn’t handle the bone-in (he’s now severely constipated). I’d like to get him back on raw, but I don’t trust non-commercial diets anymore. It’s just too easy to mess up home-prepared diets and I’m paying the price (I’ve spent over $5,500 now on raw food and its grizzly aftermath).
 
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Musiaka

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I have a kitty with possible IBD (I think he’s had it for many years now) and chronic constipation as of late in large part due to feeding bone-in raw rabbit and chicken. I’m struggling to find a commercial wet food he’ll eat at all, so in my book, if your kitty is eating with the prednisone, keep feeding him that! Byproducts or not, if he’s eating it and not vomiting more than twice a week, I say keep it going. A little foam here and there is nothing compared to daily vomiting. I totally know what you’ve been going through - it’s terrible! Just keep going with what works, and don’t worry about byproducts. If it’s a commercial diet, it has the ingredients it needs to keep your kitty healthy.
Thanks for saying that, it's sometimes difficult to not get stuck in some kind of "I'm not doing enough for my ibd cat" state of mind. I'm constantly looking for sollutions, but sometimes nothing works perfectly
 
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Musiaka

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In case you aren't already aware, I would recommend 2 FB groups that are very helpful & active: "Cats With IBD" and "Raw Feeding for IBD Cats."
I'm afraid raw feeding doesn't work for Musiaka, he is so extremely picky and mostly goes for tasty patés :/ new tastes are his enemie
 

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IBD cats often have food allergies, and it can take up to three months before you can see the result of a different diet. My old thread "Six year old Morty isn't doing so well" depicts a lot of what I went through with my IBD cat. Morty was throwing up daily even after allergens were removed, and what made things more difficult was that he didn't want the same type of food more than once or twice. It was horrendous to deal with. I kept thinking he was having new reactions to different proteins, when in reality he was still showing symptoms from food he ate two month prior. His immune system just needed time to calm down.

Introducing new food is difficult for Musiaka - after giving him some of the new food, I found a foamy yellow spot the next morning. He can have a full on vomiting attack with some foods (which he had when I tried him on Hills z/d). But I wonder if it's still worth continuing with the new food despite the reaction? Or does it immediately mean the food won't fit him? Maybe his stomach will settle? At least he didn't vomit a large amount, only some yellow stuff
Having this sort of response doesn't mean the food isn't okay for him. You'll need to use your own judgement here. For example, Morty has a really bad fish allergy and a couple weeks ago I accidentally gave him food with salmon oil. He only ate a few bites and stopped immediately. He then began having a full asthma attack as well as frequent sneezing. The symptoms this time only lasted for about a day, mainly because it was the first time he had it in his system in a while and because he only had a bit. However, before we fully understood what he could and could not have he was getting fish oil every day (because we thought it was safe). This basically built up in his system and took months to wear off. It also wasn't immediate after consumption that he was having a reaction, because he was pretty much constantly reacting.

My point is, an immediate reaction could mean an allergy/intolerance, or it could also be a side effect of food Musiaka consumed 3 months ago. If you're unsure of his intolerances your best option is to try a limited ingredient diet for an extended amount of time. I was told this frequently by so many, but I would routinely give up too early after either not seeing results, or Morty not wanting to eat the same food. It took us maybe six-eight months after his ER visit and maybe 2-3 years after his initial issues to fully get him on a diet where now he only vomits every 2-3 weeks. Idr the exact time frame, but it took a long time.

As for the Hills food, I personally would not waste my money on that overpriced heavy carb food. There are cheaper and better options out there.

Thank you! I’ve requested to join “raw feeding for IBD cats.” My kitty stopped vomiting every other day once he was back on raw food - which, at the time, I thought was a miracle - but he couldn’t handle the bone-in (he’s now severely constipated). I’d like to get him back on raw, but I don’t trust non-commercial diets anymore. It’s just too easy to mess up home-prepared diets and I’m paying the price (I’ve spent over $5,500 now on raw food and its grizzly aftermath).
You can always try a diet with no bone or a cooked diet. If you choose the fully cooked route you can buy grocery store meat without having to worry too much about pathogens (since it's cooked). If you would rather do raw and your cat can't consume bone that's also okay, Alnutrin makes a great supplement for that, which can also be used on cooked meat. You'll just want to either get fresh from the butcher or frozen. Additionally, Hare-Today has some meat only grinds as well as do other raw producers.

Btw, 5500 is an insane amount to spend? Was that over years...or?

I'm afraid raw feeding doesn't work for Musiaka, he is so extremely picky and mostly goes for tasty patés :/ new tastes are his enemie
It takes most adult cats a while to get used to raw. Before, when Morty was vomiting multiple times a day and I wasn't comfortable giving him raw, I gave him his favorite, cooked pork. I would then put it into the food processor with Alnutrin until it got a pate-like consistency. He was/is also super picky (like a lot of IBD cats), so if you can find one protein they like it could be helpful.
 

wcalvertfc

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You can always try a diet with no bone or a cooked diet. If you choose the fully cooked route you can buy grocery store meat without having to worry too much about pathogens (since it's cooked). If you would rather do raw and your cat can't consume bone that's also okay, Alnutrin makes a great supplement for that, which can also be used on cooked meat. You'll just want to either get fresh from the butcher or frozen. Additionally, Hare-Today has some meat only grinds as well as do other raw producers.

Btw, 5500 is an insane amount to spend? Was that over years...or?
The aftermath was the expensive part. Fox was hospitalized for three days (given serial enemas, golytly, a host of different meds, X-rays, etc.), visited his regular vet four times for X-rays, enemas, and meds, and saw another emergency vet twice for x-rays, enemas, and meds. Part of the expense was the timing: the in and out of ERs started two days before Christmas and lasted through New Year’s - 24/7 ERs were the only places open and many of them were packed with patients and/or struggling with staffing (both due to the holidays and the pandemic). I also live in Washington, DC, and I’m sure vets are significantly more expensive here than more suburban or rural communities.

Fast forward to three days ago: Fox underwent emergency surgery (not because of the bone-in raw food, per se, although the bone had collected in the small intestine and created an obstruction). The surgeon had to resect just about all of his ileum due to the collected bone obstruction, the significant dilation of the intestine where the obstruction occurred, and an abnormal thickening of the intestinal wall (which could have been caused by cancer, IBD, or something else - the biopsy results will come back next week). That thickening of the intestinal wall is almost certainly what snagged the bone as it was moving through Fox’s GI tract and helped it collect there in the ileum. All that said, the bone in the raw food should have been all but eaten away at in his stomach - we don’t know why it wasn’t.

The emergency surgery, the diagnostics, injections, after care in the hospital, etc., cost another $7,000. I’m not saying the raw food necessitated the surgery - really it was the thickening of the intestine that caught the bone and kept it stuck and it’s very unlikely that the bone itself caused that - but the severe constipation that was originally treated for $5,200 was a result of the raw, bone-in food.

I purchased the raw bone-in ground meat from Hare Today and used the Alnutrin bone-in supplement. I fed both rabbit and the chicken, and I spent well over $350 on it and all the necessary supplements. Fox LOVED eating this food, but it created issues, too. I’m not saying his case is normal - it’s very far from it. Five DVMs had no clue what was going on with him for three weeks… they were all but convinced his diet of bone-in raw caused all of the issues and they didn’t understand why he was so sick. His case is/was VERY weird and it took a specialist and a board certified surgeon to figure out what was going on and to help him.

I would definitely consider going back to raw, but as you can imagine, I’m a bit gun shy about going the homemade route. I have about 25 pounds of bone-in raw still in my freezer. Fox can’t eat it, but I’d happily send it somewhere it could be used safely.
 
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