5 Month Old Kitten With Loose Stools

[punkrockkitty]

Hi all, have a 5 month old kitty rescue that’s been living with me since he’s 8 weeks old. He was found in a cardboard box in a parking lot when he was just a few days old… Yeah, humans.

Anyway, he had a case of roundworms right when we adopted him. He then went through a series of deworming pills (at first, with a two-week interval, then a one-month interval between each treatment), up until about two weeks ago. He had Milbemax twice, Panacur once, Interceptor once, and Revolution once. Up until Revolution (the last treatment), his stools were really nice and solid. Then, something happened.

His stools have been soft - not super running, but the first part is always a little harder and then the last part gets very mushy. Sometimes, it’s mushy enough that I can’t tell whether it’s pee or poop…

We had a stool sample tested and it came back negative, so I’m wondering whether this is related to all the deworming treatments taking a toll on his digestive system or something else/food related.

Some other info about him: he has feline herpes with a chronic rhino (sneezes quite a bit), so we have him on L-Lysine and that helps a lot. He’s also always hungry (and a little bit bigger than he should be at his age!), but otherwise very active and seemingly happy.

We gave him 1 teaspoons of natural yoghurt for about 5-6 days when he started the diarrhea initially, but didn’t notice any change, so we stopped. He’s now been taking Fortiflora probiotics for the last 6 days, and sometimes he gets a really nice and hard stool during the day so we think “yay it’s over!”, only to be followed by a soft stool later on in the day…

We normally feed him Hill’s Healthy Advantage for kittens (dry and canned). I know a lot of people seem to not like this brand, but as usual, this is what my vet suggested and swears by, so we went with it… We bought a few cans of Hill's I/D canned formula to try out with the Fortiflora when the diarrhea started, to see whether it was related to Healthy Advantage, and the technician said it wasn't necessary to gradually transition if it was only for a few days (like a 5-day treatment). We're now almost done with the cans.

Would anybody have any suggestions/ideas as to what could be causing this or whether I should take him to the vet?

Thanks in advance)

 

[kat hamlin]

Fortiflora isn't always an instant fix. So stool sample, post-dewormings, is NPS? This is a good start. Not on any antibiotics?
You switched to I/D when diarrhea began, and are you still feeding anything other than I/D? Any dry food?
It could just be taking some time to build up his gut flora, or there could be something else wrong. Also, it could be the food. The fact that he sometimes has good stools is definitely promising.
I've never heard of dewormings overtaxing the gut. Antibiotics, definitely. But dewormings don't kill off gut flora, just parasites.
Is the stool soft, like soft serve ice cream, or softer than that? Some cats will occasionally have the soft-serve kind and it seems to just happen. However that you mention the first part being hard and the end being mushy...makes me wonder about his large intestine. It sounds like maybe food is going too quickly through his gut for all the water to be properly absorbed. That could go along with being hungry all the time.
I would ask the vet, and tell them all the things you said here. And I would, despite your vet's advice, consider a different food. He could be sensitive to the ingredients in the Hills SD. That doesn't necessarily make it a bad food, but it may not be the right food for your kitty.

 

[punkrockkitty]

Hey thanks for the reply. He's not on antibiotics, no.

Besides the canned I/D, I do give him a tiny tiny bit (1/8 cup x 2 per day) of the old Healthy Advantage dry food cuz he gets so bossy when he wants to eat and it psychologically seems to calm him down a bit to get this filler food. I know, I should just cut out the Healthy Advantage completely to see what that does. I'll try that next!

And yes, he eats very, very fast! I think he suffered some sort of trauma before we got him and he thinks he'll run out of food. So it makes sense what you said about his large intestine. Hmmm.

I'll cut out the dry food and stick to I/D for a few more days, keep giving him the Fortiflora until the end of the week and see. Do you think the rough 'no-transition' from his old food to the I/D could also be playing a part in his loose stools?

 

[punkrockkitty]

So actually, this morning, after having cut out the old dry food completely all day yesterday, he produced really nice and hard logs (twice). Would it be too soon to say that the Healthy Advantage dry food was the cause of these loose stools?

The reason I ask is because I'm running out of I/D cans and I'm wondering whether I should prolong the testing period and keep him strictly on the I/D cans for a few more days to determine whether I completely remove the old food from his diet (if he keeps producing nice hard logs), or slowly move him back on it gradually now that the diarrhea (fingers crossed) is over. Any advice?

 

[Timmer]

My cat had IBD and the vet gave us I/D to try. That's for cats with digestive issues and if you read the label, it has a lot of additives and fat that I didn't feel good about giving to my cat. My cat wouldn't eat it anyway.

The thing is, you don't want the stools to be hard as a rock. If the cat litter won't stick to them at all after he poops, then that's too hard.

I agree that the food might be moving too fast through his digestive system. The issue with that is then they don't absorb nutrients very well.
It's a fine line sometimes picking foods out. I've fed my cats Fancy Feast and they have done OK. My vet always told me don't get on the grain free bandwagon. He also told me dry food is not good. I always gave mine a combination of Fancy Feast and Blue Buffalo dry as a snack. Your kitty may even have a food allergy. It's hard to say.
Keep trying and see what your vet says. Do some research on foods.
Sorry I wasn't much of a help to you. I hope it works out.

 

[Zoya&Zirka]

I had a similar issue with my male kitten when he was about 4 months old. His stools were like your kitten's firm at the start and liquidy soft serve at the end. He turned out to have struvite crystals caused by a bacteria in his bladder that converts protein in the urine to ammonia. I was surprised to find out that a bladder issue is what was causing his intestinal issue.

When I got him he was on Royal Canin Kitten and it was when I switched him to a higher protein food that the issue flared up. The vet recommended keeping him on a strict prescription diet, I wasn't happy with having him on Hills c/d so he's on a mixture of Rayne RSS (similar to Hill's c/d), Acana Grass lands and Ranch lands, and Orijen Cat and Kitten for dry food (one bag of each mixed in a large container), and I increased his wet food feedings mixing canned and freeze dried raw (adding a TBS more water to the dish when served). He's crystal free and his stools are more solid and formed. I do believe that adding the raw food did help.

Before you change his diet too much, ask your vet to do a urinalysis. Since it seems that he does better on wet food it could be a urine pH issue, plus the extra water from the wet food could be helping him pass the crystals. When I was reading the labels on the prescription dry vs wet, there were a lot more alkaline ingredients in the dry compared to the wet.

I hope he gets better soon.

 

[punkrockkitty]

Thanks for the replies and help!

So I ended up running out of I/D and since I’m not a super big fan of Hill’s (my amazing 13 yo old cat died from IBD-turned-to-lymphoma last year after years of being on their products, R.I.P), I went back to the old cans of Healthy Advantage (no transition made) until I was able to research what new food to give him. I also completely cut out the dry food. So he’s been on a wet food only diet for the last 5 days.

On Friday morning, his stools look not so bad. I was still giving him some Fortiflora at this point.

I’d been debating for a while whether to give him a wet food only diet to avoid UTIs, so I opted for Whole Earth Farms real chicken formula canned. It’s grain-free and all life stages. He’s been on for the last 2 days and LOVES it. But his stools are back to being soft - I would say at first it was soft serve and last night it was more liquid-like.

I read that transitioning wasn’t necessary when going from canned to canned, but could the switch still be upsetting his stomach?

The other thing I’m wondering about is whether I feed him too much. I read that can give diarrhea as well. I’m not used to an all-wet diet, have always given a mixture of both dry and wet for my other cats. So I give him half a 5oz can in the morning and then the other half at night. He screams and begs for more, so I throw in another 1/2 can during the day, split in two. So he gets 1 1/2 can - is this good? He’s 5 /12 months old and weighs around 6.5 lbs (I think).

I also read that wet only diets give softer stools, but the one he had last night was softer than I’d like…

Ideally, I would like to find him a good dry food (with grains, since I read that grain-free dry food has some issues with males?). So grain-free wet, but some "good" grains for the dry part. Any recommendations??

So these are my theories - I either should’ve transitioned slowly to ease the switch from canned to canned, or he eats too much, or the wet-only is kinda intense on his bowels…

What are your thoughts?