Another case of constant diarrhea... Suggestions?

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BellaBlue82

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I think we've finally got the vomiting under control. 🤞 Cerenia is given daily now, and we're actually increasing the budesonide to twice a day. It's helping, but hit or miss sometimes. Vet was ok with that, along with some daily B12. He does way better on the days when he gets B12 so we've broken it down to basically like micro dosing.
Appetite is ok, of course he has turned his nose up to almost EVERYTHING. But I was able to find a Fancy Feast turkey pate that doesn't have fish in it that he will eat. So I'm letting him go as long as he is eating something. I can push diet change again a little more down the road.
We're starting slowly with supplements again as well. For now, just one #4 capsule of S. Boulardii. If he does ok a few days on that, we'll go to 2. I've noticed if I start small and slowly increase things it goes much better!

Here's hoping we stay on the right track and the roller coaster slows down.
 

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Just so you know, anorexia is listed as a rare side effect of Cerenia. Rare in dogs. Manufacturer did not test with cats. However, from my own experience with two cats now and many reports here, it seems reduced appetite could be a more common side effect in cats. If you find his appetite is too weak since going to daily Cerenia, you may ask about trying ondansetron instead. Of course, the weak appetite could very well be his gut and it may improve as it heals. The s. boulardii may also help with his appetite as it helps clear out the junk.
 
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Just so you know, anorexia is listed as a rare side effect of Cerenia. Rare in dogs. Manufacturer did not test with cats. However, from my own experience with two cats now and many reports here, it seems reduced appetite could be a more common side effect in cats. If you find his appetite is too weak since going to daily Cerenia, you may ask about trying ondansetron instead. Of course, the weak appetite could very well be his gut and it may improve as it heals. The s. boulardii may also help with his appetite as it helps clear out the junk.
I was reading something on that as well, so I'm keeping an eye on it. Hes not doing too bad on it now, but if it seems the appetite doesn't improve more I may ask the vet if ondesetron might be a better option.
 
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Ok, I'm going to run a "food" test tomorrow. We're roasting a turkey, which Nico usually likes. If he will eat it this time around, I'm seriously considering home cooked meals for a while. If I do that though, are there any other meal completers other than EZ complete? I bought a sample packet from them and it seemed to make him nauseous.
I'm just trying to see if home cooked will help take down the inflammation if he eats it.
 

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Ok, I'm going to run a "food" test tomorrow. We're roasting a turkey, which Nico usually likes. If he will eat it this time around, I'm seriously considering home cooked meals for a while. If I do that though, are there any other meal completers other than EZ complete? I bought a sample packet from them and it seemed to make him nauseous.
I'm just trying to see if home cooked will help take down the inflammation if he eats it.
Alnutrin. You can buy samples from them. You probably want to go with the eggshell calcium if you are going to cook the turkey. Alnutrin requires the addition of liver. You can ask the butcher for turkey giblets. Or if you don’t want to deal with fresh liver, you can find freeze dried turkey liver usually in the dog treats section. As long as the only ingredient is liver, it doesn’t matter if you found it in the cat or dog treats section. There’s a calculation for replacing fresh with freeze-dried. It comes about to about 1/3 freeze dried weight to fresh. You add the remainder in water. If the recipe says 45 g liver per pound of meat, you’ll add 15 g of freeze dried and 30 more grams of water.
 
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Alnutrin. You can buy samples from them. You probably want to go with the eggshell calcium if you are going to cook the turkey. Alnutrin requires the addition of liver. You can ask the butcher for turkey giblets. Or if you don’t want to deal with fresh liver, you can find freeze dried turkey liver usually in the dog treats section. As long as the only ingredient is liver, it doesn’t matter if you found it in the cat or dog treats section. There’s a calculation for replacing fresh with freeze-dried. It comes about to about 1/3 freeze dried weight to fresh. You add the remainder in water. If the recipe says 45 g liver per pound of meat, you’ll add 15 g of freeze dried and 30 more grams of water.
Thank you!!
 
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He had his first solid poo last night!! It was small and with some "soft serve" as I call it, but hey I'll take any positives. We progressed from total watery poo to more formed poo. Fingers crossed!!

I'm treating him to turkey today for Christmas. He's eaten a few handfuls so far. He came out this morning for his Santa Cat gifts, played with them some, and slept on the ottoman. ❤ It's nice to see him enjoy some things again.
 
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Another hurdle crossed.... We love the Rawz duck pate!!! Woo hoo!!! Tried some last night, and he's preferring it today too. I'm trying to feed it along with the turkey pate so we can slowly integrate/transition food.
I definitely think he grew intolerant to his favorite fancy feast chicken pate... All last week he was pulling fur from his body when grooming, which inclines me to believe it was showing through as skin irritation too. So far the past two days integrating the duck, less over grooming noticed.
 
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Ugh... Ok something went awry. Beginning yesterday morning, Nico has no desire to eat. I tried to see if he pooped, but not sure if he has in the past two days. Cerenia, mirtazipine, fluids, B12, pain medicine, all to no avail. He's still out and about, and walks up to the food like he's hungry - just doesn't want to eat. I syringe fed him yesterday around 4:30... If he doesn't eat soon I'll have to do that again. I skipped his budesonide this morning thinking perhaps it worked TOO well and we went in the other direction. I don't want to give him miralax, but did put some plain vasoline on his nose to see if that helps move things along in his gut.
I'm really at a loss on this one, he was doing so well. 😔
 

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I just started my second IBD cat on a new food and her response was immediate! She had stored eating barely anything and I figured... Why not try the same food as other is on?
She went from almost daily diahrea twice a day and vomiting every 2-3 days a week for years; to 24hrs after being on this food Solids stool and she hasn't vomited once since! It's been 2 weeks now. I know I shouldn't get excited, but I am. Since I adopted her 8yrs ago, we've desperately struggled. The vet only wants to ever treat the symptoms. We've tried all sorts of meds and probiotics and this and that. It may be too early, but her miracle thing was:
Instinct -limited rabbit dry.
It has No poultry, No fish, only 1 meat protein, no grain, sweet potato, potato, chickpeas, corn, wheat, soy, artificial colors or preservatives. It's a pretty good food.
But neither of these cats can tolerate the wet version. Or any wet food for that matter. They immediately start wet poop again.
But to get the newest on it to drink more without wet food, I put 1/4cup water and sprinkle a few of the dry pieces of food in it. It's like flavored water for us!😄
 
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I just started my second IBD cat on a new food and her response was immediate! She had stored eating barely anything and I figured... Why not try the same food as other is on?
She went from almost daily diahrea twice a day and vomiting every 2-3 days a week for years; to 24hrs after being on this food Solids stool and she hasn't vomited once since! It's been 2 weeks now. I know I shouldn't get excited, but I am. Since I adopted her 8yrs ago, we've desperately struggled. The vet only wants to ever treat the symptoms. We've tried all sorts of meds and probiotics and this and that. It may be too early, but her miracle thing was:
Instinct -limited rabbit dry.
It has No poultry, No fish, only 1 meat protein, no grain, sweet potato, potato, chickpeas, corn, wheat, soy, artificial colors or preservatives. It's a pretty good food.
But neither of these cats can tolerate the wet version. Or any wet food for that matter. They immediately start wet poop again.
But to get the newest on it to drink more without wet food, I put 1/4cup water and sprinkle a few of the dry pieces of food in it. It's like flavored water for us!😄
I'm so glad you've had success! I honestly think it was the food. I was out of his turkey pate, and was trying to get him to eat the older chicken food or his duck pate. Of course, the love of duck didn't seem to last that long. Either that or he was associating it with not feeling well. We dialed back the budesonide, and that along with his turkey seemed to do the trick. It's so crazy how wonky they get when the food doesn't agree with them!!
 
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Even though there has been improvement in the past few weeks with Nico, I seem to still be having issues with him gaining weight. Is that something that takes a while to start seeing again? Im just a bit scared that he lost 4 pounds in three months, but I'm sure like anything it will just take time to put back on.
 

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Even though there has been improvement in the past few weeks with Nico, I seem to still be having issues with him gaining weight. Is that something that takes a while to start seeing again? Im just a bit scared that he lost 4 pounds in three months, but I'm sure like anything it will just take time to put back on.
Has he had an ultrasound? 4 lbs in 3 months is quite a lot. He may just need some B12 replacement therapy. But there may be something more sinister behind the weight loss. An ultrasound would be a good non-invasive(!) place to start.
 
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Has he had an ultrasound? 4 lbs in 3 months is quite a lot. He may just need some B12 replacement therapy. But there may be something more sinister behind the weight loss. An ultrasound would be a good non-invasive(!) place to start.
Thanks, yes he had an ultrasound a few weeks ago. They didn't find anything of real notice other than some minor inflammation.
Follow up call with his vet is tomorrow, I think the Cerenia may becoming ineffective. He had some throw up today after two weeks of doing fine. But I also noticed he hadn't gone #2 for a few days - the throw up was right before a huge (and solid!) #2. He's still struggling with some appetite issues, so I think in the discussion tomorrow I'll be asking about changing to ondansetron.
 
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Ok, Vet okayed trying the zofran (generic.) She said start with 1mg for now, can go up to 2mg a day to try it out. We're also increasing the B12 shots to twice a week from once a week.
 

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Ok, Vet okayed trying the zofran (generic.) She said start with 1mg for now, can go up to 2mg a day to try it out. We're also increasing the B12 shots to twice a week from once a week.
1 mg once a day? It’s a twelve hour medicine. You may need to give it twice a day. I cut a 4 mg tablet into fourths and put each crumb into a size five gelatin capsule. Betty will take her own meds as long as I can dip a capsule in A/D (delicious food she only gets for meds) and drop on carpet for her. I actually split her ondansetron into AM and PM capsules where the AM are orange (ondansetron-only) and the PM’s are pink capsules (prednisilone plus ondansetron.). Those really need to be swapped for purple because orange and pink look too similar at 5am. 🤦🏼‍♂️
 
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1 mg once a day? It’s a twelve hour medicine. You may need to give it twice a day. I cut a 4 mg tablet into fourths and put each crumb into a size five gelatin capsule. Betty will take her own meds as long as I can dip a capsule in A/D (delicious food she only gets for meds) and drop on carpet for her. I actually split her ondansetron into AM and PM capsules where the AM are orange (ondansetron-only) and the PM’s are pink capsules (prednisilone plus ondansetron.). Those really need to be swapped for purple because orange and pink look too similar at 5am. 🤦🏼‍♂️
Yeah, she mainly wanted to avoid interactions with the Mirtaz. While rare, it could result in seratonin overload so it's just a better safe than sorry mode for now.
If he responds well on the zofran, and doesn't need the Mirtaz, then I can do AM and PM.
Lol I feel you on the capsule colors, I just bought some blue and white for his S. Boulardii - I had purple and white, and ironically that was the color of his budesonide pills!! UGH I don't need to mess that up at 5am... Smh
 
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For goodness sake, the saga continues lol.
So, I think Nico has a food aversion from being so nauseous and sick for so long before we started budesonide.
The good news, giving 2mg Am and Pm of zofran seems to be helping with his nausea. Poo has been solid every time he goes. No throwing up. Just, doesn't want to eat. I can tell he gets hungry, but then walks away from the plate every time I try.
So, we're now assisted feeding. Ironically, I put his wet food in a syringe and onto the palm of my hand while I sit with him, and he will eat it that way. Hey, at this point whatever works!!
I'm also waiting on his bottle of B12 and syringes. I had the vet give him B12 week before Xmas, and I had one that I gave last week as well... We decided twice a week would be best so just waiting to pick it up. We'll find out tomorrow how it goes!!
 

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Betty has her moments where she doesn't seem to want to eat. What works for Betty is to simply take a morsel of food and put it on the carpet for her. I have no idea why that works. My leading theory is that she might have dental pain and she may have hit a tooth against the plate enough times to scare her. But she does eventually eat from the plate just fine. So I don't know if it's that. And I've tried paper plates and that doesn't change anything. One thing that I figured out almost by accident is that she must indeed have some dental pain. When she was scheduled to have a dental last month, she took some preflight gabapentin to relax her. Well the dental got canceled at the last possible moment and I had a bag-of-Jello Betty that tore through her food that day like I hadn't seen since she was on high dose of steroids. You may want to ask your vet for a trial prescription of gabapentin (maybe just five or ten 100 mg capsules.) You'll have to empty the powder out and eyeball the division. Betty gets 25 mg twice a day. That has made a huge difference in her eating and finishing her portions without turning her into a bag of Jello.

Krista wore many B12 shots on her neck and back until I got good enough at it. If you do it well enough, Nico won't even notice. But if you have a learning curve like I did, shake off the mistakes. Don't force anything. If he feels the needle and you can't push it or you got it in but he ended up wearing more dose than receiving it, just shake it off, and try again next time.
 
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Betty has her moments where she doesn't seem to want to eat. What works for Betty is to simply take a morsel of food and put it on the carpet for her. I have no idea why that works. My leading theory is that she might have dental pain and she may have hit a tooth against the plate enough times to scare her. But she does eventually eat from the plate just fine. So I don't know if it's that. And I've tried paper plates and that doesn't change anything. One thing that I figured out almost by accident is that she must indeed have some dental pain. When she was scheduled to have a dental last month, she took some preflight gabapentin to relax her. Well the dental got canceled at the last possible moment and I had a bag-of-Jello Betty that tore through her food that day like I hadn't seen since she was on high dose of steroids. You may want to ask your vet for a trial prescription of gabapentin (maybe just five or ten 100 mg capsules.) You'll have to empty the powder out and eyeball the division. Betty gets 25 mg twice a day. That has made a huge difference in her eating and finishing her portions without turning her into a bag of Jello.
Yeah I'm not sure if he's in pain or not right now? I do have some gabapentin on hand, and gave him a small dose tonight. We'll see how she does. Ironically when my other kitty was sick, she developed a food aversion as well. She had a piece of plastic bag she found God knows we're get stuck in her tummy!! Luckily she puked it up, but kept puking all day. Hence the not wanting to eat. After some recovery time and a few days of assisted feeding she realized oh, I'm ok now and the food is making me feel better! So hopefully it's just that. But I'm not adverse to trying different tricks to get him to eat. 😉
Krista wore many B12 shots on her neck and back until I got good enough at it. If you do it well enough, Nico won't even notice. But if you have a learning curve like I did, shake off the mistakes. Don't force anything. If he feels the needle and you can't push it or you got it in but he ended up wearing more dose than receiving it, just shake it off, and try again next time.
I'm lucky there - I give Nico insulin so thankfully I'm pretty handy with a needle. In a good way!! Lol I'm hoping once we get a few good doses on board, that will help too. When he had his B12 tested week before Xmas, it was tanked. Poor guy just can't catch a break... But I'm helping the best I can, that's why I'm his momma! ❤
 
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